Social anxiety symptoms in young children:Investigating the interplay of theory of mind and expressions of shyness

Children’s early onset of social anxiety may be associated with their social understanding, and their ability to express emotions adaptively. We examined whether social anxiety in 48-month-old children (N = 110; 54 boys) was related to: a) a lower level of theory of mind (ToM); b) a lower proclivity to express shyness in a positive way (adaptive); and c) a higher tendency to express shyness in a negative way (non-adaptive). In addition, we investigated to what extent children’s level of social anxiety was predicted by the interaction between ToM and expressions of shyness. Children’s positive and negative expressions of shyness were observed during a performance task. ToM was measured with a validated battery, and social anxiety was assessed using both parents’ reports on questionnaires. Socially anxious children had a lower level of ToM, and displayed more negative and less positive shy expressions. However, children with a lower level of ToM who expressed more positive shyness were less socially anxious. Additional results show that children who displayed shyness only in a negative manner were more socially anxious than children who expressed shyness only in a positive way and children who did not display any shyness. Moreover, children who displayed both positive and negative expressions of shyness were more socially anxious than children who displayed shyness only in a positive way. These findings highlight the importance of ToM development and socio-emotional strategies, and their interaction, on the early development of social anxiety

A note on the energy-efficiency investments of an expected cost minimizer

This paper analyzes a consumer's choice between a high-efficiency and a low-efficiency version of an energy-using durable when the expected lifetimes of the two versions differ. A (small) difference in expected lifetimes may induce entirely different implications for the behavior of st cost minimizing consumer, as compared to the case with equal expected lifetimes. The result supplements the explanations for the extremely high discount rates that have been reported for energy efficiency investments. We also provide sufficient conditions for the existence of a reservation property, both in the case of deterministic and of random lifetimes. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

The development of a social cognition training for autistic children

Item does not contain fulltex