title: Social anxiety and the cortisol response to social evaluation in children and adolescents.
abstract: Contradictory findings have been reported on the relation between social anxiety and the cortisol response to social evaluation in youth. The present longitudinal study aimed to clarify this relation by taking pubertal development into account. Data were collected in two waves, two years apart, for a community sample of 196 participants, aged 8-17 years at Time 1. Pubertal development and social anxiety were assessed with self-report questionnaires. Salivary cortisol was obtained before and after participants completed the Leiden Public Speaking Task. Data were analyzed using regression analysis with clustered bootstrap. The dependent variable was the cortisol area under the curve. Social anxiety and pubertal development scores were decomposed into between- and within-participants components. Between participants, the relation between social anxiety and the cortisol response to public speaking varied with pubertal development: socially anxious individuals showed higher responses at low levels of pubertal development, but lower responses at high levels of pubertal development. Within participants, an increase in social anxiety over time was associated with a lower cortisol response. The results are in line with the suggestion that the responses of socially anxious individuals change from elevated in childhood to attenuated in adolescence and adulthood. Attenuation of the cortisol response is explained by theories proposing that the stress response changes with the duration of the stressor.
authors.affiliation: Developmental and Educational Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. Electronic address: bosejvanden@fsw.leidenuniv.nl.
authors.forename: Esther
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: van den Bos
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical, Neuro & Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Science, VU University Amsterdam, van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: m.tops@vu.nl.
authors.forename: Mattie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tops
authors.affiliation: Developmental and Educational Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. Electronic address: Westenberg@fsw.leidenuniv.nl.
authors.forename: P Michiel
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Westenberg
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006854:Hydrocortisone / Q000032:analysis*; D007030:Hypothalamo-Hypophyseal System / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D010913:Pituitary-Adrenal System / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012463:Saliva / Q000737:chemistry; D057566:Self Report; D013060:Speech; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
chemical_list: D006854:Hydrocortisone
keywords: Adolescence; Attenuation; Pubertal development; Salivary cortisol; Social anxiety; Social evaluation