Facing the Beast Apart Together: Fear in Boys and Girls after Processing Information about Novel Animals Individually or in a Duo

In this experimental study, we made an attempt to examine gender-related peer influences on childhood fear. Nine- to 12-year-old boys and girls were provided with ambiguous and positive information about novel animals and then asked to provide a subjective fear rating of the animals under two conditions: fear of one animal was assessed individually by the child on its own, whereas fear of the other animal was measured after a brief discussion on fear-related issues with a same-gender peer. Results indicated that children who completed the FBQ after a discussion with a same-gender peer displayed lower fear beliefs scores than children who completed the questionnaire fully on their own. This fear-suppression effect was mainly evident in boys after hearing ambiguous information about the novel animals. The implications of these findings are briefly discussed

Watch Out for the Beast: Fear Information and Attentional Bias in Children

Although valenced information about novel animals changes the implicit and explicit fear beliefs of children (Field & Lawson, 2003), how it might lead to anxiety is unknown. One possibility, based on cognitive models of anxiety, is that fear information creates attentional biases similar to those seen in anxiety disorders. Children between 7 and 9 years old were given positive information about 1 novel animal, negative information about another, and no information about the 3rd. A pictorial dot-probe task was used, immediately or with a 24-hr delay, to test for attentional biases to the different animals. The results replicated the finding that fear information changes children's fear beliefs. Regardless of whether there was a delay, children acquired an attentional bias in the left visual field toward the animal about which they held negative beliefs compared to the control animal. These results imply a possible way in which fear information might contribute to acquired fear

Children’s Internal Attributions of Anxiety-Related Physical Symptoms: Age-Related Patterns and the Role of Cognitive Development and Anxiety Sensitivity

The present study examined age-related patterns in children’s anxiety-related interpretations and internal attributions of physical symptoms. A large sample of 388 children aged between 4 and 13 years completed a vignette paradigm during which they had to explain the emotional response of the main character who experienced anxiety-related physical symptoms in a variety of daily situations. In addition, children completed measures of cognitive development and anxiety sensitivity. Results demonstrated that age, cognitive development, and anxiety sensitivity were all positively related to children’s ability to perceive physical symptoms as a signal of anxiety and making internal attributions. Further, while a substantial proportion of the younger children (i.e., <7 years) were able to make a valid anxiety-related interpretation of a physical symptom, very few were capable of making an internal attribution, which means that children of this age lack the developmental prerequisites for applying physical symptoms-based theories of childhood anxiety

"i'm not really afraid of Osama Bin Laden!" fear of terrorism in dutch children

We examined to what extent children in The Netherlands are affected by the threat of terrorism. For this purpose, a sample of school children living in Rotterdam or adjacent satellites (N = 216) completed a fear survey that included a number of terrorism-related items, and were confronted with ambiguous vignettes to measure threat-related interpretation bias. The results demonstrated that although a number of terrorism-related items (i.e., bombing attacks, explosions in a bus or subway) listed high in a ranking of most intense childhood fears, very few children made terrorist-related interpretations of ambiguous situations

The Relation Between Cognitive Development and Anxiety Phenomena in Children

We examined the relation between cognitive development and fear, anxiety, and behavioral inhibition in a non-clinical sample of 226 Dutch children aged 4–9 years. To assess cognitive development, children were tested with Piagetian conservation tasks and a Theory-of-Mind (TOM) test. Fears were measured by means of a self-report scale completed by the children, while anxiety symptoms and behavioral inhibition were indexed by rating scales that were filled out by parents. Significant age trends were observed for some anxiety phenomena. For example, younger children displayed higher fear scores, whereas older children exhibited higher levels of generalized anxiety. Most importantly, results of regression analyses (in which we controlled for age) indicated that cognitive development, and in particular TOM ability, made a unique and significant contribution to various domains of behavioral inhibition. In all cases, higher levels of TOM were associated with lower levels of behavioral inhibition. In general, percentages of explained variance were rather small (i.e., <6%), indicating that the role of cognitive development in various anxiety phenomena is limited

“You Might Belong in Gryffindor”: Children’s Courage and Its Relationships to Anxiety Symptoms, Big Five Personality Traits, and Sex Roles

This study describes a first exploration of the construct of courage in youths. Children aged 8–13 years were invited to report on the most courageous action that they had ever performed during their life. In addition, the Courage Measure for Children (CM-C) was construed as an index of children’s level of personal courage, and this scale was administered in two samples of school children (Ns being 168 and 159) along with a number of other questionnaires. Results indicated that children were familiar with the concept of courage as more than 70% reported to have carried out a courageous action during their life. In addition, self-reported courage as indexed by the CM-C was positively correlated with scores on a vignette measure of courage, parent ratings of children’s courage, extraversion, openness/intellect, and a masculine sex role, whereas a negative correlation was observed with anxiety symptoms. The implications of these findings and potential directions for future research are briefly discussed

Predictors of Change Following Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Children with Anxiety Problems: A Preliminary Investigation on Negative Automatic Thoughts and Anxiety Control

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate negative automatic thoughts and anxiety control as predictors of change produced by cognitive-behavioral treatment of youths with anxiety disorders. Forty-five high-anxious children aged between 9 and 12 years who were selected from the primary school population, received a standardized CBT intervention that was provided in a group format. Before and after the intervention, children completed scales of negative automatic thoughts and perceived control over anxiety-related events as well as a questionnaire for measuring DSM-defined anxiety disorders symptoms, which was the outcome measure. Results indicated that CBT was effective in reducing children’s anxiety symptoms. Most importantly, the reduction of anxiety disorders symptoms was significantly associated with a decrease in negative automatic thoughts and an increase of anxiety control, which provides support for the notion that these variables are candidate mediators of CBT in anxious youths

Symptoms of Anxiety, Depression, and Aggression in Non-clinical Children: Relationships with Self-report and Performance-based Measures of Attention and Effortful Control

This study investigated the relation between the regulative trait of effortful control, and in particular attention control, and psychopathological symptoms in a sample of 207 non-clinical children aged 8–12 years. For this purpose, children completed self-report scales for measuring regulative traits and various types of psychopathological symptoms (i.e., anxiety, depression, and aggression) and were tested with a neuropsychological battery for measuring attention/effortful control capacity. Results indicated that self-report and performance-based measures of attention/effortful control were at best moderately correlated. Further, it was found that self-report indexes of attention/effortful control were clearly negatively related to psychopathological symptoms, which provides support for the notion that low regulation is associated with higher levels of psychopathology. Finally, the performance-based measure of attention/effortful control was not convincingly related to psychopathological symptoms

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf: a prospective paradigm to test Rachman's indirect pathways in children

Rachman's theory [The conditioning theory of fear insition: a critical examination. Behav. Res. Ther. 15 (1977) 375–387] of fear acquisition suggests that fears and phobias can be acquired through three pathways: direct conditioning, vicarious learning and information/instruction. Although retrospective studies have provided some evidence for these pathways in the development of phobias during childhood [see King, Gullone, & Ollendick, Etiology of childhood phobias: current status of Rachman's three pathway's theory. Behav. Res. Ther. 36 (1998) 297–309 for a review], these studies have relied on long-term past memories of adult phobics or their parents. The current study was aimed towards developing a paradigm in which the plausibility of Rachman's indirect pathways could be investigated prospectively. In Experiment 1, children aged between 7 and 9 were presented with two types of information about novel stimuli (two monsters): video information and verbal information in the form of a story. Fear-related beliefs about the monsters changed significantly as a result of verbal information but not video information. Having established an operational paradigm, Experiment 2 looked at whether the source of verbal information had an effect on changes in fear-beliefs. Using the same paradigm, information about the monsters was provided by either a teacher, an adult stranger or a peer, or no information was given. Again, verbal information significantly changed fear-beliefs, but only when the information came from an adult. The role of information in the acquisition of fear and maintenance of avoidant behaviour is discussed with reference to modern conditioning theories of fear acquisition