Abstract
This pre-registered study focused on developing a new social picture task to assess interpretation bias related to social fears in adolescents. Using such a pictorial task may increase ecological validity and readily trigger emotional processes compared to more traditional verbal tasks that are often used. In the picture task, ambiguous social pictures were presented, followed by a positive and negative interpretation. In this study, we examined how the new task relates to an already existing interpretation bias task and how the new pictorial task relates to social fears in adolescents. The sample consisted of 329 adolescents aged 12 to 18 years. Interpretation bias was assessed with the newly developed pictorial task and with more traditional verbal vignettes. Social fears were measured with self-report questionnaires. The results suggest that the pictorial task was able to assess interpretation bias comparable to the verbal vignettes, suggesting appropriate convergent validity. Interpretation bias assessed with the picture task was linked to higher levels of fear of negative evaluation, the core symptom of social anxiety, but not to social anxiety symptoms in general. The verbal task was linked to both social fears and thus still seems the preferred method to investigate interpretation bias related to social fears in adolescents. However, we do believe that with further improvement of the pictorial task, it could be a useful addition to the research field.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1067-1080 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Aug 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We would like to thank all school directors, teachers, parents and adolescents for their participation in our study. We would also like to thank the producers of Saxonia Media, and in particular Yvonne Abele, Anne Schmidt and Josefine Bohlken, for providing us with the video material of Schloss Einstein, which made it possible to develop the interpretation bias social picture task.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
Funding
We would like to thank all school directors, teachers, parents and adolescents for their participation in our study. We would also like to thank the producers of Saxonia Media, and in particular Yvonne Abele, Anne Schmidt and Josefine Bohlken, for providing us with the video material of Schloss Einstein, which made it possible to develop the interpretation bias social picture task.
Keywords
- Adolescents
- Fear of negative evaluation
- Interpretation bias
- Social anxiety
