RESUMEN
Mentalizing, or social cognition, refers to the brain's higher order capacity that allows humans to be aware of one's own and others' mental states (e.g., emotions, feelings, intentions). While cognition in social anxiety has been broadly analyzed, there is a paucity of research regarding the role of social cognition. Moreover, mentalizing or social cognition research is traditionally focused on the understanding of others' mental states, rather than self-mentalizing. Finally, most studies analyze the role of social cognition in the development or maintenance of social anxiety, yet no study to date has analyzed whether social cognition moderates functional impairment associated with it. This study analyzes whether self- and other-mentalizing moderate the relationship between social anxiety and impairment in social and self-functioning. A sample of 262 adolescents from the non-clinical population was assessed on measures of social anxiety, self- and other- mentalization, indicators of social functioning (social competence and sociometric status), and indicators of self-functioning (depression and self-esteem). Multiple linear regressions were conducted to test possible moderation effects of self-mentalizing and other-mentalizing on the relationships between social anxiety and social and self-functioning. Results revealed that other-mentalizing does not moderate social- nor self-functioning, while self-mentalizing moderates the impairment of all of them. While impairment in social functioning is buffered by one dimension of self-mentalizing (emotional clarity; b = 0.003, p = 0.043 and b = 0.016, p = 0.008 for social competence and sociometric status, respectively), impairment in self-functioning is strengthened by the other dimension (attention to emotions; b = -0.007, p = 0.008 and b = 0.009, p = 0.047 for self-esteem and depression, respectively). Probing the moderation at the 16th, 50th, and 84th percentiles revealed that the negative imbalance between dimensions (i.e., high attention and low clarity) tended to exacerbate impairment most on all indicators, while the positive imbalance (i.e., low attention and high clarity) was usually the most buffering condition. This supports that "low-flying" or implicit mentalizing provides more resilience than explicit mentalizing (i.e., high attention and high clarity). Findings suggest that the work on emotional self-awareness should be stressed in the intervention of the social anxiety spectrum conditions in order to improve prevention, functioning, and ultimately, treatments, of people impaired by symptoms of social anxiety.
RESUMEN
Recent advances suggest that impairment in social cognition (SC) may play a role in the development of social anxiety (SA). However, very few studies have analyzed whether SA fosters poorer social-cognitive development as it leads to social avoidance. This study aimed to analyze whether retrospectively assessed behavioral inhibition (BI) (i.e., an early form of SA) in childhood is associated with a deficit in social cognition operationalized as impairment of mentalizing (MZ) in adolescence. A sample of 256 adolescents (range: 12-18 years; mean age: 14.7 years; SD = 1.7) from general population were assessed for MZ capacities and retrospective BI through self-report and interview measures. Results comparing three groups of adolescents with different levels of childhood BI (low, moderate or high) and controlling for concurrent SA and depression reveal that the higher the level of BI, the lower the level of MZ. These results were consistent for almost all mentalization measures, including when both extreme (i.e., high vs. low BI) and non-extreme (i.e., high vs. moderate BI) were compared in both self-report and interview measures and in both dimensions of MZ (i.e., MZ referred to others' and to own mental states). These findings support that childhood forms of SA are associated to deficit in SC in adolescence. A possible bi-directional relationship between SA and SC, and the role that it may play in the pathway to clinical SA are discussed.