A young child with anxiety symptoms may be at risk of experiencing anxiety in their adolescence and adulthood. This is the case even for children who aren’t diagnosed as anxious, but who still have relatively high anxiety (called subclinical anxiety). Most studies of subclinical social anxiety, however, have focused on older children and adolescents—until now.
Researchers in Ottawa took a look at the effects of subclinical social anxiety on early elementary school children. What they found – social anxiety can have negative effects on young children, even if the anxiety is not clinically diagnosed – may interest teachers and school administrators who are trying to identify social anxiety in the classroom.
To get the full story, check out EENet’s new Research Snapshot of the article, “The correlates and consequences of early appearing social anxiety in young children,” by Murray Weeks, Robert J. Coplan, and Adam Kingsbury. The article appeared in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, vol. 23, no. 7: 965-72. The Snapshot is available here.
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