Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Freiburg, Engelbergerstrasse 41, Freiburg, Germany.
Behav Res Ther. 2011 Nov;49(11):789-95. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2011.09.001. Epub 2011 Sep 9.
Cognitive models of social phobia (SP) assume that following social evaluative stress, individuals with SP engage into dysfunctional post-event processing (PEP), a detailed negative review of the past event. While previous research has already shown, that children with high levels of social fears suffer from more frequent negative PEP, it remains unclear how stable PEP is across time in this age group and whether it leads to degraded self-appraisals of performance. Therefore in the present study we exposed a group of high (HSA) and low socially anxious children (LSA; both n = 20), aged 10-12 years, to a social evaluative situation and assessed negative and positive PEP as well as self-rated performance at 2.5 h and one week after the task. Our results revealed that HSA children reported more negative PEP than LSA children, independent of levels of depression. Moreover, negative PEP was related to measures of social anxiety and performance ratings within the tasks. Only the performance ratings in HSA children worsened over the course of the following week and were related to more negative PEP. Thus, these results speak for the high clinical relevance dysfunctional PEP may have for the maintenance of social fears already in childhood.
社交恐惧症（SP）的认知模型假设，在经历社会评价压力后，SP 患者会进行功能失调的事后加工（PEP），即对过去事件的详细负面评估。尽管先前的研究已经表明，高社交恐惧水平的儿童会经历更频繁的负面 PEP，但在该年龄段，PEP 的时间稳定性如何，以及它是否会导致对表现的自我评估恶化，仍不清楚。因此，在本研究中，我们让一组 10-12 岁的高社交焦虑儿童（HSA）和低社交焦虑儿童（LSA；每组 n=20）暴露于社会评价情境中，并在 2.5 小时和任务结束一周后评估负面和正面 PEP 以及自我报告的表现。我们的结果表明，HSA 儿童比 LSA 儿童报告了更多的负面 PEP，而与抑郁水平无关。此外，负面 PEP 与任务中的社交焦虑和表现评定相关。只有 HSA 儿童的表现评定在接下来的一周内恶化，并与更多的负面 PEP 相关。因此，这些结果表明，功能失调的 PEP 在儿童时期可能对维持社交恐惧具有高度的临床相关性。
