Social cue interpretation of anxious children

Anxiety‐Related Reasoning Biases in Children and Adolescents

“…In one of the first studies examining anxiety-related interpretation bias in children, Bell-Dolan (1995) presented 9-to 11-year-olds who were high or low on trait anxiety, with a series of videotaped peer-interaction vignettes displaying peer behaviour that was either hostile, non-hostile or ambiguous. Results showed that the high-anxious children were equally accurate in identifying hostile intent in peer interactions as their low-anxious counterparts.…”

Differential correlates of reactive and proactive aggression in Asian adolescents: relations to narcissism, anxiety, schizotypal traits, and peer relations

“…Numerous studies have also found that children with deficits in these first two stages of social information processing are likely to exhibit high levels of anxiety [Bell-Dolan, 1995;Vasey et al, 1995]. One such study, conducted by Vasey et al [1995], suggested that clinically anxious children had a propensity to exhibit an attentional bias toward threatening or hostile cues, as compared with nonanxious children: findings reported that clinically anxious subjects were more likely to respond faster to a visual dot probe that followed a threat-related word, than when it followed a neutral word in a probe detection task.…”

“…One such study, conducted by Vasey et al [1995], suggested that clinically anxious children had a propensity to exhibit an attentional bias toward threatening or hostile cues, as compared with nonanxious children: findings reported that clinically anxious subjects were more likely to respond faster to a visual dot probe that followed a threat-related word, than when it followed a neutral word in a probe detection task. Another study discovered that, although anxious children were as likely as nonanxious children to accurately attribute hostile intent during hostile peer interactions, these anxious children were more likely than their non-anxious counterparts to misinterpret non-hostile social situations as hostile [Bell-Dolan, 1995]. Hence, with extant literature showing that impairments in the first two stages of social information processing are distinct to reactive aggression, it is possible to suggest that reactively aggressive behavior may be accompanied by levels of anxiety that are higher than in proactively aggressive individuals.…”

Social Information Processing and Coping Strategies of Shy/Withdrawn and Aggressive Children: Does Friendship Matter?

“…Non-aggressive children, particularly those who may be described as socially wary and withdrawn, may view interpersonal situations such as peer group entry as stressful and anxiety-producing; in their case, avoidance evoked by fear or wariness may be the social consequence. Thus, an inability to regulate emotional arousal under certain circumstances could influence several steps of the information processing and behavioral enactment process.Whereas the majority of attention has been devoted to the study of aggression (see Orobio de Castro, Veerman, Koops, Bosch, & Monshouwer, 2002), social information-processing models have also been proposed as being relevant for the understanding of peer victimization (Graham & Juvonen, 1998), childhood anxiety (Bell-Dolan, 1995;Daleiden & Vasey, 1997;Suarez & Bell-Dolan, 2001), and childhood/adolescent depression (e.g., Garber, Keiley, & Martin, 2002). Although not all withdrawn children experience anxiety and depression, social withdrawal is generally considered a symptom of internalizing problems (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1981;Rubin, Burgess, Kennedy, & Stewart, 2003).…”