The effects of social awareness on anticipated social interactions in anxious and non-anxious youth: An fMRI study

Authors

• QB Do
• BI Rappaport
• EE Nelson
• JM Jarcho
• DS Pine
• AR Smith

Abstract

Social awareness, the ability to detect social cues, is critical in forming relationships – particularly during adolescence. Anxious youth tend to interpret social interactions more negatively than their healthy peers, often leading to social withdrawal. Thus, understanding how individual differences in social awareness influence brain response during anticipation of peer interactions may be critical to understanding social anxiety. Both anxious (N=44) and healthy (N=45) youth ages 8-17 completed a computerized social interaction task while undergoing fMRI. Participants were the “New Kid” at a virtual school, and a purported group of “Other Students” provided evaluative feedback about their online profiles. To examine how youth anticipate different types of social interactions, the Other Students had reputations for being ‘nice’ (provided 100% positive feedback), ‘mean’ (provided 100% negative feedback), or ‘unpredictable’ (provided 50% positive, 50% negative feedback). The present analysis focused on anticipation prior to receiving feedback. We ran a whole brain mixed-effects model with social awareness (measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale) as a continuous, between-subject variable and student reputation as a repeated, within-subjects variable. A whole brain analysis (p

Scientific Focus Area: Neuroscience

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