Is having social anxiety part of AS?

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I am not sure if I have social anxiety, but I just have anxiety in general, and in either case, I don't know if it's part of AS.

I have social anxiety of epic proportions. All of the Welcome Week reps at my university were very irritated with me because I refused to interact with strangers during their ice-breaker games.

So I'm curious, you've found research on Social Anxiety Disorder having problems with facial expressions? Is it in a similar way to how ASD have a general tendency, but not necessarily universal? I'm trying to figure out the source?

That's related to why they tend to not diagnose social phobia in those who appear to experience the symptoms as a result of another condition (see criterion G). Some who are diagnosed with social phobia, however, may also be experiencing legitimate fears if they have innate social cognition deficits. The research on this is quite recent (I'll paste some abstracts below); eventually the criteria and available treatments will probably alter as a result of such findings.




Such traits are not necessarily universal. I haven't done a search recently, but here are some abstracts I collected over a year ago:

Recognition of Facial Affect by Children and Adolescents Diagnosed with Social Phobia (2001)
Susan J. Simonian , Deborah C. Beidel, Samuel M. Turner, Jennifer L. Berkes and Jonathan H. Long

Abstract This study compared the ability of children with social phobia and children with no psychiatric disorder to accurately judge facial affect. Fifteen children and adolescents with social phobia and 14 control children were asked to identify emotions depicted in slides from the Pictures of Facial Affect. In addition, they rated their level of anxiety on a pictorial Likert scale prior to and upon completion of the facial recognition task. The results indicated that children with social phobia had significantly poorer facial affect recognition skills than normal controls and reported greater anxiety upon completion of the recognition task. Multivariate analysis revealed significant differences between groups in the number of errors based on the type of facial affect. Post-hoc analysis indicated that deficits were most pronounced for facial representations of happiness, sadness, and disgust. The results are discussed in relation to an integrated model of social skills training that includes facial affect recognition training as a integral component in treatment programs for children and adolescents with social phobia. Directions for future research with larger samples of more ethnically diverse children and adolescents are presented.


Reduced sensitivity in the recognition of anger and disgust in social anxiety disorder

Titre de la Revue : Cognitive neuropsychiatry. [ Cogn. neuropsychiatry. ] , 2006 , vol. 11 , no 4 , pp. 389 - 401 [ 13 pages. ]

MONTAGNE Barbara , SCHUTTERS Sara , WESTENBERG Herman G. M. , VAN HONK Jack , KESSELS Roy P. C. , DE HAAN Edward H. F.

Résumé : Introduction. The aim of this study was to investigate the recognition of facial expressions in patients with a generalised social anxiety disorder. It is well documented that in different psychiatric disorders (e.g., depression, schizophrenia) patients may show an altered processing of emotions. However, in generalised social anxiety, emotion recognition has not been studied. Methods. 24 Patients with generalised social anxiety disorder and 26 healthy controls, matched on age, education, and sex were included. The task entailed the emotional labelling of faces with different facial expressions (happiness, fear, disgust, sadness, surprise, anger) presented in different intensities. Subjects were asked to make a forced-choice response. Results. These revealed that patients with a generalised social anxiety disorder were less sensitive for the negative facial expressions of anger and disgust compared to the control group. Conclusions. This deficit could play a role in the development and/or the maintaining of the social anxiety. Both explanations are discussed.


Toward a framework for defective emotion processing in social phobia

Titre de la Revue : Cognitive neuropsychiatry. [ Cogn. neuropsychiatry. ] , 2006 , vol. 11 , no 3 , pp. 307 - 331 [ 25 pages. ]

HERMANS Erno J. , VAN HONK Jack
Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University

Résumé : Introduction. This paper explores and outlines an evolutionary approach to understanding social phobia (SP) as a developmental disorder in brain mechanisms that regulate socioemotional behaviour. Methods. A literature review of cognitive, neuronal, and endocrine correlates of SP is presented using an integrative approach. Results. Social phobia patients present with a specific and developmentally stable functional neuroanatomical and neuroendocrine profile that can be linked to findings of cognitive attentional abnormalities. Conclusions. It is argued that SP is the human counterpart to primate subordination stress and develops from clearly identifiable precursors in early childhood, the understanding of which requires fundamental insights into the regulation of socioemotional behaviour. The current state of knowledge speaks strongly in favour of a diathesis model, in which distorted cognitions that are characteristic of SP are secondary to hyperexcitability of fear circuits that set off at least as early as at preverbal ages and ultimately may lead to the development of SP.


Time-Varying Amygdala Response to Emotional Faces in Generalized Social Phobia.

Campbell DW, Sareen J, Paulus MP, Goldin PR, Stein MB, Reiss JP.

BACKGROUND: Individuals with social phobia (SP) have altered behavioral and neural responses to emotional faces and are hypothesized to have deficits in inhibiting emotion-related amygdala responses. We tested for such amygdala deficits to emotional faces in a sample of individuals with SP. METHOD: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural substrates of emotional face processing in 14 generalized SP (gSP) and 14 healthy comparison (HC) participants. Analyses focused on the temporal dynamics of the amygdala, prefrontal cortex (PFC), and fusiform face area (FFA) across blocks of neutral, fear, contempt, anger, and happy faces in gSP versus HC participants. RESULTS: Amygdala responses in participants with gSP occurred later than the HC participants to fear, angry, and happy faces. Parallel PFC responses were found for happy and fear faces. There were no group differences in temporal response patterns in the FFA. CONCLUSIONS: This finding might reflect a neural correlate of atypical orienting responses among individuals with gSP. Commonly reported SP deficits in habituation might reflect neural regions associated with emotional self-evaluations rather than the amygdala. This study highlights the importance of considering time-varying modulation when examining emotion-related processing in individuals with gSP.


Social-Cognitive Factors in Childhood Social Anxiety: A Preliminary Investigation (2001)

Robin Banerjee &
Lynne Henderson

The present study addresses the social cognition of socially anxious children, with particular emphasis on their ability to understand others' mental states in interpersonal situations. The heterogeneous sample used in this preliminary investigation consisted of 63 primary school children in England and the USA. The English children were from a mainstream classroom of 8- to 9-year-olds, while the children from the USA ranged in age from 6 to 11 years and had been selected by school district officials for a variety of social interaction difficulties. All children completed measures of social anxiety, shy negative affect, and various social-cognitive abilities, and teacher ratings of social skills were additionally available for the USA subgroup. Results showed that feelings of social anxiety are not associated with any basic deficit in the understanding of recursive mental states which concern facts about the physical world. However, there was evidence that socially anxious children—particularly those with high levels of shy negative affect—do experience specific social-cognitive difficulties in understanding the links between emotions, intentions, and beliefs in social situations. Providing further support for this link, socially anxious children were rated by their teachers as poorer than non-anxious children only on social skills that require insight into others' mental states. Directions for further examination of this complex interplay between cognitive and emotional factors in the development of social anxiety are discussed.

Yes i have it but it manifests differently than my NT friends that have it

severe social anxiety/phobia can be really debilitating. I definitely would rather have my ASD than that.

Also I agree that SA is fixable, but in some cases in only fixable in theory.

I also have traits of Avoidant personality. Some people confuse this with SA but it is actually something different.

I have social anxiety. They tell me it's more of a social phobia or something.

I can't say I'm 100% comfortable with social situations, but I've learned to stop being so hung up over it.

As a kid, I was more shy than not around kids my age. I felt "safer" around adults...more "connected."

I became really withdrawn as a teen as kids tormented me for being "different."

So, I think my "social anxiety" was not so much the result of AS but of situations triggered by having AS.

Once I reached the point of not caring what everyone thought about me, I started being more interactive. That too had its drawbacks, but that's another issue.

I have social anxiety- (my definition is, I seem to be far more anxious than the average person)- mostly in new social situations, whereas I have very little anxiety in situations that I have experienced over and over again, or with people I know. (Or, there are some situations- like dating, networking, and public speaking- that I just never "got over"). My anxiety was far more acute when I was young and seems to get better as I gain in experience. I have read, though, that although many AS people experience social anxiety, not all do. I think it depends upon the personality and past experiences.

The problem with those studies is that the anxiety could be causing those problems. People almost always do worse on intellectual tasks when they're nervous.
Also, a lot of aspies don't have too many problems with those facial recognition tests.. It seems that many aspies are simply good test takers, though.. Particularly multiple choice tests, they're so logical.
(I'm almost always a good test taker, except for fill-in-the-blank tests. Multiple choice and essay are just peachy, but fill in the blank.. *shudder* I think it's a problem with understanding the intent of the question. With a multiple choice question, the intent can be deduced through the options. With an essay, I can just put in craploads of info. With a fill in the blank, I need to know what it is that the asker wants. That I can't do. In fifth grade we had these "definition tests" instead of spelling tests, where they didn't give us the word, they gave us the definition of the word, and we had to know the word and how to spell it from that. They also didn't write those definitions out for the test-- just said them out loud. I don't think I ever passed a single one of those tests. I bet I still couldn't.)

Yes, anxiety does affect performance. I read through the first paper listed and they investigated this effect by studying ratings of the subjects' anxiety levels before and after task completion. They found after analysing various factors that task anxiety played some role in performance, but that the largest contributor by far (to the variance in the scores) was meeting the diagnostic criteria for social phobia. This suggests the deficits in emotion recognition are not just a function of task anxiety. They therefore recommend that social skills training include training in recognising emotions from faces.