Assessing Peer-Related Impairments Linked to Adolescent Social Anxiety: Strategic Selection of Informants Optimizes Prediction of Clinically Relevant Domains

Understanding School Anxiety in Italian Adolescence through an Artificial Neural Network: Influence of Social Skills and Coping Strategies

“…Furthermore, our research found a direct relationship between poor social skills and school anxiety, something that has been the subject of interest in recent studies [28,38,41,43]. Students with insufficient social skills tend to experience more anxiety, which is consistent with previous research [37,39]. This connection highlights the importance of boosting the development of social skills, as they have been shown to be essential for academic success and psychosocial development [31].…”

“…These skills are essential for successful adaptation in social situations and may include a variety of behaviors, such as cooperation, assertiveness, empathy, and communication skills, as well as catering to the diversity of the student body [35,36]. It has been observed that students with adequate social skills tend to experience lower levels of anxiety compared to their peers with less developed social skills [37][38][39]. What is relevant about these behaviors is that such skills can be taught and improved through intervention programs at school and at home and are an essential part of social-emotional education [40].…”

Assessing Anxiety-Related Impairment in Children and Adolescents

“…Behavioral and neurobiological approaches may provide a sense of anxiety-related impairment and offer important benefits (for reviews, see Byrne et al, 2018; Silverman & Ollendick, 2005). A nice example of this is assessing impairment and symptoms related to social anxiety by observing and rating youths’ ability to interact with confederates or complete speech tasks (e.g., Follet et al, 2023). Overall, though, the psychometric data base for these methods is less developed than symptom measures and diagnostic interviews.…”