Poster #58 - Role of Avoidant Bias in Predicting Social Anxiety Symptoms in Adolescent Girls

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Background:

Avoidant coping behaviors have been long-theorized to maintain social anxiety symptoms, with the assumption that threatening situations activate avoidant behaviors, leading to a cycle of negative reinforcement (Mathews & MacLeod, 2005). Task-based research that has used emotional facial stimuli to elicit approach and avoidant behaviors has shown that threatening faces (e.g., angry) elicit greater avoidant tendencies than non-threatening (e.g., happy) faces in socially anxious individuals (Roelofs et al., 2010). Given that adolescent girls are at high risk for developing social anxiety (Essau et al., 2000), there is great need to study avoidant behaviors in adolescent girls; however, the majority of the literature has focused on adults. Based on past research, we hypothesized that girls who avoided angry faces faster would report higher social anxiety. Additionally, we sought to assess if task-based avoidance maps onto real-world avoidance coping strategies.

Methods:

Participants were 64 adolescent girls, ages 11-13, oversampled for temperamental-risk for social anxiety. Approach and avoidance biases were assessed using the Approach Avoidance Task (AAT; Roelofs et al., 2010), in which participants view happy and angry faces with straight or averted gazes on a screen and are asked to either push (avoid) or pull (approach) emotional faces with a joystick. Bias measures for each type of emotional face and gaze direction were calculated by subtracting the reaction time (RT) averages of each participants’ pull movements from their push movements. Participants completed a self-report measure of social anxiety using a subscale of the Self Report for Childhood Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED-C; Birmaher et al., 1999).

In order to assess the ecological validity of the AAT, bias measures were compared to ecological momentary assessment (EMA) items assessing avoidant behaviors in the ten days following completion of the task. Participants reported their most negative recent interaction, their resulting negative emotions (on a 100-point scale), and if they avoided the situation. Participants’ avoidant responses were computed as a ratio of their responses to their number of samples.

Results:

A linear regression model with RT bias measures predicting social anxiety symptoms indicated that approach and avoidant behaviors accounted for 16% of the variance in predicting social anxiety symptoms (R2= 15.9). A main effect of avoidance of straight gaze angry faces (β =-.007, t(58)=-2.355, p =.022) showed a greater avoidance of angry faces predicting higher social anxiety symptoms.

Pearson correlations demonstrated a significant positive association between AAT avoidance of straight gaze angry faces and EMA avoidant coping strategy (r(28) = .338, p < .05).

Conclusion

Our findings support previous research showing that avoidance plays a role in social anxiety and critically extends it to adolescent girls, who are at increased risk for developing social anxiety disorder. Furthermore, our results for angry faces suggest that direct gaze is more likely to elicit avoidance than approach in individuals who report more social anxiety symptoms. Angry faces with averted gaze may not be perceived as directed to the participant, lessening the need to withdraw and avoid. Additionally, we provide validation of the AAT as an assessment of socially-avoidant behavior.

Authors

• Elisa Borrero, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Dana Karlton Rosen, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kirsten M.P. McKone, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marlissa Cristina Amole, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Silk, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author