Follet Lia E, Okuno Hide, De Los Reyes Andres
University of Maryland at College Park.
University of Maryland at College Park.
Behav Ther. 2023 Jan;54(1):29-42. doi: 10.1016/j.beth.2022.06.010. Epub 2022 Jul 15.
Socially anxious adolescents commonly experience impaired interpersonal functioning with unfamiliar, same-age peers. Yet, we lack short screening tools for assessing peer-related impairments. Recent work revealed that a parent-reported, three-item screening tool produced scores that uniquely related to social anxiety concerns. However, this tool ought to go beyond linking impairments to service needs (i.e., social anxiety symptoms). This tool should also inform the goals of services, in particular by linking impairments to key domains relevant to therapeutically addressing adolescents' anxiety-related needs, such as social skills when interacting with unfamiliar peers. This requires an assessment approach that involves strategic selection of informants who vary in their expertise for observing anxiety-related needs, as well as the therapeutic goals for addressing anxiety-related impairments (e.g., social skills within peer interactions). We leveraged parents' reports to link impairments to social anxiety-related needs. To link impairments to social skills, we leveraged informants (i.e., unfamiliar untrained observers [UUOs]) who observed adolescents within tasks designed to simulate interactions with same-age, unfamiliar peers. We tested this approach using a mixed-clinical/community sample of 134 adolescents, ages 14- to 15 years old. We leveraged multi-informant survey reports to assess adolescent social anxiety, and trained independent observers rated adolescents' social skills within unfamiliar peer interactions. Parents' reports performed best when distinguishing adolescents on referral status and predicting survey-reported social anxiety, whereas only UUOs' reports predicted independent observers' social skills ratings. These findings inform the strategic selection of informants for assessing impairments that commonly prompt the need for adolescents to access mental health services for social anxiety.
社交焦虑的青少年在与不熟悉的同龄同龄人交往时，通常会出现人际交往功能受损的情况。然而，我们缺乏用于评估与同伴相关损伤的简短筛查工具。最近的研究表明，一种由家长报告的三项筛查工具所产生的分数与社交焦虑问题具有独特的相关性。然而，该工具不仅应将损伤与服务需求（即社交焦虑症状）联系起来。该工具还应明确服务目标，特别是通过将损伤与治疗青少年焦虑相关需求的关键领域联系起来，例如与不熟悉的同龄人互动时的社交技能。这需要一种评估方法，该方法涉及战略性地选择在观察焦虑相关需求方面具有不同专业知识的信息提供者，以及解决焦虑相关损伤的治疗目标（例如，同伴互动中的社交技能）。我们利用家长的报告将损伤与社交焦虑相关需求联系起来。为了将损伤与社交技能联系起来，我们利用信息提供者（即不熟悉的未经训练的观察者[UUO]）在旨在模拟与同龄、不熟悉的同龄人互动的任务中观察青少年。我们使用134名14至15岁青少年的混合临床/社区样本对该方法进行了测试。我们利用多信息提供者的调查报告来评估青少年的社交焦虑，并让经过培训的独立观察者对青少年在不熟悉的同伴互动中的社交技能进行评分。在区分青少年的转诊状态和预测调查所报告的社交焦虑方面，家长的报告表现最佳，而只有UUO的报告能够预测独立观察者的社交技能评分。这些发现为评估损伤时信息提供者的战略性选择提供了参考，这些损伤通常促使青少年因社交焦虑而寻求心理健康服务。
