Interpretation Bias In Adolescents With Social Anxiety

"Interpretation Bias", described as the tendency to interpret situations in a negative or threatening manner. In recent years, forensic researcher have focused on the social cognitive characteristics in people with high anxiety. In previous studies, interpretation bias were found to be widely linked to social anxiety in adult populations. However, there is few research to investigate mechanisms underlying the effect of social anxiety on interpretation bias. Furthermore, most studies have assessed biased interpretative inferences made on "off-line" or "on-line" with either self-report or reaction time paradigms, rather than using both methods (Beard,2009).This study aimed to extend research on interpretation bias to an adolescent population with both self-report or reaction time paradigms. Meanwhile, the research on interpretation bias in adolescents provide the theoretical basis for the social cognitive models and treatments targeting individuals with social anxiety disorder.The procedures in current study were as follows:fist, analyse the literature to proposing research question and hypothesis, then to design and implement research program. At last, we analyse the data and confirm the hypothesis. We use self-report paradigms to investigated whether high socially Anxious adolescents interpret social situations in a more negative or less positive manner in comparison to low socially anxious adolescents, and the effect of gender on the relationship between social anxiety and interpretation bias were controlled. In order to check the interpretation made "on-line", we used reaction time paradigms and change the SOA to investigate mechanisms underlying the effect of social anxiety on interpretation bias.The results in the current study as following:(1) negative interpretations made on "off-line" of social situations were more common in the high anxious than control group.(2)high anxious adolescents were not more negative but less positive than control participants in their "off-line" interpretations of non-social situations.(3) girls were significantly more likely to endorse negative interpretations, less likely to endorse positive interpretations of social situations.(4) Initially, all meanings of the social situation are retrieved in both high anxious adolescents and control group.(5) high anxious adolescents were more negative and less positive than control participants in their "on-line" interpretations of social situations at the stage of post-lexical processes.(6) negative meaning of the non-social situation was retrieved and the positive meaning was suppressed in both high anxious adolescents and control group.