Abstract Social fears are highly prevalent, causing many functional limitations. Social fears in parents, transmitted via social learning, are one of the main risk factors contributing to the...Show moreAbstract Social fears are highly prevalent, causing many functional limitations. Social fears in parents, transmitted via social learning, are one of the main risk factors contributing to the development of social fears. This thesis is the first to investigate the effect of parental verbal expression of fear versus safety, in social situations, on child’s avoidance, in the developmental period where there is an increase in social fears, that is between 10-13 years of age. We additionally investigated whether parental social anxiety moderated the effect of parental verbal expression and child's avoidance. In the study, 76 children between 10 and 14 years old (M = 11.62) participated together with their parents. Both parents reported their social anxiety in online questionnaires. During a lab visit, only the primary caregivers provided their children with a fear and safety message about two strangers. The child was then confronted with the two strangers, during social tasks. The avoidant behavior was measured during the social performance task. Our findings revealed no significant difference in child’s avoidance towards the two strangers. In other words, when a parent verbally expressed fear about a stranger, the child did not show more avoidant behavior than when the parent verbally expressed safety. Also, the moderating role of parental social anxiety was not significant within this effect. We concluded that the parent's verbal information did not influence child’s avoidance, in the social situations constructed in this experiment. However, this thesis gave us insights in the intergenerational transmission of social fears and provided a baseline for future research investigating the influences of parental verbal expression of social fears on children's avoidance.Show less
The aim of this study was to further investigate the influence of verbal threat information provided by parents on the child’s fearful behaviour and whether behavioural inhibition is moderating...Show moreThe aim of this study was to further investigate the influence of verbal threat information provided by parents on the child’s fearful behaviour and whether behavioural inhibition is moderating this relationship. In this study, verbal threat information, revered to negative information about two strangers, was provided by the parent to the child. For this study, it was hypothesised that children who received verbal threat information from the parent show higher levels of fearful behaviour in a social performance task compared to when receiving safety verbal information from the parent. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that this relationship will be stronger if the child is more behaviourally inhibited, resulting in even higher levels of fearful behaviour. The research was conducted with a sample of 71 participants between the ages of 10 to 14 collected through volunteer sampling. Behavioural inhibition was measured with the BIQ, which was filled out by the parent prior to the experiment. In the lab, the child had to engage in a social performance task in front of two strangers. Observed fearful behaviour was then measured in 30-second intervals on a 5-point scale by coders. The results of the study were not in line with the hypotheses. The findings suggest further research in the field of verbal fear transmission and the development of social fears in children and adolescents.Show less
In infants and toddlers, fears can be acquired through observational learning. Previous research suggests that positive modelling which is a form of observational learning can form positive...Show moreIn infants and toddlers, fears can be acquired through observational learning. Previous research suggests that positive modelling which is a form of observational learning can form positive inhibitory associations that can counter the effects of fear learning. This meta-analysis aimed to synthesize the empirical studies on the influence of positive modelling on social fear learning in infants and toddlers between 0-3 ages. Three procedures were identified as the effects of positive modelling, namely fear reversal, fear prevention and fear reduction. OVID (Medline), EBSCO and PsychInfo databases were searched and a total of 1715 studies were found of which 15 were included in the final analysis. A meta-analysis was performed for two outcome variable categories, affect and approach/avoidance. Meta-analysis results showed that positive modelling has a significant fear reduction effect for affect variables with 0.55 effect size and for approach/avoidance variables with 0.64 effect size. Two studies showed support for the fear prevention effect of positive modelling, whereas none of the studies matched the criteria for fear reversal effect. To conclude, responsiveness of infants and toddlers to positive modelling can be seen as an inspiration for developing interventions that could be implemented in the early stages of life for fear/anxiety related problems.Show less
