| Popis: |
When considering social phobia as a presumably unique pattern of behaviors strongly characterized by reticence, evasion, withdrawal, and absences, one is struck by the extent to which the social functioning of the socially phobic is disturbed. One of the various conceivable explanations for this wide-ranging diffidence is that socially phobic individuals lack the requisite social skills in order to perform proficiently in various social (and anxiety-evoking) situations. Anxiousness in this view would appear to be a by-product of the inability to act effectively. The hypothesis of skills deficits has also important therapeutic implications. As a putative causal factor of social phobia, it is viewed as calling for and indeed amenable to treatment by, namely social skills training. Our principle goal in this chapter is to examine the evidence having a bearing on the “skill-deficits” account of social phobia. In order to do so, we first attempt to clarify the concept of “social skills”. Subsequently, as psychological constructs cannot exist apart from the way in which they are measured, we shall investigate the validity of the corresponding tests devised to identify and quantify social skills deficits. Once the matter of their validity is dealt with, we should be able to proceed and tackle the more precise questions of whether subgroups of socially phobic individuals differ from one another in this respect and whether the socially phobic differ in their social skills from normal and/or other contrast populations. Finally, we shall gauge the value of the concept of skills deficits indirectly, through the perspective of treatment by means of social skills training. |
