Social Anxiety, Anticipatory Processing and Negative Expectancies for an Interpersonal Task in Middle Childhood

Abstract

Cognitive models assume that socially anxious individuals engage in negatively-biased anticipatory processing that enhances anxiety and exacerbates maladaptive cognitions. To date little is known about this anticipatory processing and its relationship with mood and predicted performance in socially anxious children. In the present study, a school sample of 181 children (aged 10-11 years) was instructed to either engage in anticipatory processing or perform a distraction task while preparing to give a speech in front of the class. Results showed that trait social anxiety was associated with more negative estimates of personal appearance and catastrophic thoughts relating to speech performance. Following the manipulation, children in the distraction condition showed significant reductions in state anxiety, but children in the anticipation condition did not. Furthermore, children in the anticipation condition gave more negative predictions of personal appearance during the speech task than children in the distraction condition. Crucially, trait social anxiety was `more strongly associated with catastrophic thinking and negative expectations of their personal appearance when children were instructed to engage in anticipatory processing rather than distraction. The findings provide further support for the suggestion that anticipatory processing plays a role in maintaining childhood social anxiety.

Is positive thinking in anticipation of a performance situation better than distraction? An experimental study in preadolescents

“…The data of Vassilopoulos et al . () support the hypothesis that engaging in anticipatory processing has a significant effect on how preadolescents feel and think before an anxiety‐provoking social situation. However, since children in the Vassilopoulos et al .…”

“…The distraction and positive anticipation tasks were largely adapted from the task developed by Vassilopoulos et al . (). In both tasks, participants worked at their own pace for 6–7 min through a list of 13 items.…”

“…Whereas cross‐sectional studies provide information on the strengths of relationships between variables, experimental studies enable a more direct examination of causal relationships. To this aim, Vassilopoulos, Moberly and Tsoumanis () recently reported a study which experimentally manipulated anticipatory processing in children. A school sample of 181 children (aged 10–11 years) was instructed to either engage in anticipatory processing or perform a distraction task while preparing to give a speech in front of the class.…”

“…However, since children in the Vassilopoulos et al . () study did not eventually perform the social‐evaluative task, it is not clear whether the effects of anticipatory processing would be related to actual behavior in the feared situation. Moreover, in most of the adult studies investigating pre‐event rumination in social anxiety, participants are instructed to engage in negative anticipatory thinking (e.g., dwell on past failures and negative self‐images, think about what could go wrong in the impeding situation, etc.…”

“…Based on the aforementioned Clark and Wells () model, we hypothesized that trait social anxiety would be associated with: (1) predictions of more negative sport performance and appearance, and (2) more catastrophic thoughts about performance related to the sporting situation. In addition, on the basis of the defensive pessimism literature (Norem, ) or previous work with youth samples (Vassilopoulos et al ., ), it was predicted that: (1) preadolescents engaging in positive anticipatory thinking would report more state anxiety or catastrophic thoughts and would predict more negative personal appearance compared to preadolescents who distracted; and (2) experimental condition would interact with social anxiety to influence these outcomes, such that anticipation condition would have more pronounced effects on predictions of negative personal appearance and catastrophic thinking for individuals with higher trait levels of social anxiety. Finally, we predicted that positive anticipatory thinking would be associated with poorer task performance (poorer observer‐rated athletic performance).…”