An Intervention Study In Children’s Social Anxiety Based On Interpretation Bias Modification And Self-image Modification

Social anxiety,as a kind of negative emotion,will affect children’s social interaction and peer relationship.Cognitive bias plays an important role during the generation and maintenance of children’s social anxiety.The role of cognitive factors such as self-image and interpretation bias in social anxiety had attracted extensive attention during recent years.Research revealed that individuals with higher social anxiety were more likely to interpret ambiguous events as negative and maintain a negative self-image than individuals with lower social anxiety,which would deepen their social anxiety.Therefore,it will be helpful to intervene children’s negative interpretation bias and reconstruct their self-image to alleviate their social anxiety.Although many studies had confirmed the effects of interpretation bias modification and self-image modification training for adults’ social anxiety,their effect on children’s social anxiety was still inconsistent.This study aimed to explore the relationship among self-image,cognitive bias and social anxiety with a crosssectional design firstly.Then an intervention study was carried out to examine the effects of self-image and interpretation bias modification training on children’s social anxiety.In the first study,202 children aged 10-12(M=10.96,SD=0.26)were selected from a primary school in Nanjing to explore the relationship among self-image,interpretation bias and social anxiety.The social anxiety scale,self-image questionnaire,interpretation bias questionnaire and stress task were used.The results showed that: negative self-image and interpretation bias were significantly correlated with social anxiety;And children with higher negative self-image and interpretation bias had more social anxiety.In the second study,202 children(M=10.96,SD=0.26)were assigned to three groups(self-image group,interpretation bias group and control group).Participants of the self-image group were trained with some positive self-image instructions,and participants of the interpretation bias group were trained with interpretation bias modification procedures,while participants of the control group were given attentioncontrol training.Finally 185 participants completed the intervention procedure and were asked to report their self-image,interpretation bias,and social anxiety again.The results showed that:(1)The negative self-image,anticipation anxiety and anticipation performance of the interpretation bias group decreased significantly after the intervention,and the negative interpretation bias and social anxiety were improved;The self-image,social anxiety,anticipatory anxiety and anticipatory performance of participant of the self-image group decreased significantly after the intervention.(2)Participants of the self-image group and the interpretation bias group did not differ from those of control group in self-image,anticipatory anxiety,anticipatory performance and social anxiety after intervention;And participants of the interpretation bias group decreased significantly in interpretation bias compared with the control group;The change of interpretation bias played a mediating role between the intervention conditions(interpretation bias group,control group)and the change of social anxiety;The effects of two intervention conditions are different only in interpretation bias.(3)There was a correlation between the changes of the self-image,interpretation bias and social anxiety;There is no obvious generalization effect between interpretation bias and self-image compared with the control group.(4)The intervention effects were larger for participants with higher social anxiety.To sum up,this study explored the relationship among self-image,interpretation bias and social anxiety,and based on which,some new intervention programmes were developed to ameliorate children’s social anxiety and their effect were confirmed.The present study has important implications for the studies and early interventions of children’s social anxiety.