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Introduction: The current studies examined how smartphone-assessed contextual features (i.e., location, time-of-day, social situation, and affect) contribute to the relative likelihood of emotion regulation strategy endorsement in daily life. Methods: Emotion regulation strategy endorsement and concurrent contextual features were assessed either passively (e.g., via GPS coordinates) or via self-report among unselected (Study 1: N = 112; duration = 2 weeks) and socially anxious (Study 2: N = 106; duration = 5 weeks) young adults. Results: An analysis of 2,891 (Study 1) and 12,289 (Study 2) mobile phone survey responses indicated small differences in rates of emotion regulation strategy endorsement across location (e.g., home vs. work/education settings), time-of-day (e.g., afternoon vs. evening), time-of-week (i.e., weekdays vs. weekends) and social context (e.g., with others vs. alone). However, emotion regulation patterns differed markedly depending on the set of emotion regulation strategies examined, which likely partly explains some inconsistent results across the studies. Also, many observed effects were no longer significant after accounting for state affect in the models. Discussion: Results demonstrate how contextual information collected with relatively low (or no) participant burden can add to our understanding of emotion regulation in daily life, yet it is important to consider state affect alongside other contextual features when drawing conclusions about how people regulate their emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social anxiety disorder is associated with distinct mobility patterns (e.g., increased time spent at home compared to non-anxious individuals), but we know little about if these patterns change following interventions. The ubiquity of GPS-enabled smartphones offers new opportunities to assess the benefits of mental health interventions beyond self-reported data. This pre-registered study () assesses the impact of a brief, online cognitive training intervention for threat interpretations using passively-collected mobile sensing data. Ninety-eight participants scoring high on a measure of trait social anxiety completed five weeks of mobile phone monitoring, with 49 participants randomly assigned to receive the intervention halfway through the monitoring period. The brief intervention was not reliably associated with changes to participant mobility patterns. Despite the lack of significant findings, this paper offers a framework within which to test future intervention effects using GPS data. We present a template for combining clinical theory and empirical GPS findings to derive testable hypotheses, outline data processing steps, and provide human-readable data processing scripts to guide future research. This manuscript illustrates how data processing steps common in engineering can be harnessed to extend our understanding of the impact of mental health interventions in daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Poor emotion regulation (ER) has been implicated in many mental illnesses, including social anxiety disorder. To work towards a scalable, low‐cost intervention for improving ER, we developed a novel contextual recommender algorithm for ER strategies. Design: N = 114 socially anxious participants were prompted via a mobile app up to six times daily for five weeks to report their emotional state, use of 19 different ER strategies (or no strategy), physical location, and social context. Information from passive sensors was also collected. Methods: Given the large number of ER strategies, we used two different approaches for variable reduction: (1) grouping ER strategies into categories based on a prior meta‐analysis, and (2) considering only the ten most frequently used strategies. For each approach, an algorithm that recommends strategies based on one's current context was compared with an algorithm that recommends ER strategies randomly, an algorithm that always recommends cognitive reappraisal, and the person's observed ER strategy use. Contextual bandits were used to predict the effectiveness of the strategies recommended by each policy. Results: When strategies were grouped into categories, the contextual algorithm was not the best performing policy. However, when the top ten strategies were considered individually, the contextual algorithm outperformed all other policies. Conclusions: Grouping strategies into categories may obscure differences in their contextual effectiveness. Further, using strategies tailored to context is more effective than using cognitive reappraisal indiscriminately across all contexts. Future directions include deploying the contextual recommender algorithm as part of a just‐in‐time intervention to assess real‐world efficacy. Practitioner points: Emotion regulation strategies vary in their effectiveness across different contexts.An algorithm that recommends emotion regulation strategies based on a person's current context may one day be used as an adjunct to treatment to help dysregulated individuals optimize their in‐the‐moment emotion regulation.Recommending flexible use of emotion regulation strategies across different contexts may be more effective than recommending cognitive reappraisal indiscriminately across all contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The extent to which a person believes they can change or control their own emotions is associated with trait-level symptoms of mood and anxiety-related psychopathology. Method: The present study examined how this belief relates to momentary and daily self-reports of affect, emotion regulation tendencies, and perceived effectiveness of emotion regulation attempts throughout a five-week experience sampling study conducted in N = 113 high socially anxious people (https://osf.io/eprwt/). Results: Results suggest that people with relatively stronger beliefs that their emotions are malleable experienced more momentary and daily positive affect (relative to negative affect), even after controlling for social anxiety symptom severity (although only daily positive affect, and not momentary positive affect, remained significant after correcting for false discovery rate). However, emotion malleability beliefs were not uniquely associated with other emotion regulation-related outcomes in daily life, despite theory suggesting malleability beliefs influence motivation to engage in emotion regulation. Conclusion: The paucity of significant associations observed between trait malleability beliefs and momentary and daily self-reports of emotion regulation (despite consistent findings of such relationships at trait levels) calls for additional research to better understand the complex dynamics of emotion beliefs in daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Approach bias modification (ApBM) and interpretation bias modification (IBM) are two promising adjunct treatments for alcohol use and social anxiety, respectively. However, the acceptability of combining ApBM and IBM into one program for people who experience both of these disorders is unknown. The present study describes the codevelopment of a new, hybrid ApBM + IBM program and provides insight into the perceptions of acceptability from service providers and emerging adults. Methods: Service providers (n = 14) and emerging adults aged 18 to 25 years with lived experience of hazardous alcohol use and heightened social anxiety (n = 15) were recruited via online advertisements and through existing networks. All participants were shown a beta version of the program and asked to complete qualitative and quantitative questions to ascertain feedback on the program's acceptability and suggestions for improvement. Results: Themes emerged relating to the ApBM + IBM program's quality and usefulness, appropriateness, motivation and engagement, and potential clinical value. The program was well received and deemed acceptable for the target age group. It was rated particularly highly with regard to the overall quality and ease of use. Emerging adults had fewer suggestions for how the intervention might be revised; however, there were suggestions from both groups regarding the need for a compelling rationale at the outset of treatment and a suggestion to include a motivational interviewing and psychoeducational‐based module prior to the first training session, to increase user buy‐in and engagement. Conclusions: The current findings reflect positively on the acceptability of a hybrid ApBM + IBM for emerging adults with co‐occurring hazardous alcohol use and social anxiety. Service providers and emerging adults identified a number of ways to improve the design and implementation of the program, which will likely improve adherence to, and outcomes of, the intervention when added as an adjunct to treatment as usual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Effective emotion regulation (ER) is important to long-term healthy functioning, but little is known about what constitutes effective ER in the moment or how social anxiety symptoms and different strategies influence short-term effectiveness outcomes.Methods: Intensive ecological momentary data from N = 124 college students illustrate how different ways of operationalizing ER effectiveness leads to different conclusions about the short-term effectiveness of different strategies in daily life.Results: When effectiveness is operationalized as the degree to which participants judged that their ER attempts made them feel better, social anxiety severity was negatively associated with effectiveness, and avoidance-oriented strategies were judged to be less effective than engagement-oriented strategies. In contrast, when effectiveness is operationalized as the degree of change in self-reported affect following ER attempts, social anxiety severity was not related to effectiveness, and avoidance-oriented strategies were more effective than engagement-oriented strategies. Social anxiety and ER strategy type did not interact in either model, regardless of how effectiveness was measured.Conclusions: The study highlights discrepancies when examining two common but distinct ways of measuring the same overarching effectiveness construct, and raises intriguing questions about how forms of psychopathology that are intimately tied to emotion dysregulation, like social anxiety, moderate different ways of measuring the effectiveness of ER attempts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The current study investigated whether high and low socially-anxious individuals would show differences in affective forecasting accuracy (i.e., the prediction of emotional states in response to future events) to positive versus negative social evaluation. Method: High (n = 94) and low (n = 98) socially-anxious participants gave a speech and were randomly assigned to receive a positive or negative evaluation. Results: For affective forecasts made proximally (moments before the speech), those low in social anxiety overpredicted their affect to a greater extent to a negative evaluation versus a positive evaluation. In contrast, those high in social anxiety overpredicted their affect to positive and negative evaluations comparably, and failed to adjust their prediction for a future hypothetical negative evaluation—in effect, not learning from their prior forecasting error. Discussion: Results suggest that affective forecasting biases deserve further study as a maintaining factor for social anxiety symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In two studies, the present research examined whether being high in both social anxiety and alcohol use disorder symptoms is associated with a comorbid interpretation and expectancy bias that reflects their bidirectional relationship.Design: Cross-sectional, quantitative surveys.Methods: Measures of social anxiety and alcohol use disorder symptoms, as well as an interpretation and expectancy bias task assessing biases for social anxiety, drinking, and comorbid social anxiety and drinking.Results: In Study 1 (N = 447), individuals high (vs. low) in social anxiety had stronger social threat bias and individuals high (vs. low) in alcohol use disorder symptoms had stronger drinking bias. Those high in both social anxiety and alcohol use disorder symptoms endorsed interpretations and expectancies linking social interaction with alcohol use. Comorbid bias predicted membership into the high social anxiety/drinking group, even after taking into account single-disorder biases. In Study 2 (N = 325), alcohol use disorder symptoms predicted drinking bias and social anxiety symptoms predicted social anxiety bias. Alcohol use disorder symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and their interaction predicted comorbid interpretation and expectancy bias.Conclusion: Results indicate unique cognitive vulnerability markers for persons with comorbid social anxiety and alcohol use disorder symptoms, which may improve detection and treatment of this serious comorbidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socially anxious individuals exhibit cognitive performance impairments; it is unclear whether this is due to trait differences in abilities or effects of the experimental context. This study sought to determine how social context, individual differences in fear of negative evaluation (FNE), and task difficulty interact to influence working memory performance as indicated by effectiveness (accuracy) and efficiency (reaction times). Participants (N = 61) performed the n-back task at 2-back and 3-back difficulty levels under three conditions: alone ("Anonymous"), in presence of a non-evaluative experimenter ("Presence"), and under explicit performance evaluation by the experimenter ("Threat"). Overall, participants showed improved accuracy during Threat, but only on 2-back trials. FNE was positively associated with longer reaction times during Threat on 3-back trials. FNE did not relate to accuracy, suggesting that threat-related impairments tied to social anxiety may alter efficiency rather than effectiveness. Thus, social anxiety may elicit cognitive performance impairments even in minimally evaluative environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case features an adult male with moderate social anxiety disorder and mild depressive symptoms who showed an initial positive response to an earlier experience of cognitive behavior therapy, but then relapsed when he started avoiding social situations again because of continuing beliefs that experiencing anxiety was unacceptable. His treatment at our clinic focused on shifting unhelpful thinking about the likelihood and consequences of becoming anxious and reengaging in avoided social situations so he could learn to tolerate negative affect and uncertainty. The treatment approach draws from cognitive behavioral models of social anxiety and highlights advances in clinical science, especially recent work on the causal role of interpretation biases (the tendency to assign negative or threatening meaning to ambiguous situations) in the maintenance and reduction of anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objectives Cognitive Bias Modification to reduce threat interpretations (CBM-I) trains individuals to resolve ambiguous scenarios via completion of word fragments that assign benign meanings to scenarios. The current study tested: 1) whether Internet-based CBM-I can shift interpretations to be more positive/less negative, and 2) whether varying the number of letters missing in the word fragments (assumed to increase task difficulty) moderates CBM-I's effects. Methods Participants ( N = 350) completed a brief online version of CBM-I, followed by assessments of interpretation bias, fear of negative evaluation, and anticipatory anxiety. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 conditions: control (half of scenarios ended positively, half negatively), or 4 positive conditions (all scenarios ended positively, but word fragments varied on number of letters missing, from 0 to 3). Results Relative to the control condition, all positive conditions led to more positive/less negative interpretations. When analyses were re-run with only a highly socially anxious subset of the sample ( n = 100), conditions in which the final word of scenarios was missing 0, 1, or 2 letters led to more positive/less negative interpretations compared to the control condition, but the condition missing 3 letters did not differ from the control condition. There were no differences between conditions on other outcome measures. Limitations Training was brief, and an unselected sample was used. Conclusions Results suggest a brief Internet-based CBM-I paradigm can shift interpretation bias, but not necessarily other anxiety-relevant outcomes. Making the task too difficult may blunt effects for highly socially anxious individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive paradigms allow clinical psychologists to examine memory processes, such as false memory production, to better understand psychopathology. The current study uses the Deese-Roediger-McDermott task to investigate true and false memories in a sample with social anxiety disorder ( n = 37) compared to a non-anxious control group ( n = 40) before and after a three-day delay following list presentation. Additionally, the study examines anticipation of a social stressor and stimuli content (social versus nonsocial) as moderators of memory effects. Contrary to hypotheses, results for true memories showed no effects involving social anxiety or stressor group. However, nonsocial false memories were reported more frequently when participants with social anxiety disorder were anticipating a speech and when control participants were not (the latter at the level of a trend). Notably, when lists were socially relevant, these group differences in false memory disappeared. Results suggest that individuals with social anxiety disorder may be vulnerable to some unexpected memory distortions when anticipating social stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study brings together two typically distinct lines of research. First, social anxiety is inconsistently associated with behavioral deficits in social performance, and the factors accounting for these deficits remain poorly understood. Second, research on selective processing of threat cues, termed cognitive biases , suggests these biases typically predict negative outcomes, but may sometimes be adaptive, depending on the context. Integrating these research areas, the current study examined whether conscious and/or unconscious threat interference biases (indexed by the unmasked and masked emotional Stroop) can explain unique variance, beyond self-reported anxiety measures, in behavioral avoidance and observer-rated anxious behavior during a public speaking task. Minute of speech and general inhibitory control (indexed by the color-word Stroop) were examined as within-subject and between-subject moderators, respectively. Highly socially anxious participants ( N = 135) completed the emotional and color-word Stroop blocks prior to completing a 4-minute videotaped speech task, which was later coded for anxious behaviors (e.g., speech dysfluency). Mixed-effects regression analyses revealed that general inhibitory control moderated the relationship between both conscious and unconscious threat interference bias and anxious behavior (though not avoidance), such that lower threat interference predicted higher levels of anxious behavior, but only among those with relatively weaker (versus stronger) inhibitory control. Minute of speech further moderated this relationship for unconscious (but not conscious) social-threat interference, such that lower social-threat interference predicted a steeper increase in anxious behaviors over the course of the speech (but only among those with weaker inhibitory control). Thus, both trait and state differences in inhibitory control resources may influence the behavioral impact of threat biases in social anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior findings are mixed regarding the presence and direction of threat-related interference biases in social anxiety. The current study examined general inhibitory control (IC), measured by the classic colour-word Stroop, as a moderator of the relationship between both threat interference biases [indexed by the emotional Stroop (e-Stroop)] and several social anxiety indicators. High socially anxious undergraduate students (N= 159) completed the emotional and colour-word Stroop tasks, followed by an anxiety-inducing speech task. Participants completed measures of trait social anxiety, state anxiety before and during the speech, negative task-interfering cognitions during the speech and overall self-evaluation of speech performance. Speech duration was used to measure behavioural avoidance. In line with hypotheses, IC moderated the relationship between e-Stroop bias and every anxiety indicator (with the exception of behavioural avoidance), such thatgreatersocial-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those withweakIC, whereaslessersocial-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those withstrongIC. Implications for the theory and treatment of threat interference biases in socially anxious individuals are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A reprint of the article "Evaluating Age Differences in Coping Motives as a Mediator of the Link Between Social Anxiety Symptoms and Alcohol Problems" by researcher Elise M. Clerkin and others, published online on May 19, 2014 issue of the periodical is presented. It mentions a study related to the evaluation of age differences in adult drinkers, to understand relationships between symptoms of social anxiety, alcohol problems and coping motives.

Objective: Cognitive models of anxiety disorders posit that biases in interpretation maintain, and potentially cause, anxiety. This study tested whether it is possible to decrease height fear symptoms through cognitive bias modification for interpretations (CBM-I). Additionally, the clinical utility of CBM-I was tested by comparing it to an already established treatment: exposure therapy. Method: Extremely height fearful individuals (N = 110) participated in the study. Acrophobic symptoms were measured before and after 2 sessions of CBM-I and were compared to the standard treatment for acrophobia (exposure therapy), a combination of CBM-I and exposure therapy, and a Control condition. Results: In line with hypotheses, participants in the 3 active conditions showed greater response to treatment than the Control condition in height-relevant interpretation bias, symptoms, and behavioral avoidance on a height Stressor, with few differences between the active conditions. Further, symptom change was mediated by change in interpretation bias. Conclusions: Overall, findings suggest that different pathways to fear reduction (exposure vs. shifting interpretations) can lead to similar reductions in height fear. This study provides the first evidence that directly shifting cognitive processing, even with no therapist involvement, can reduce symptoms as effectively as the gold standard, therapist-directed exposure therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Differences in the relative use of global and local information (seeing the forest vs. the trees) may explain why people with social anxiety often do not benefit from corrective feedback, even though they pay close attention to details in social situations. In the current study, participants high (n =43) or low (n =47) in social anxiety symptoms gave a series of brief speeches, and then self-rated their speaking performance on items reflecting global and local performance indicators (self-assessment) and also received standardized performance feedback from an experimenter. Participants then completed a questionnaire asking how they thought the experimenter would rate their performance based on the feedback provided (experimenter assessment). Participants completed the self- and experimenter assessments again after 3days, in addition to a measure of postevent processing (repetitive negative thinking) about their speech performance. Results showed that, as hypothesized, the High SA group rated their performance more negatively than the Low SA group. Moreover, the High SA group''s ratings of global aspects of their performance became relatively more negative over time, compared to their ratings of local aspects and the Low SA group''s ratings. As expected, postevent processing mediated the relationship between social anxiety group status and worsening global performance evaluations. These findings point to a pattern of progressively more negative global evaluations over time for persons high in social anxiety. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Despite predictions following from cognitive theories of anxiety, evidence for memory biases in social anxiety has been mixed. This study extends previous research by using stimuli relevant to participants’ concerns and allowing time for post-event processing. Participants high (n =42) or low (n =39) in social anxiety symptoms gave speeches and received standardized feedback on their and a confederate''s performance. Participants then took recognition and recall tests for the feedback immediately after it was given and after a two-day delay. Results showed no recall biases. However, the hypothesized recognition biases were found: the high social anxiety group remembered the confederate''s feedback more positively than their own, remembered their negative feedback as worse than the low group, and diminished positive feedback over time. Moreover, post-event processing mediated the relationship between social anxiety and memory for negative feedback. Results suggest that biased recognition of social feedback is linked to social anxiety. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The current study investigates an experimental anxiety reduction intervention among a highly socially anxious sample (N =108; n =36 per Condition; 80 women). Using a conditioning paradigm, our goal was to modify implicit social anxiety associations to directly test the premise from cognitive models that biased cognitive processing may be causally related to anxious responding. Participants were trained to preferentially process non-threatening information through repeated pairings of self-relevant stimuli and faces indicating positive social feedback. As expected, participants in this positive training condition (relative to our two control conditions) displayed less negative implicit associations following training, and were more likely to complete an impromptu speech (though they did not report less anxiety during the speech). These findings offer partial support for cognitive models and indicate that implicit associations are not only correlated with social anxiety, they may be causally related to anxiety reduction as well. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

To evaluate a causal relationship between biased information processing and fear responding, as posited by many cognitive models of anxiety disorders, spider-relevant interpretations were trained to be non-threatening in an analog phobic sample. Participants high in spider fear ( N = 61) were randomly assigned to a ‘Positive training’ condition, or to a ‘Neutral training’ or ‘No training’ control condition. ‘Positive training’ involved learning to ascribe non-threatening meanings to emotionally ambiguous scenarios. Results suggested this training was successful at inducing interpretation biases to be non-threatening, as indicated by faster responses to positive (versus negative) word fragments, as well as more positive and less negative interpretations of novel scenarios (relative to control conditions). Notwithstanding, the impact of training on subsequent avoidance and fear when presented with a live spider was minimal. No differences across training conditions were found; however, faster responding to positive word fragments predicted less avoidance and fear for participants receiving ‘Positive training’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Research in psychology demonstrates a strong link between state affect (moment-to-moment experiences of positive or negative emotionality) and trait affect (eg, relatively enduring depression and social anxiety symptoms), and a tendency to withdraw (eg, spending time at home). However, existing work is based almost exclusively on static, self-reported descriptions of emotions and behavior that limit generalizability. Despite adoption of increasingly sophisticated research designs and technology (eg, mobile sensing using a global positioning system [GPS]), little research has integrated these seemingly disparate forms of data to improve understanding of how emotional experiences in everyday life are associated with time spent at home, and whether this is influenced by depression or social anxiety symptoms.Objective: We hypothesized that more time spent at home would be associated with more negative and less positive affect.Methods: We recruited 72 undergraduate participants from a southeast university in the United States. We assessed depression and social anxiety symptoms using self-report instruments at baseline. An app (Sensus) installed on participants' personal mobile phones repeatedly collected in situ self-reported state affect and GPS location data for up to 2 weeks. Time spent at home was a proxy for social isolation.Results: We tested separate models examining the relations between state affect and time spent at home, with levels of depression and social anxiety as moderators. Models differed only in the temporal links examined. One model focused on associations between changes in affect and time spent at home within short, 4-hour time windows. The other 3 models focused on associations between mean-level affect within a day and time spent at home (1) the same day, (2) the following day, and (3) the previous day. Overall, we obtained many of the expected main effects (although there were some null effects), in which higher social anxiety was associated with more time or greater likelihood of spending time at home, and more negative or less positive affect was linked to longer homestay. Interactions indicated that, among individuals higher in social anxiety, higher negative affect and lower positive affect within a day was associated with greater likelihood of spending time at home the following day.Conclusions: Results demonstrate the feasibility and utility of modeling the relationship between affect and homestay using fine-grained GPS data. Although these findings must be replicated in a larger study and with clinical samples, they suggest that integrating repeated state affect assessments in situ with continuous GPS data can increase understanding of how actual homestay is related to affect in everyday life and to symptoms of anxiety and depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The relationship between fine-grained behavior and social anxiety levels is examined. • Multimodal sensor fusion is proposed to represent fine-grained behavior. • Individuals' behaviors with different social anxiety levels are significantly different. • The implications of these findings for developing better interventions are discussed. Abstract The way people use smartphones provides a window into the relationship between behaviors and mental health. This relationship is of particular significance to individuals with elevated social anxiety, as it helps to reveal when and where their stress increases in relation to social interactions, ultimately leading to more precise treatment delivery and interventions. In this collaboration between engineers and psychologists, we present the first study to use smartphone sensors to examine socially anxious individuals' fine-grained behaviors around periods in which they engage in some form of social interaction, and how these behaviors differ as a function of location (e.g., at home, at work, or at an unfamiliar location). In a two-week study of 52 college students, we show that there is a significant difference in behaviors for individuals based on social anxiety levels and locations, in that individuals higher (vs. lower) in social anxiety symptoms exhibit more movement (as tracked by the accelerometer) around the time of phone calls, especially in an unfamiliar location (i.e., not home or at work). Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for developing better interventions for socially anxious individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reinforcement learning biases have been empirically linked to anhedonia in depression and theoretically linked to social anhedonia in social anxiety disorder, but little work has directly assessed how socially anxious individuals learn from social reward and punishment. N = 157 individuals high and low in social anxiety symptoms completed a social probabilistic selection task that involved selecting between pairs of neutral faces with varying probabilities of changing to a happy or angry face. Computational modeling was performed to estimate learning rates. Accuracy in choosing the more rewarding face was also analyzed. No significant group differences were found for learning rates. Contrary to hypotheses, participants high in social anxiety showed impaired punishment learning accuracy; they were more accurate at choosing the most rewarding face than they were at avoiding the most punishing face, and their punishment learning accuracy was lower than that of participants low in social anxiety. Secondary analyses found that high (vs. low) social anxiety participants were less accurate at selecting the more rewarding face on more (vs. less) punishing face pairs. Stimuli were static, White, facial images, which lack important social cues (e.g., movement, sound) and diversity, and participants were largely non-Hispanic, White undergraduates, whose social reinforcement learning may differ from individuals at different developmental stages and those holding more marginalized identities. Socially anxious individuals may be less accurate at learning to avoid social punishment, which may maintain negative beliefs through an interpersonal stress generation process. • Participants completed a social probabilistic selection task with emotional faces. • Social reinforcement learning was modeled with Q-learning. • Learning rates were not different for participants high vs. low in social anxiety. • High (vs. low) social anxiety Ps were less accurate at avoiding angry faces. • This learning bias may contribute to maintenance of negative social beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socially anxious and depressed individuals tend to evaluate their social interactions negatively, but little is known about the specific real-time contributors to these negative perceptions. The current study examined how affect ratings during social interactions predict later perceptions of those interactions, and whether this differs by social anxiety and depression severity. Undergraduate participants (N = 60) responded to a smartphone application that prompted participants to answer short questions about their current affect and social context up to 6 times a day for 2 weeks. At the end of each day, participants answered questions about their perceptions of their social interactions from that day. Results indicated that the link between negative affective experiences reported during social interactions and the end-of-day report of enjoyment (but not effectiveness) of those experiences was more negative when social anxiety was more severe. The link between negative affective experiences rated during social interactions and the end-of-day report of effectiveness (but not enjoyment) during those social encounters was more negative when depression was more severe. These findings demonstrate the importance of examining self-perceptions of social interactions based both on the extent to which individuals think that they met the objective demands of an interaction (i.e., effectiveness, mastery) and the extent to which they liked or disliked that interaction (i.e., enjoyment, pleasure). These findings also highlight how real-time assessments of daily social interactions may reveal the key experiences that contribute to negative self-evaluations across disorders, potentially identifying critical targets for therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]