Davina Howell

Social Anxiety: Early Childhood Memories and Early Maladaptive Schemas Davina Howell

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a remarkably common disorder that causes severe disruptions in daily life. However, despite growing literature specific aetiological factors underpinning SAD are still relatively unknown. Cognitive theories propose that memories of past experiences and biased schematic processing influence the development and maintenance of the disorder. This book aimed to explore aetiological factors underlying social anxiety, using an experimental design comprising projective and self-report measures. Five early memories were cued to activate early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) in participants with high social anxiety. Results suggested that schemas were activated by specific people or events in memory and thus offers a new experimental design for future research in this area. Defectiveness/ shame schemas cued by school memories and failure schemas probed by memories of a social situation predicted social anxiety although regression analyses failed to reach statistical significance. Nevertheless, due to a small sample size and non-clinical population, these findings could be considered preliminary evidence that lie in the expected direction.