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Social Interpretation Bias in Children and Adolescents with Anxiety Disorders: Psychometric Examination of the Self-report of Ambiguous Social Situations for Youth (SASSY) Scale.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health problems in youth, and faulty interpretation bias has been positively linked to anxiety severity, even within anxiety-disordered youth. Quick, reliable assessment of interpretation bias may be useful in identifying youth with certain types of anxiety or assessing changes on cognitive bias during intervention. OBJECTIVE:This study examined the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Self-report of Ambiguous Social Situations for Youth (SASSY) scale, a self-report measure developed to assess interpretation bias in youth. METHODS:Participants (N=488, age 7 to 17) met diagnostic criteria for Social Phobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and/or Separation Anxiety Disorder. An exploratory factor analysis was performed on baseline data from youth participating in a large randomized clinical trial. RESULTS:Exploratory factor analysis yielded two factors (Accusation/Blame, Social Rejection). The SASSY full scale and Social Rejection factor demonstrated adequate internal consistency, convergent validity with social anxiety, and discriminant validity as evidenced by non-significant correlations with measures of non-social anxiety. Further, the SASSY Social Rejection factor accurately distinguished children and adolescents with Social Phobia from those with other anxiety disorders, supporting its criterion validity, and revealed sensitivity to changes with treatment. Given the relevance to youth with social phobia, pre- and post-intervention data were examined for youth social phobia to test sensitivity to treatment effects; results suggested that SASSY scores reduced for treatment responders. CONCLUSIONS:Findings suggest the potential utility of the SASSY Social Rejection factor as a quick, reliable, and efficient way of assessing interpretation bias in anxious youth, particularly as related to social concerns, in research and clinical settings.

SUBMITTER: Gonzalez A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5521277 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Social Interpretation Bias in Children and Adolescents with Anxiety Disorders: Psychometric Examination of the Self-report of Ambiguous Social Situations for Youth (SASSY) Scale.

Gonzalez Araceli A Rozenman Michelle M Langley Audra K AK Kendall Philip C PC Ginsburg Golda S GS Compton Scott S Walkup John T JT Birmaher Boris B Albano Anne Marie AM Piacentini John J

Child & youth care forum 20161124 3

<h4>Background</h4>Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health problems in youth, and faulty interpretation bias has been positively linked to anxiety severity, even within anxiety-disordered youth. Quick, reliable assessment of interpretation bias may be useful in identifying youth with certain types of anxiety or assessing changes on cognitive bias during intervention.<h4>Objective</h4>This study examined the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Self-report of Ambig ...[more]

PMID: 28740356

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Project description:BackgroundResearch indicates that difficulties across multiple socioemotional functioning domains (e.g., social emotion expression/regulation, response to social elicitors of emotion) and negatively biased interpretations of ambiguous social situations may affect eating disorder symptoms. The impact of inflexible interpretations of social situations on eating disorder symptoms is less clear. The present study therefore examined relations between inflexible and biased social interpretations, socioemotional functioning, and eating disorder symptoms.MethodA total of 310 participants from the general population, recruited from an online crowdsourcing platform, completed measures of socioemotional functioning (e.g., rejection sensitivity, negative social exchange), eating disorder symptoms, and positive and negative interpretation bias and inflexibility on a single measurement occasion.ResultsSocioemotional functioning impairments (Pillai's trace = 0.11, p < .001), but not negative (β = .07, p = .162) or positive (β = -.01, p = .804) interpretation bias or inflexible interpretations (β = .04, p = .446), were associated with eating disorder symptoms in multiple regression models. In network analyses controlling statistically for multiple markers of socioemotional functioning, eating disorder symptoms were directly associated with negative (but not positive) interpretation bias. Inflexible interpretations were indirectly linked to symptoms via co-dampening of positive emotions. Exploratory causal discovery analyses suggested that several socioemotional functioning variables (social anxiety, depression, negative social exchange) may cause eating disorder symptoms.ConclusionsConsistent with cognitive-interpersonal models of disordered eating, our results suggest that less accurate (biased, inflexible) interpretations of social information contribute to patterns of cognition (anxious anticipation of rejection) and emotion regulation (down-regulation of positive social emotion) thought to encourage disordered eating.Public significanceThis study suggests that less accurate interpretations of ambiguous social information encourage anxious anticipation of rejection and downregulation of positive social emotions, both of which are thought to promote eating disorder symptoms. Knowledge provided by this study about the likely relations between interpretive processes, social/emotional functioning, and eating disorder symptoms may help inform treatments for eating disorders, particularly those that attempt to modify patterns of interpretation.

Dataset Information

Social Interpretation Bias in Children and Adolescents with Anxiety Disorders: Psychometric Examination of the Self-report of Ambiguous Social Situations for Youth (SASSY) Scale.

Publications

Social Interpretation Bias in Children and Adolescents with Anxiety Disorders: Psychometric Examination of the Self-report of Ambiguous Social Situations for Youth (SASSY) Scale.

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