Heir to the Scare?: A Cognitive Study of the Role of Interpretation Bias in Intergenerational Anxiety Transmission

Cognitive-behavioural models of anxiety propose that interpretation bias (IB), defined as the tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as threatening, plays a central role in the development and maintenance of anxiety and may contribute to its intergenerational transmission. Although parent anxiety and child anxiety are consistently associated, most prior research has focused on behavioural mechanisms and younger samples, leaving the cognitive-to-cognitive transmission of IB relatively underexplored, particularly for young adults. The present study examined whether parental and young adult IB sequentially mediate the association between parent anxiety and young adult anxiety in emerging adulthood. 148 parents and their young adult offspring (ages 18-24) completed the Ambiguous Social Scenarios Questionnaire (ASSQ) to assess threat-related IB and the SCAARED-A to assess anxiety symptoms. A serial mediation model tested whether parent anxiety predicted parent IB, whether parent IB...Show moreCognitive-behavioural models of anxiety propose that interpretation bias (IB), defined as the tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as threatening, plays a central role in the development and maintenance of anxiety and may contribute to its intergenerational transmission. Although parent anxiety and child anxiety are consistently associated, most prior research has focused on behavioural mechanisms and younger samples, leaving the cognitive-to-cognitive transmission of IB relatively underexplored, particularly for young adults. The present study examined whether parental and young adult IB sequentially mediate the association between parent anxiety and young adult anxiety in emerging adulthood. 148 parents and their young adult offspring (ages 18-24) completed the Ambiguous Social Scenarios Questionnaire (ASSQ) to assess threat-related IB and the SCAARED-A to assess anxiety symptoms. A serial mediation model tested whether parent anxiety predicted parent IB, whether parent IB predicted young adult IB, and whether young adult IB predicted young adult anxiety, forming a sequential cognitive pathway. Parent anxiety was significantly associated with stronger parental threat interpretations, and young adult IB was robustly associated with young adult anxiety. However, parent IB did not predict young adult IB, and none of the indirect effects via parent IB alone, young adult IB alone, or the full sequential pathway were statistically significant. The direct association between parental and young adult anxiety remained significant after accounting for both mediators. These findings suggest that although IB is a meaningful individual-level correlate of anxiety, it does not appear to function as the primary cognitive mechanism explaining parent-offspring anxiety resemblance in young adulthood.Show less

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Heir to the Scare? A Cognitive Study of the Role of Interpretation Bias in Intergenerational Anxiety Transmission