Bidirectional Associations Between Coparenting Relations and Family Member Anxiety: A Review and Conceptual Model

Research into anxiety has largely ignored the dynamics of family systems in anxiety development. Coparenting refers to the quality of coordination between individuals responsible for the upbringing of children and links different subsystems within the family, such as the child, the marital relationship, and the parents. This review discusses the potential mechanisms and empirical findings regarding the bidirectional relations of parent and child anxiety with coparenting. The majority of studies point to bidirectional associations between greater coparenting difficulties and higher levels of anxiety. For example, the few available studies suggest that paternal and perhaps maternal anxiety is linked to lower coparental support. Also, research supports the existence of inverse links between coparenting quality and child anxiety. A child’s reactive temperament appears to have adverse effects on particularly coparenting of fathers. A conceptual model is proposed that integrates the role of parental and child anxiety, parenting, and coparenting, to guide future research and the development of clinical interventions. Future research should distinguish between fathers’ and mothers’ coparenting behaviors, include parental anxiety, and investigate the coparental relationship longitudinally. Clinicians should be aware of the reciprocal relations between child anxiety and coparenting quality, and families presenting for treatment who report child (or parent) anxiety should be assessed for difficulties in coparenting. Clinical approaches to bolster coparenting quality are called for.FSW – Publicaties zonder aanstelling Universiteit Leide

Pre-verbal infants perceive emotional facial expressions categorically

Adults perceive emotional expressions categorically, with discrimination being faster and more accurate between expressions from different emotion categories (i.e. blends with two different predominant emotions) than between two stimuli from the same category (i.e. blends with the same predominant emotion). The current study sought to test whether facial expressions of happiness and fear are perceived categorically by pre-verbal infants, using a new stimulus set that was shown to yield categorical perception in adult observers (Experiments 1 and 2). These stimuli were then used with 7-month-old infants (N  =  34) using a habituation and visual preference paradigm (Experiment 3). Infants were first habituated to an expression of one emotion, then presented with the same expression paired with a novel expression either from the same emotion category or from a different emotion category. After habituation to fear, infants displayed a novelty preference for pairs of between-category expressions, but not within-category ones, showing categorical perception. However, infants showed no novelty preference when they were habituated to happiness. Our findings provide evidence for categorical perception of emotional expressions in pre-verbal infants, while the asymmetrical effect challenges the notion of a bias towards negative information in this age group

Evaluating Mindful With Your Baby/Toddler: Observational Changes in Maternal Sensitivity, Acceptance, Mind-Mindedness, and Dyadic Synchrony

Studies on the effectiveness of mindful parenting interventions predominantly focused on self-report measures of parenting, whereas observational assessments of change are lacking. The present study examined whether the Mindful with your baby/toddler training leads to observed changes in maternal behavior and mother–child interaction quality. Mindful with your baby/toddler is a 8- or 9-week mindful parenting training for clinically referred mothers of young children (aged 0–48 months), who experience parental stress, mother–child interaction problems, and/or whose children experience regulation problems. The study involved a quasi-experimental non-random design including a sample of 50 mothers who were diagnosed with a mood disorder (n = 21, 42%), an anxiety disorder (n = 7, 14%), post-traumatic stress disorder (n = 6, 12%), or other disorder (n = 7, 14%). Mothers completed a parental stress questionnaire and participated in home observations with their babies (n = 36) or toddlers (n = 14) during a waitlist, pretest, and posttest assessment. Maternal sensitivity, acceptance, and mind-mindedness were coded from free-play interactions and dyadic synchrony was coded from face-to-face interactions. Sensitivity and acceptance were coded with the Ainsworth’s maternal sensitivity scales. Mind-mindedness was assessed by calculating frequency and proportions of appropriate and nonattuned mind-related comments. Dyadic synchrony was operationalized by co-occurrences of gazes and positive facial expressions and maternal and child responsiveness in vocal interaction within the dyad. Coders were blind to the measurement moment. From waitlist to pretest, no significant improvements were observed. At posttest, mothers reported less parenting stress, and were observed to show more accepting behavior and make less nonattuned comments than at pretest, and children showed higher levels of responsiveness. The outcomes suggest that the Mindful with your baby/toddler training affects not only maternal stress, but also maternal behavior, particularly (over)reactive parenting behaviors, which resulted in more acceptance, better attunement to child’s mental world, and more “space” for children to respond to their mothers during interactions. Mindful with your baby/toddler may be a suitable intervention for mothers of young children with (a combination of) maternal psychopathology, parental stress, and problems in the parent–child interaction and child regulation problems

Intergenerational Transmission of Anxious Information Processing Biases: An Updated Conceptual Model

AbstractAnxiety disorders are globally one of the most prevalent and disabling forms of psychopathology in adults and children. Having a parent with an anxiety disorder multiplies the risk of anxiety disorders in the offspring, although the specific mechanisms and processes that play a role in this intergenerational transmission remain largely unknown. According to information processing theories, threat-related biases in cognitive processing are a causal mechanism in the development and maintenance of anxiety. These theories propose that individuals with anxiety are more likely to cognitively process novel stimuli in their environment as threatening. Creswell and colleagues proposed a theoretical model that highlighted the role of these cognitive biases as a mechanism in the intergenerational transmission of anxiety (Creswell et al., in Hadwin, Field (eds) Information processing biases and anxiety: a developmental perspective, Wiley, pp 279–295, 2010). This model postulated significant associations between (1) parents’ and children’s threat-related cognitive biases (2) parents’ threat-related cognitive biases in their own and their child’s environment, (3) parents’ threat-related cognitive biases and parenting behaviors that convey anxiety risk to the offspring (e.g., modeling of fear, and verbal threat information transmission), and (4) parenting behaviors and child threat-related biases. This theoretical review collated the recent empirical work testing these four core hypotheses of the model. Building on the reviewed empirical work, an updated conceptual model focusing on threat-related attention and interpretation is proposed. This updated model incorporates the links between cognition and anxiety in parents and children and addresses the potential bidirectional nature of parent–child influences.</jats:p

Intergenerational transmission of attentional bias and anxiety

Aktar A., Bockstaele B. van, Pérez-Edgar K., Wiers R.W., Bögels S.M. (2019) Developmental Scienc

Intergenerational transmission of attentional bias and anxiety

Aktar A., Bockstaele B. van, Pérez-Edgar K., Wiers R.W., Bögels S.M. (2019) Developmental Scienc

Study 1a: The effect of a brief detached mindfulness intervention on high socially anxious’ metacognitive and physiological disturbances during a socially stressful task.

This study will build upon “Reducing anxiety during social stress: The impact of short digital interventions targeting metacognitive and heart rate variability” 2022-11-14-M.E. Kret-V1-4339. We improved the limitations of the aforementioned study to examine whether the improvements to the detached mindfulness intervention would show effectiveness not only for the physiological domain but also the metacognitive domain. Furthermore, In our current study, we aim to take the investigation of brief mindfulness interventions a step further by evaluating the interventions’ effectiveness in adolescents with subclinical levels of social anxiety. This pre-registration outlines study 1a, which is part of an overarching study 1 that also has a part b where the task is identical, but the intervention mechanism differs. In this study, we will focus on metacognition and test the effects of a detached mindfulness intervention compared to a matched control condition on reducing cognitive and physiological symptoms before, during, and after a real-life socially stressful task, i.e., public speaking. Along with the effect of the intervention, we want to explore potential mechanisms of change and test whether negative metacognitive beliefs mediate the effects of detached mindfulness on the symptoms

Study 1b: The effect of brief digital slow breathing interventions on high socially anxious’ metacognitive and physiological disturbances during a socially stressful task.

This study will build upon “Reducing anxiety during social stress: The impact of short digital interventions targeting metacognitive and heart rate variability” 2022-11-14-M.E. Kret-V1-4339. This earlier proof-of-concept study demonstrated that the slow breathing intervention effectively targets its designated mechanism in a healthy student sample. In our current study, we aim to take the investigation of brief breathing interventions a step further by evaluating the interventions’ effectiveness in adolescents with subclinical levels of social anxiety. This pre-registration outlines study 1b, which is part of an overarching study 1 that also has a part a where the task is identical, but the intervention mechanism differs. In this study, we will focus on heart rate variability and test the effects of a slow breathing intervention compared to a matched control condition on reducing cognitive and physiological symptoms before, during, and after a real-life socially stressful task, i.e., public speaking. Along with the effect of the intervention, we want to explore potential mechanisms of change and test whether increased heart rate variability mediates the effects of slow breathing on the symptoms