The body language of social phobia patients enables a complete evaluation of the pathology

An ethological approach to the study of behavioral disorders provides key information on functional aspects of behavior that characterize certain pathologies. The purpose of this study was to describe non-verbal behavioral units presented by a group of 14 women with social phobia (SP) and a control group of 13 women during a clinical interview and to evaluate the possible differences between these two groups. The 19 behavior units were selected with the index of concordance between the observers tau Kendall = 0.795 (p = 0.000). People with SP supported the way they spoke with their hands and placed their hands on their legs, in comparison with the control group. People with SP nodded more often, touched their faces, pressed their lips, licked their lips and touched their hair more frequently than the control group. The article suggests that a systematic evaluation of non-verbal behavior may be important in conducting a full evaluation of patients with SF in a clinical environment, and may contribute to evaluating the efficiency of the treatment. Copyright © Sociedad Iberoamericana de Información Científica (SIIC), 2012.