Mijn angst belet me om voluit te leven

Anne is een meisje van 13 jaar. Ze zit in het derde jaar algemeen secundair onderwijs en volgt de richting moderne talen. Het gezin bestaat uit vader, moeder en Anne. Papa heeft een fulltime baan en moeder is niet werkzaam. Anne werd aangemeld door haar moeder omdat Anne al enkele jaren problemen heeft, maar sinds een jaar gaat dit gepaard met flauwvallen met verlies bewustzijn. Mama omschrijft de problemen van Anne als faalangst, angststoornissen en een laag zelfvertrouwen

Adequate screening of youngsters for depressive characteristics

Introduction. In order to set up an effective early-detection of depressive symptoms in youngsters, the current study aims to investigate whether two measure moments of the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) improve screening and whether a multi-informant procedure is superior compared to a single-informant procedure thereby controlling for comorbid. symptoms. Method. Youngsters (10-15 years) filled in the CDI and an Anxiety Scale at Time 1 and the CDI and Youth Self Report one week later. Next, a structured clinical interview was administered. The Child Behaviour CheckList was filled in by the parents. Results. Two measure moments of the CDI are not more accurate in capturing disordered mood changes. Furthermore, parent reports were no significant contributor to the variance over and above the CDI. Discussion. A second moment does not increase screening accuracy. Further research on setting up an effective multistage screening procedure for depressive symptoms for youngsters is however necessary

Attachment and children's biased attentional processing: evidence for the exclusion of attachment-related information

Research in both infants and adults demonstrated that attachment expectations are associated with the attentional processing of attachment-related information. However, this research suffered from methodological issues and has not been validated across ages. Employing a more ecologically valid paradigm to measure attentional processes by virtue of eye tracking, the current study tested the defensive exclusion hypothesis in late childhood. According to this hypothesis, insecurely attached children are assumed to defensively exclude attachment-related information. We hypothesized that securely attached children process attachment- related neutral and emotional information in a more open manner compared to insecurely attached children. Sixty-two children (59.7% girls, 8–12 years) completed two different tasks, while eye movements were recorded: task one presented an array of neutral faces including mother and unfamiliar women and task two presented the same with happy and angry faces. Results indicated that more securely attached children looked longer at mother’s face regardless of the emotional expression. Also, they tend to have more maintained attention to mother’s neutral face. Furthermore, more attachment avoidance was related to a reduced total viewing time of mother’s neutral, happy, and angry face. Attachment anxiety was not consistently related to the processing of mother’s face. Findings support the theoretical assumption that securely attached children have an open manner of processing all attachment-related information

Young adolescent's confidence in maternal support: attentional bias moderates the link between attachment-related expectations and behavioral problems

Attachment security is an important resilience factor for children at risk for psychopathology, whereas attachment insecurity can be an important risk factor. Effects of attachment security on behavior problems may be partially explained by expectations regarding attachment figures' availability and the moderating effect of concurrent automatic biases in children's attentional processing of their mother on the link between attachment-related expectations and behavioral problems. This hypothesis was tested in two studies with 10-12 year old early adolescents (Study 1: N = 32; Study 2: N = 138). In both studies, the findings confirmed the moderation hypothesis, suggesting that less confidence in maternal support was related to more behavioral problems when children's attentional processing of mother was biased

Lack of trust in maternal support is associated with negative interpretations of ambiguous maternal behavior

Attachment theory assumes that children who lack trust in maternal availability for support are more inclined to interpret maternal behavior in congruence with their expectation that mother will remain unavailable for support. To provide the first test of this assumption, early adolescents (9-13 years old) were asked to assess whether ambiguous interactions with mother should be interpreted in a positive or a negative way. In our sample (n = 322), results showed that early adolescents' lack of trust in their mother's availability for support was related to more negative interpretations of maternal behavior. The associations remained significant after controlling for depressive mood. The importance of these findings for our understanding of attachment theory, attachment stability, and clinical practice are discussed

State trust in middle childhood: an experimental manipulation of maternal support

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