Psyc7006 - Social Anxiety - wk6 Flashcards
What is social anxiety?
- fear social situations where exposed to scrutiny and negative evaluation by others.
- fear (anxiety) is out of proportion
- Social situations provoke avoidance or are endured with distress
- duration greater than 6 months, impairment and distress
Outline Clark & Wells 1995 cognitive model of social phobia. Give an example of a scenario
Social situation –> Activations assumptions (unhelpful and bias beliefs) –> perceived social danger (negative thoughts) –> symptoms (somatic and cognitive) + Safety behaviours (Which increase symptoms)
Processing self as a social object (attention is self-focused)!
Situation = going to the shop, having to check out through the cashier
v
activates assumptions: excessively high performance standard + consequences of performing + unconditional negative beliefs “i am flawed”
V (negative thoughts)
Anticipatory processing e.g., I’m going to fuck up and people will think I am an idiot.
Interpretation bias - primed to interpret situation as more negative than it is, as confirmatory evidence for phobia.
Thoughts = I’ll stutter and get flustered, I’ll drop thing
Biased self-focused attention (processing self as a social object self-focused attention) = focused on voice and flustered-ness (blushing) look red and jittery, feel that one must look as anxious as one feels.
Persistant negative images, smells, sounds
v
Anxiety symptoms = dry mouth, unsteady voice, fidgeting, sweating, red face
&
Safety behaviours = over preparing, breathing exercising, attempt to hide blushing with clothes –> can cause more symptoms.
V
Post-event rumination - adding negative experiences to a mental ‘collection’ of past social failures that can be dredged up when in same or similar situations.
Give an example of assumptions someone with social phobia/social anxiety might make? (3x)
Excessively high standards of performance (“this must be perfect”)
Beliefs concerning the consequences of performing (“ people will dislike me” “I will blush”)
Unconditional negative belief (“I am unlikeable”)
What is biased attention?
- Shift attention to themselves
- Use the internal information to infer - how they appear to others and what other people are thinking about them
therefore, reduced processing of external social cues
What is Interpretation bias?
Biased processing of external social cues
- Ambigious social cues –> negatively evaluated
- Mildly negative social event –> catastrophically
- Absence of positive responses
What is biased anticipatory & post event processing (Rumination?
- negatively biased anticipatory processing dominated by negative images - collect past failures, predict failures and rejection.
- Post-event processing (rumination) dominated by negative self-perception
- Add recent failure to the list of past one, encoded in memory
What are safety behaviour?
- Behavioural & cognitive strategies that are engaged in a fashion of intending to prevents one’s fears from becoming true (Feared catastrophe)
e.g.,
my face will go red –> keep cool (open windows, drink cold water, avoid hot drink)
Outline Rapee & Heimberg’s model (1997)
Perceived audience -> mental representation of self as seen by audience –> comparison of self as seen by audience with appraisal of audience’s expected standard (actually ones own biased standard) –> symptoms (behavioural, cognitive, physical) —>(feedback loop) —> mental representation of self as seen by audience
Key: preferential allocation of attentional resources to negative evaluation and to self.
What is thought to be the maintaining process of social anxiety?
Attention focused on the self - on how they must look to others (+ negatively biased processing) this ‘evidence’ only ever confirms phobia. Therefore not receiving disconfirming evidence.
Based on Clark and Wells 1995 and Rapee & Heimbergs model (1997) how should social anxiety be treated?
Focus on:
* drop safety behaviours and self-focused attention
* Shift focus of attention to social situation
* Video feedback to modify distorted self-imagery (include cog-prep, post-VF review and audience feedback)
*Identify and modify anticipatory and post-event processing (rumination)
Challenge dysfunctional assumptions through behavioural experiments and cognitive restructuring.
What is video feedback?
An effective method to modify self-imagery and allow individuals with social anxiety disorder to obtain more accurate self-perceptions
What is cognitive preparation? How does it help VF?
A procedure done before VF that ensures maximal benefit of VF
participants are asked to:
- predict in detail what they thought they would see in the video
- close their eyes and form a clear image of how they think they came across during the speech
- to pay attention to how they LOOKED rather than how they FELT and to watch the video as if watching a stranger.
encourage them NOT to focus on self image…
What is Post-VF cognitive review?
Cognitive review enables the processing and encoding of the feedback information, facilitating new learning.
two-steps:
- go over their performance ratings that they rated more positively from before to after watching the VF
- answer 4 questions: enhance their processing and encode feedback in a deerper, more meaningful self-relevant matter. (Deeper LOP!)
What are some of the limitations in Video Feedback studies?
- using analogue populations (not SAD sufferers)
- restricting the procedure to speech tasks rather than other kinds of social tasks
- Failing to demonstrate effects of VF on speech anxiety despite showing improvements in self-perceptions of performance.
Outline how you would treat social anxiety?
Key goal: reverse the maintaining processes
- develop a personal version of model (what are the triggers, physical responses, safety behaviours, assumptions etc.)
- Stop using safety behaviours and stop focusing on the self. –> Shift focus back to the social situation
- VF (with cognitive preparation and post-VF review and Audience feedback)
- CBT - behavioral experiments to test assumptions and the feared consequences. Identify and modify anticipatory and post-event processing, challenge dysfunctional assumptions through behavioural experiments and cognitive restructuring.
