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Social Anxiety Monitoring and Mobile Intervention (SAMMI) Study

Presenters Name: 
Wafa Salah
Co Presenters Name: 
Primary Research Mentor: 
Bethany Teachman
Secondary Research Mentor: 
Session: 
3
Location: 
Newcomb Hall Ballroom
Grant Program Recipient: 
USOAR Program
Abstract: 

This research’s main goal is to investigate individuals’ thoughts and feelings in different social contexts and see how an online training targeting people’s thoughts about situations might lead to changes in everyday life. To examine how this online training impacts day-to-day emotions, thoughts, and behavior, we invited people who are higher than average in social anxiety symptoms and a group who are lower than average in social anxiety symptoms, based on surveys completed online, to participate in the study. The procedure involved having these participants come into the lab and doing a few in lab activities followed by a five-week period where they would answer daily surveys -collecting data on how they were feeling and interacting with the world as well as themselves. Additionally, beginning third week, some participants were assigned to complete the online training program that targeted their thought process in different situations. Finally, at the end of the five weeks, both groups would come back into the lab to perform tasks similar to the ones they did during the first time around with just slight variations. Preliminary results indicate that, compared to the control group, participants that completed the online training had a significant decline in measures of both interpretation bias and fear of negative evaluation. In the measure of social anxiety symptoms, however, both groups reported a comparable significant decline. These findings illuminate the potential that this training has in offering easily accessible interventions for people whose cognitive processes tend to negatively affect their everyday interactions.