Young people with higher social anxiety are less likely to adopt the perspective of another: Data from the Director task

- Accuracy on trials requiring social perspective taking improved with age.
- Those with high social anxiety engaged less in online social perspective taking.
- Performance on control trials did not differ between social anxiety groups.
- The relationship between anxiety and accuracy was strongest in mid-adolescence.

Background and objectivesYoung people with social anxiety display poor social functioning but it is unclear whether this is underscored by difficulties in key social cognitive abilities, such as perspective taking. Here, we examined whether increased social anxiety is associated with reduced accuracy on a perspective taking task and whether this relationship is stronger at particular periods within adolescence.MethodsFifty-nine adolescents aged 11-19 years completed the computerised Director Task (DT) and the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescence. In the DT, participants virtually move objects by following either instructions given by the 'Director' (who can see only some objects), or a simple rule to ignore certain objects.ResultsParticipants who scored above the clinical cut-off for social anxiety (n = 17) were less accurate when they had to take the perspective of the Director into account than those scoring below cut-off, yet performed similarly on control trials. Preliminary analysis indicated that poorer performance was most strongly associated with social anxiety in mid-adolescence (14-16.5 years).LimitationsThe DT has been used previously to measure online perspective taking but the underlying cognitive mechanisms have not been fully elucidated. Extending these findings using additional measures of perspective taking would be valuable.ConclusionsAdolescents with higher social anxiety were less accurate at taking the perspective of a computerised character, with some suggestion that this relationship is strongest during mid-adolescence. If replicated, these findings highlight the importance of addressing specific social cognitive abilities in the assessment and treatment of adolescent social anxiety.