Self-focused attention and social cognitive biases in nonreferred, socially anxious children

The goal of this investigation was to better understand the role that cognitive processes play in childhood social anxiety. Based on Barlow's model of anxious apprehension (1988, 2002), Kendall and Ronan's cognitive-behavioral model of childhood anxiety (1990), and two theories of social anxiety (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997), this study examined the role that self-focused attention plays in the development and maintenance of childhood social anxiety. Participants and their caregivers completed questionnaires regarding social anxiety, self-consciousness, and negative affect. Children also completed measures of mood state and focus of attention. Then children were randomly assigned to either a mirror manipulation group that attempted to induce self-focused attention using the presence of a mirror or to a control group (no mirror present). Participants then completed two cognitive tasks, one measuring selective attention biases (probe detection task) and the other measuring interpretation biases (ambiguous stories). Results indicated that social anxiety is significantly correlated with interpretation biases, but not attentional biases. Dispositional self-consciousness is significantly correlated with social anxiety, negative affect, and interpretation biases, but not attentional biases. The mirror manipulation procedure did not have an effect on self-reported focus of attention, negative affect, or negative cognitive biases. Finally, the mirror manipulation procedure did not interact with social anxiety on negative cognitive biases when dispositional self-consciousness was held constant. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.