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Subjective, Autonomic, and Endocrine Reactivity during Social Stress in Children with Social Phobia

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Abstract

Reports of exaggerated anxiety and physiological hyperreactivity to social-evaluative situations are characteristic of childhood social phobia (SP). However, laboratory research on subjective, autonomic and endocrine functioning in childhood SP is scarce, inconsistent and limited by small sample sizes, limited breadth of measurements, and the use of non-standardized stressor tasks. We exposed 8–12-year-old children with DSM-IV SP (n = 41) and matched healthy control children (HC; n = 40) to the Trier Social Stress Test for Children (TSST-C) while measuring subjective anxiety, heart rate (HR) and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) as well as salivary cortisol. The SP children showed heightened reactivity to the TSST-C on subjective anxiety compared to the HC children but not a heightened reactivity in HR, sAA or cortisol. However, the SP children showed chronically elevated HR levels throughout the whole laboratory session. Whereas subjective anxiety seems to respond specifically to social-evaluative stress in childhood SP, HR levels may be chronically elevated suggesting a more generalized autonomic hyperreactivity.

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Notes

  1. The current sample is a sub-sample of the whole sample (n = 130) for which endocrine data were available.

  2. Including outliers into statistical analyses did not change the results. Outliers: HR: 1 participant (HC), salivary cortisol: 3 participants (SP), sAA: 3 participants (1 SP, 2 HC); Missing values due to artefacts or technical errors: HR: 3 participants (2 SP, 1 HC), salivary cortisol: 1 participants (SP), sAA: 4 participants (1 SP, 3 HC).

  3. ANCOVAs evaluated the effect of the covariates study site, gender, and presence of comorbidity on the dependent variables. In no case did inclusion of these covariates alter the interpretation of the results.

  4. Additional group comparisons concerning values for area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg) and area under the curve with respect to increase (AUCi; Pruessner et al. 2003) did not show significant differences between SPs and HCs (ps > 0.125).

  5. Additional group comparisons concerning values for area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg) and area under the curve with respect to increase (AUCi; Pruessner et al. 2003) did not show significant differences between SPs and HCs (ps > 0.722).

  6. Please note that analysis of covariance does not provide a solution here (Miller and Chapman 2001).

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; Grant TU 78/5-1; HE 3342/4-1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Freiburg, Engelbergerstrasse 41, 79106, Freiburg, Germany

    Martina Krämer, Brunna Tuschen-Caffier & Julian Schmitz

  2. Department of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy and Diagnostic, Technical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    Wiebke Lina Seefeldt

  3. Department of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

    Nina Heinrichs

  4. Department of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Oliver Tobias Wolf

  5. Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Jens Blechert

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  1. Martina Krämer
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Krämer, M., Seefeldt, W.L., Heinrichs, N. et al. Subjective, Autonomic, and Endocrine Reactivity during Social Stress in Children with Social Phobia. J Abnorm Child Psychol 40, 95–104 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-011-9548-9

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