Depression and social anxiety increase in prevalence during adolescence and are
linked to long-term difficulties. The aetiology of increased onset of depression and
social anxiety during adolescence is likely to be complex, encompassing social,
biological and neuropsychological factors. The present study aimed to investigate
some of these factors, in terms of parental attachment, stage of puberty and emotional
lateralization.
One hundred children aged 9 to 14 undertook the chimeric faces test, evaluating their
lateralization for facial emotion processing. Children also completed self-report
measures to assess their levels of depression and social anxiety, stage of puberty and
parental attachment. Data were entered into hierarchical regression analyses, with
either depression or social anxiety as outcome variables. Known predictors were
entered at Block one with emotional lateralization, stage of puberty and parental
attachment entered at Block two. Interactions between laterality, attachment and
puberty were entered into Block three.
The results showed that higher parental attachment trust was linked to higher
depression scores. Furthermore, the interaction between laterality and parental
attachment trust was also shown to be a significant predictor. This revealed that
higher attachment trust scores were predictive only when children had bi-lateral or
left hemisphere lateralization for emotional processing. For social anxiety, both
higher parental attachment trust and parental attachment alienation were linked to
higher social anxiety scores. There was no effect of the interactions for social anxiety.
Additionally there was no unique effect of puberty or lateralization for either
depression or social anxiety.
The results provide insight into the complex aetiology of depression and social
anxiety, suggesting that they are related to similar but subtly different predictors. The
study also revealed that social factors were more important than either biological or
neuropsychological factors, suggesting targets for clinical intervention when working
with young children and adolescents with depression and social anxiety.
