Implicit assumptions and interpretation bias in youth with severe, chronic social phobia

Interpretation bias and dysfunctional social assumptions are proposed to play a pivotal role in the development and maintenance of social phobia (SP), especially in youth. In this study, we aimed to investigate disorder-specific implicit assumptions of rejection and implicit interpretation bias in youth with severe, chronic SP and healthy controls (CG). Twenty-seven youth with SP in inpatient/day-care treatment (M age = 15.6 years, 74% female) and 24 healthy controls (M age = 15.7 years, 54% female) were included. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) were completed to assess implicit assumptions and interpretation bias related to the processing of social and affective stimuli. No group differences were observed for the IAT controlling for depressive symptoms in the analyses. However, group differences were found regarding interpretation bias (p = .017, η(2)(p) = .137). Correlations between implicit scores and explicit questionnaire results were medium to large in the SP group (r =|.28| to |.54|, p(all) ≤ .05), but lower in the control group (r =|.04| to |.46|, p(all) ≤ .05). Our results confirm the finding of an interpretation bias in youth SP, especially regarding the implicit processing of faces, whereas implicit dysfunctional social assumptions of being rejected do not seem to be specific for SP. Future research should investigate the causal relationship of assumptions/interpretation bias and SP. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00787-021-01879-3.