While fear of social situations is common, excessive social fears, as observed in social anxiety disorder (SAD), can have debilitating consequences on one’s life. Social fears increase from early...Show moreWhile fear of social situations is common, excessive social fears, as observed in social anxiety disorder (SAD), can have debilitating consequences on one’s life. Social fears increase from early to mid-adolescence, heightening vulnerability to developing SAD. Parents’ threatening verbal comments in a social context could influence children’s fear response, including attention, and lead to social fear acquisition. Additionally, children with higher behavioral inhibition (BI), who are more cautious and withdrawn in novel situations, can be more open to the effects of parental remarks than children with lower BI. Therefore, the current thesis aimed to investigate the effect of parental verbal threat versus safety about strangers on children’s attention to strangers, while looking at BI as a moderator. The children (age M = 11.62, SD = 1.18, range: 9.5-14) gave a presentation for two strangers after receiving either threatening or safe verbal descriptions of these strangers from their parents. Results showed that the child’s attention (i.e., looking duration) toward the stranger did not significantly differ between the threat and safe conditions. Furthermore, there was no significant moderation by BI. Thus, child attention was not influenced by parental verbal information irrespective of individual differences in child BI. Future studies could investigate children’s development of SAD further by focusing on the role of parental SAD, as well as the effects of repetitive exposure to parental verbal threat, other variables related to attention, and the developmental trajectories regarding BI.Show less
This study investigated the transmission of social anxiety from parent to child via verbal information about strangers. Based on previous research findings demonstrating verbal fear learning from...Show moreThis study investigated the transmission of social anxiety from parent to child via verbal information about strangers. Based on previous research findings demonstrating verbal fear learning from parent to child, which often resulted in avoidance behavior in the children, this study tested verbal fear learning in a social performance task with a stranger. Further, it was investigated whether parental social anxiety would moderate child´s avoidance towards the stranger. The current study included a community sample of 71 adolescents aged eleven- to fourteen. The children were accompanied by their primary caregiver to the lab, where the caregiver gave the manipulation by providing either safety or threat messages about two strangers. Multiple questionnaires were filled in by the parents and child, along with several measurements taken during the study, of which this thesis focused on the child´s avoidance behavior during the social performance task. Results indicate no significant differences in avoidance behavior between the safety or threat messages and no moderation effect of parental SAD. It was demonstrated that children of socially anxious parents were overall significantly more avoidant towards the strangers. Even though no support for a parent-to-child transmission of stranger anxiety in this sample was found, the findings contribute to the growing evidence that parental SAD does translate into behavioral avoidance in their children. Future research should try to find reliable measures of avoidance behavior, research a clinical sample and investigate this intergenerational transmission in a longitudinal or observational design.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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This study investigated the impact of parental verbal threat (vs. safety) information regarding a stranger on a child’s subjective and behavioral fear responses towards that stranger. As a...Show moreThis study investigated the impact of parental verbal threat (vs. safety) information regarding a stranger on a child’s subjective and behavioral fear responses towards that stranger. As a manipulation, parents were instructed to provide their children (N=79), aged 10-14 years, with standardized verbal threat or safety information about two strangers in the lab. Then, children engaged in a social interaction task with the two strangers (blind to their condition) separately, while child behavioral avoidance was recorded. Following the task, children reported fear beliefs for each stranger. Also, parents completed a self-report questionnaire on social anxiety symptoms. Children reported more fear beliefs for the stranger paired with the threat information, but no significant difference was found in observed avoidance. In addition, verbal threat information did not have a stronger influence on children’s observed avoidance in case of higher reported fear beliefs. Similarly, high parental social anxiety symptoms did not moderate the impact of verbal threat information on the child’s cognitive or behavioural fear indices. However, they did have a significant influence on behavioural avoidance, regardless of verbal information. Overall, this study shows a causal effect of verbal threat messages provided by parents only on child subjective fear and highlightsthe need for further research on the verbal transmission of childhood social fears in the context of family, by examining these processes in various social situations, age groups, and fear indices.Show less
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common types of psychopathology. Parent-child interactions play a prominent role in the development of SAD. Verbal information from parent to child...Show moreSocial anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common types of psychopathology. Parent-child interactions play a prominent role in the development of SAD. Verbal information from parent to child has been shown to be a potential mechanism for the transfer of fear. The current study aimed to investigate this transfer from parent to child by exploring the effect of parental verbal communication of threat and safety information on children’s attentional bias. Additionally, it was investigated whether the overall anxiety levels of parents would moderate this effect. The sample included 68 children aged 10 to 14 (38 girls and 29 boys, Mage = 11.23, SD = 1.17, range 9.57 - 14.28) and their parents (68 mothers and 55 fathers). The attentional bias was operationalized by using recorded videos of the social tasks performed by the children to calculate the total duration and frequency of the child's gaze at a safety-paired stranger and a threat-paired stranger. The results revealed no significant effect of parental verbal communication of threat versus safety on children’s attentional bias. Moreover, parental anxiety scores did not moderate this effect. The findings suggest that threat and safety information received verbally from parents does not influence the child's fear response. Our findings are not in line with previous studies, highlighting the importance of future research that will further clarify the mechanisms playing a role in the verbal transmission of threat and anxiety from parent to child.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
closed access
Observing emotions in others’ facial expressions is an important factor guiding social interaction. Observing others’ emotions elicits physiological arousal in the observer, which is reflected in...Show moreObserving emotions in others’ facial expressions is an important factor guiding social interaction. Observing others’ emotions elicits physiological arousal in the observer, which is reflected in increased pupil diameter (i.e., pupil dilation). The current study used pupil dilation as an index of physiological arousal to explore children’s responses to emotional facial expressions. More specifically, we investigated whether maternal symptoms of depression and/or anxiety were related to offspring’s pupil responses to negative (versus positive) facial displays irrespective of the child’s symptomology. A community sample of 87 mother- (M = 42.30, SD = 5.60, range = 27-57) child (M = 10.11, SD = 1.32, range = 7.2-12.9) dyads participated in the current study. Mothers and offspring reported on their depressive and anxiety symptoms via self-report questionnaires. Children’s pupil responses to angry, fearful, sad, and happy dynamic facial displays were measured during the dynamic emotions task using eye-tracking. Results revealed that maternal depressive symptoms were not related to child pupil responses to negative (versus positive) faces. Higher levels of maternal anxiety, however, were linked to stronger child pupil responses to fearful and sad faces than to happy faces. In turn, child pupil responses to angry (versus happy) faces did not statistically differ as a function of maternal anxiety. These findings persisted after accounting for the link between child anxiety symptoms and child pupil responses. Therefore, the way typically developing children react to negative versus positive emotional faces in later childhood appears to be related to maternal levels of anxiety, but not to maternal levels of depression. This points to the importance of exploring maternal anxiety symptoms as a potential risk factor for the development of negativity biases in offspring across the general population.Show less
To look at how a parent’s verbal communication can influence a child’s development of fear beliefs, a study called STARs Leiden was conducted using different social interaction tasks. During this...Show moreTo look at how a parent’s verbal communication can influence a child’s development of fear beliefs, a study called STARs Leiden was conducted using different social interaction tasks. During this research 72 participants between the ages 10 and 14 years were examined to see how parental verbal transmission of threat vs safety about strangers influenced fear beliefs. This was examined by offering the children the following three tasks: a speech about shyness and confidence, that was being recorded, watching the recording of their speech with a stranger and lastly a speech about their overall performance. Before any engagement took place the parent of each child pointed to an image of two strangers and declared that one is “nice”, and one is “tough”. After this the child had to fill in a questionnaire about fear beliefs about both judges. The child also had to fill in the child anxiety SCARED questionnaire before completing any of the tasks. An ANOVA was used to see if parental expression of threat vs safety had an influence on a child’s reported fear beliefs, these results were significant. Secondly, an ANOVA was also used to see if a child that scored high on social anxiety (when looking at the results on the child anxiety SCARED) also had more fear beliefs, however, these results did not yield a significant effect.Show less
Social anxiety runs in families. A pathway that plays a significant role in the transmission of social anxiety from parent-to-child, is the verbal information pathway. Studies that investigated...Show moreSocial anxiety runs in families. A pathway that plays a significant role in the transmission of social anxiety from parent-to-child, is the verbal information pathway. Studies that investigated this pathway mainly focused on the fear of novel animals instead of social fears. The current study investigated how parental verbal threat versus safety information affects the fear beliefs of children about strangers in social situations. Additionally, in the light of earlier research suggesting an influence of parental social anxiety on the effect of verbal information, parental social anxiety has been explored as a moderator. Primary caregivers provided their child (N = 69, M = 11.67 years, 59.4% girls) with either verbal threat or safety information regarding two strangers. After receiving the verbal information, the child had to perform three social tasks, twice, in front of each stranger. After the social tasks, the child had to report his level of fear (fear beliefs) regarding the strangers. Parents reported their own levels of social anxiety through a questionnaire. The findings showed that children reported more fear for the stranger paired with parental verbal threat information compared to the stranger paired with parental verbal safety information. However, no moderation of parental social anxiety on the effect of verbal information was found. Conclusively, the study reveals a causal effect of parental verbal threat on children’s fear beliefs. Possible explanations for the lack of a moderating effect of parental social anxiety and the need for future research are discussed.Show less
