BEHAVIOR THERAPY 12, 195-201 (1981)

Sense of Timing" A Skill Deficit in Heterosocially Anxious Women

JANIS PETERSON

Purdue University

MARIO FISCHETTI

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic

JAMES P. CURRAN

Brown University Medical School

SUSAN ARLAND

Purdue University

Groups of heterosocially competent and incompetent undergraduate women were selected using both a self-report measure of social anxiety and judges' rat- ings of both anxiety and skill in a simulated first-date interaction. Selected sub- jects viewed a videotape of a male speaker discussing various aspects of his life and were asked to press a switch whenever they thought a response would com- municate understanding or rapport. The results tentatively extended the evidence for the response timing-placement phenomenon to socially competent and incom- petent women as well as men. While socially competent and incompetent women did not differ in the frequency of their responses, they did tend to differ in the timing, placement, or distribution of their responses. The results suggest that previous social skills training and research may have emphasized response ac- quisition and frequency to the detriment of response synchronization to partner cues.

Fischetti, Curran, and Wessberg (1977) called into question the ade- quacy, though not necessarily the relevancy, of the most commonly used measures to investigate the specific nature of social skills deficits. They pointed out that frequency measures of specific behaviors such as number

Requests for reprints should be addressed to Mario Fischetti, Ph.D., Psychiatric Epi- demiology, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, 3811 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261. The first two authors contributed equally to the investigation.

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196 P E T E R S O N ET AL.

of smiles, eye contacts, and the like, ignored the reciprocal nature of social interactions (Argyle & Kendon, 1967; Libet & Lewinsohn, 1973; Weiss, 1968), especially the skill involved in the synchronization of social responses to a partner's behavioral cues.

Response synchronicity, or the timing and placement of responses, may be a more important component of social skills than the mere fre- quency with which a response is emitted (Fischetti et al., 1977; Weiss, 1968), especially as optimal skill levels are approached. Although in- creases in the frequency of the behaviors mentioned above appear to have some clinical significance in extremely debilitated populations (Libet & Lewinsohn, 1973), in relatively nondebilitated populations frequency count measures have generally failed to differentiate high and low het- erosocially anxious groups or have produced an inconsistent pattern of results (Arkowitz, Lichenstein, McGovern, & Hines, 1975; Borkovec, Stone, O'Brien, & Kaloupek, 1974). The specific nature of the behavioral differences between high and low heterosocially anxious groups remains obscure (Hersen & Bellack, 1977), although differences on global ratings of social skill have been more consistently observed (Arkowitz et al.; Borkovec et al.). The Fischetti et al. study, along with the studies of Weiss, suggest that what judges' global ratings may be discriminating in high and low heterosocially anxious groups is the ability of the subjects to synchronize skillfully their social responses with the behavior of their partners.

The possibility that the timing or placement of social responses is more important than their frequency in discriminating relatively nondebilitated high and low heterosocially anxious groups has potentially important im- plications for the assessment and treatment of social skills deficits. The present study attempted to extend the evidence for the timing-placement phenomenon to include heterosocially competent college-aged women as well as college-aged men (Fischetti et al., 1977). The measure chosen to test the time-placement hypothesis was described in detail by Fischetti et al. The specific hypotheses tested in this study with women were sim- ilar to those made for the men in Fischetti et al. It was predicted that groups selected for social competence and for social incompetence would not differ in the frequency of their social responses, but would differ in the timing, placement, or distribution of those responses.

METHOD Subject Selection

Three-hundred ninety undergraduate women at Purdue University were administered a slightly modified version of the Situation Question- naire (Rehm & Marston, 1968), a 30-item, self-report measure of hetero- social anxiety developed for use with men. For this study the wording of the Situation Questionnaire was slightly altered for use with females, but the items and situations remained basically the same as in the original scale. Ninety women scoring in the upper quartile and 100 women scoring

S E N S E O F T I M I N G 197

in the lower quartile were selected as having reported themselves as high and low heterosociaily anxious. These 190 women were then solicited for participation in the study by mail. Thirty-four self-reported high hetero- socially anxious women and 45 self-reported low heterosocially anxious women responded to the mailed inquiry and participated in the experi- ment. All received credit toward completion of their coursework in in-

t r oduc to ry psychology. When these 79 self-reported high and low het- erosocially anxious women arrived in the experimental laboratory they were asked first to participate in the Weiss (1968) response timing-place- ment task (see Procedure) and then in a 5-min role play of a simulated dating interaction with an undergraduate man (Curran & Gilbert, 1975). The role play, although previously used mainly with males, was not changed for this study in order to be consistent except for the reversal in sex of the confederates.

Six undergraduate men participated in the role play as confederates. They were trained and used as in Fischetti et al. (1977). Each role play was videotaped and later presented in a random fashion to two judges who rated each subject 's performance in the role play for level of het- erosocial anxiety and skill. The ratings were conducted as in Fischetti et al. Reliabilities between judges ' ratings were calculated by the intraclass correlation coefficient and were p = .70, p < .001 for the anxiety ratings, and p = .69, p < .001 for the skill ratings.

The mean and standard deviation for the 79 anxiety and skill ratings were calculated separately. In the group of 34 self-reported high hetero- socially anxious women, only those whose anxiety and skill ratings were one-half a standard deviation from the mean in the direction of high anx- iety and low skill were retained. The converse anxiety and skill rating selections were made in the group of 45 self-reported low heterosocially anxious women.

Three groups were formed from the remaining subjects. Socially com- petent group one (n = 12) and two (n = 12) contained women who re- garded themselves as low heterosocially anxious, who demonstrated non- anxious heterosocial behavior, and who also demonstrated highly skilled heterosocial behavior. The socially incompetent group (n = 12) con- tained women who regarded themselves as high heterosocially anxious, who demonstrated anxious heterosocial behavior, and who demonstrated low heterosocial skill. The rationale for selecting two socially competent groups was similar to that in Fischetti et al. (1977).

Procedure

The experimental room, apparatus, instructions to subjects, and stim- ulus tape for the response timing-placement task were essentially iden- tical to that of Fischetti et al. (1977). Subjects were seated before a tele- vision monitor and two switches and asked to press momentari ly either switch, separately or jointly, whenever they thought it was an appropriate time to respond with a gesture and/or vocal response to the speaker on the monitor. The speaker for the practice section of the stimulus tape

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was a 20 year-old male college sophomore majoring in theatre. The speak- er for the experimental section of the stimulus tape, in segments, was also a 20 year-old male college sophomore. As in the Fischetti et al. study, the segmental tape was divided into 2 5-min segments (one segment involved personal topics and the other general topics); the order of pre- sentation was counterbalanced.

RESULTS Frequency of Responding

The gestural and vocal response frequencies of subjects to the personal and general sections of the stimulus tape were treated separately for each experimental group. The frequency of responses in each of the experi- mental groups was compared using four one-way analyses of variance. Assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance were satisfied in all cases. The analyses did not show significant differences between groups for gestural responses in both the personal condition and the gen- eral condition; nor vocal responses in both the personal condition and the general condition.

Commonality of Responses In order to test the hypothesis that the two groups of socially competent

women would demonstrate greater agreement than the incompetent group concerning the efficacy of emitting responses during specific time inter- vals (4 sec), the concept of popular time intervals was used (Fischetti et al., 1977). A popular time interval was defined when the number of re- sponses in it exceeded chance (p < .05). Increasing numbers of popular intervals indicated increasing commonality of response output (agree- ment) to the stimulus tape.

For each experimental group, the number of popular intervals was compared to the number expected to emerge by chance (i.e., given the number of total responses and intervals) using Fisher's Exact Probability Test. As can be seen from Table 1, except for socially competent group two in the personal condition, the number of popular intervals defined for vocal responses under both the personal and general conditions ex- ceeded chance for both groups of socially competent women, but did not for the socially incompetent group. The number of popular intervals de- fined for gestural responses exceeded chance for one group of socially competent women in the personal condition, and approached significance in the second socially competent group. The socially incompetent women did not define more popular intervals than would be expected by chance for the gestural responses.

Reinforcing Skill In order to examine the hypothesis that the proportion of women who

could be classified as skillful reinforcers in the socially competent group would reach statistical significance, while the proportion in the incom-

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T A B L E 1 A COMPARISON OF POPULAR INTERVAL EMERGENCE WITH CHANCE IN THE SOCIALLY COMPETENT AND INCOMPETENT GROUPS USING FISHER'S EXACT PROBABILITY TEST

Observed number of popular intervals a

Response Personal General mode Group condition p condit ion p

Gestural Socially competen t group 1 10 .05 6 ns

Socially competen t group 2 9 ns 3 n s

Socially incompeten t group 3 ns 7 n s

Vocal Socially competen t group 1 12 .02 10 .05 Socially competen t group 2 5 n s 13 .01 Socially incompeten t group 3 ns 3 n s

N o t e : The two categories of the first d imension are number of popular and nonpopular intervals. The two categories of the second dimension are observed and expected (chance) number of popular and nonpopular intervals. Total number of intervals per condition (per- sonal or general) equaled 75.

a A popular interval was defined as any interval in which the accumulated number of responses exceeded chance at the p < .05 level. Four intervals out of 75 would be expected to emerge as popular by chance.

petent group would not, individual subject reinforcing skill scores were calculated (Fischetti et al., 1977). The reinforcing skill scores of the wom- en in socially competen t group two and the socially incompetent group reflected the extent to which they systematical ly placed their responses in appropr ia te (popular) time intervals as defined by the criterion group (socially competen t group one). Appropr ia te p lacement of responses maximized the reinforcing power , or efficiency, of an individual 's total response output. Popular intervals whose number of responses exceeded chance at the p < .01 level, ra ther than the p < .05 level, were used in order to significantly decrease the probabil i ty of disrupting the sensitivity of the reinforcing skill measure by inadvertent ly including time intervals defined as popular by chance alone.

The observed incidence of skillful women reinforcers in the socially competen t and incompetent groups was compared to that expected by chance using F isher ' s Exact Probabili ty Test, where the two categories of the first dimension were number of skilled and unskilled reinforcers, and the two categories of the second dimension were observed and ex- pected number of skilled and unskilled reinforcers (Fischetti et al., 1977).

For gestural responses , the number of skillful women reinforcers in socially competen t group two exceeded chance in both the personal con- dition (p < .05) and the general condition (p < .05), while the number of skillful women reinforcers in the socially incompetent group failed to reach statistical significance in either the personal condition or the general

200 PETERSON ET AL.

condition. For vocal responses, neither experimental group produced a statistically significant number of skillful reinforcers in either condition.

Another hypothesis examined in this study was that an increase in the level of intimacy of conversation on the stimulus tape would not affect the reinforcing skill of the socially competent women, but would adverse- ly affect the reinforcing skill of the socially incompetent women. Al- though there was a trend for gestural responses, in the socially incom- petent group, Fisher's Exact Probability Test showed that the number of individuals in both the socially competent and incompetent groups whose reinforcing skill declined from the general to the personal condition did not exceed chance.

DISCUSSION The results of this study with a sample of college-aged women tenta-

tively extend the evidence for the response timing-placement phenome- non to heterosocially competent college-aged women as well as men (Fischetti et al., 1977). The attenuated levels of significance with the women as compared to the men were probably caused by the formation of less contrasted groups (Farrell, Mariotto, Conger, Curran, & Wallan- der, 1979). First, the small number of women available made necessary less stringent subject selection criteria (than in the Fischetti et al. study) in order to obtain groups large enough for meaningful comparison. Sec- ond, and perhaps more importantly, the relative lack of research regard- ing the social skills of women necessitated the use of subject selection procedures primarily designed for and validated on men.

Taking into account the contrasted groups problem, the results of the present study suggest that skill in response synchronization may be as important a skill for women as it appears to be for men (Fischetti et al., 1977). The results of these two studies, taken together, have potentially important implications for both the assessment and treatment of social skills deficits. For example, in assessment, the role plays currently in popular use may very well be minimizing opportunities for the subject to demonstrate skill in response synchronization by restricitng the reactivity of the confederate in the interests of standardization. In treatment, the possible importance of response synchronizations suggests that response acquisition has been emphasized to the detriment of cue discrimination and social perception. Such potentially far-reaching implications warrant further investigation of the external validity of the method used in this study to measure response synchronization. While Weiss (1968) has al- ready provided some validity data on the switch-pressing technique, more external validity data is needed.

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RECEIVED: December 3, 1979; REVISED: August 11, 1980 FINAL ACCEPTANCE: August 12, 1980