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 Additionally, children with higher behavioral inhibition (BI), who are more cautious and withdrawn in novel situations, can be more open to the effects of parental remarks than children with lower BI.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)
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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
Verbal parental transmission of threat information about strangers may influence fear beliefs and avoidance responses in children. Earlier studies showed that sharing threat information with...Show moreVerbal parental transmission of threat information about strangers may influence fear beliefs and avoidance responses in children. Earlier studies showed that sharing threat information with children caused higher levels in fear beliefs and higher avoidance responses compared to when safe information was shared. There is proof that fearful temperament/behavioral inhibition (BI), moderate the relation between children receiving threat information and scoring higher on fear beliefs and avoidance responses. In this study, parents provided threat and safe information about two strangers to their children (N = 72, Mage = 11.67). Following the manipulation, children went through three social tasks twice with each of the strangers and reported fear beliefs in a questionnaire for each stranger. Avoidance behavior was observed in the social tasks. Fearful temperament was used as an individual difference predictor and was measured by the Early Adult Temperament Questionnaire. Verbal transmission of threat information was linked to higher fear belief scores compared to safe information. Verbal transmission of threat information was not linked to higher avoidance behavior responses. The fear beliefs outcomes and the behavioral responses were not affected by fearful temperament. This study only found proof that verbal parental transmission of threat information about strangers increased children’s’ fear beliefs and may increase the risks of developing SAD. This study has his strengths and limitations regarding the procedure and chosen measurements, but hopefully gives new inspiration to new or follow-up research about verbal parental transmission of threat information about strangers and the effects on children.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Negative Attention Bias (NAB) is suggested to have evolutionary functions; however, there is evidence that it also plays a role in the onset and maintenance of depression. Previous studies...Show moreNegative Attention Bias (NAB) is suggested to have evolutionary functions; however, there is evidence that it also plays a role in the onset and maintenance of depression. Previous studies investigating NAB and its links to depression were mainly conducted with clinical and at-risk adolescent and adult samples. Results of previous studies indicated depressed or at-risk individuals present NAB specifically towards depression-congruent stimuli (e.g., sad faces). This study is the first to investigate NAB and its links to depressive symptoms in non-clinical children. Moreover, the link between parental depressive symptoms and NAB in children was also investigated. In line with the previous studies, it was hypothesized children, like adults, will show NAB towards negative over positive emotional stimuli; children who have higher levels of depression will attend longer to sad faces in specific; children whose parents have higher levels of depression will attend longer to sad faces in specific. In a cross-sectional design, 90 8–12-year-old children and 84 parents (44 mothers) were tested. Children and parents’ dwell times to positive (happy) compared to negative (angry, fearful, sad) emotional expressions were measured using an eye-tracking task. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI) for children and the Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI) for parents. While only one parent contributed to the eye-tracking task, both parents were asked to fill out the BDI. Results indicated although parents compared to children attended longer to all emotional expressions, both children and their parents attended longer to negative compared to positive emotions. No link between child depressive symptoms or parental depressive symptoms with NAB specific to sad faces was found in children. We conclude that children, like adults, show a negativity bias in their attention to emotional expressions; however, suggested links between child and parent depressive symptoms with NAB may not hold in non-clinical child samples. This study adds to the growing research on emotion-processing and vulnerability to depression in children.Show less
The development of social anxiety, which is highly prevalent and persistent in adolescents, heavily depends on predisposing factors, such as behavioral inhibition, and environmental influences,...Show moreThe development of social anxiety, which is highly prevalent and persistent in adolescents, heavily depends on predisposing factors, such as behavioral inhibition, and environmental influences, such as parenting, particularly via verbal learning. This study investigated whether social fears can be verbally transmitted from parents to their adolescent children (N = 72, M = 11.67 years; 54.5% girls) by exploring whether standardized threat information about a stranger leads to higher fear beliefs in contrast to safety information about another stranger, and whether behavioral inhibition has a moderating role by exacerbating this verbal transmission of fear. The adolescents were provided with this information before performing a social interaction task with each of two strangers acting as judges, who were unaware whether they were paired with threat or safety information. Behavioral inhibition scores were assessed via parent and child reports prior to the verbal threat or safety information transfer, while fear beliefs were reported by the adolescents after the social task. In line with previous literature, adolescents reported higher fear beliefs for the strangers associated with threat information than for those associated with safety information. No significant moderation by behavioral inhibition was found, though parentally reported child behavioral inhibition positively predicted overall fear beliefs. Conclusively, social fears may be verbally transmitted from parents to adolescents via threat or safety information affecting fear beliefs. Limitations are discussed and further research to ascertain the full scope of this effect and implications is encouraged.Show less
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most prevalent anxiety disorders and can be conceptualized as the fear of scrutiny by others. SAD comes with elevated heart rate (HR) in the feared...Show moreSocial anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most prevalent anxiety disorders and can be conceptualized as the fear of scrutiny by others. SAD comes with elevated heart rate (HR) in the feared social situation. Additionally, it has been found that individuals with SAD perceive their HR to be higher. Therefore, high perceived HR serves as an indicator of how much anxiety an individual is experiencing. The development of SAD is impacted by verbal transmission of fears. This presents the idea that exposure to verbal threat information about a stimulus influences the child’s development of fears. Especially parents and their level of anxiety play a significant role in this pathway. The present study investigates the verbal transmission pathway by looking at the influence of parental transmission of safety and threat information on children’s HR and their perception of HR. Primary caregivers were instructed to transmit verbal or threat information to their child (N = 64, Mage = 11.67) regarding two strangers that the child faced in the lab. Fear response to the strangers was measured with HR and a visual analogous scale indicating the perceived HR. Parents also reported their own social anxiety, which was included as a moderating variable. No significant influence of the transmission of verbal information was found on HR and perceived HR. Additionally, parental social anxiety did not act as a significant moderator when it comes to the transmission of verbal information on HR or perceived HR. The lack of significant findings underlines the need to further investigate the influence of parental verbal transmission of information on child’s HR and perceived HR and the moderating role of parental social anxiety in these pathways.Show less
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is among the most common and debilitating forms of anxiety disorders. Fears of social situations can be acquired in childhood and adolescence through parent verbal...Show moreSocial anxiety disorder (SAD) is among the most common and debilitating forms of anxiety disorders. Fears of social situations can be acquired in childhood and adolescence through parent verbal information transmission. Acquired social fear in children can manifest itself in indices of fear, such as reported fear beliefs and observed avoidance behavior. This thesis focused on how parental verbal expressions of threat and safety influences the fear beliefs and avoidance behavior of children towards strangers (N = 72, Mage = 11.67 years, 41 girls). The parent was instructed to describe two strangers (who were unaware of their condition) with threat or safety statements. The children then performed three social tasks with each stranger. During these tasks their avoidant behavior was observed and after the tasks fear beliefs for each stranger were reported. Parents were also asked to report on symptoms of SAD to investigate whether this has a moderating role in child social fears. Results show that children reported significantly more fear beliefs for the stranger paired with threat information than the stranger with safety information, but there were no significant differences in avoidance behaviors between the two strangers. In addition, the findings did not reveal a moderating role of parental SAD. We conclude that verbal expressions of threat contribute to more fear beliefs towards strangers, but these fear beliefs are not translated into more avoidance behavior. The findings reveal the need for more research on avoidance in social situations and the role of parent SAD in a clinical sample.Show less
Previous research has shown that parental verbal expressions of positive and negative information contribute to the development of fear responses in their child using a variety of indices, but...Show morePrevious research has shown that parental verbal expressions of positive and negative information contribute to the development of fear responses in their child using a variety of indices, but research on the effect of parental verbal expressions on physiological indices of fear is limited. The current study aims to investigate whether threat or safety information presented by parents about a stranger affects the heart rate of the children when interacting with those strangers. Additionally, in the light of earlier evidence that has shown a moderating effect on the influence of verbal threat information on physiological changes, the role of child trait social anxiety has been explored as a possible moderator. A sample of 38 10-to-14-year-old children and their primary caregivers have participated in the current study. Parents gave their child verbal threat or safety information about two strangers that the child had to interact with during social tasks: social performance, watching back their performance, and social interaction. Heart rate was continuously recorded during these social tasks. Child trait social anxiety was measured through the child's report on the social anxiety subscale of the SCARED questionnaire. Results showed that parental verbal expressions of threat versus safety did not have a significant effect on the heart rate of the child. Furthermore, no significant moderation of this effect by child trait social anxiety was found. Conclusively, the results of the current experimental design are not in line with the expected outcome and, therefore, possible explanations and the need for further research have been highlighted.Show less
The literature suggests a possible link between self-esteem and the affective component of eye contact. We drew on these findings to examine whether this link is also present with a subcomponent of...Show moreThe literature suggests a possible link between self-esteem and the affective component of eye contact. We drew on these findings to examine whether this link is also present with a subcomponent of self-esteem, namely parental self-efficacy. Parental self-efficacy has a mutual influence on parental care, and, along with eye contact, they are critical to the formation of a healthy parent-child relationship, which in turn fosters favorable child development outcomes. However, not much is known about how parental self-efficacy and parental care impact (the experience of) eye contact between a parent and their child. The present study (n = 62) investigated the association between parental care as perceived by the child, parental selfefficacy, and the affective response of parents to eye contact with their own child. Parents engaged in an fMRI task where they were shown pre-recorded movies of target people gazing directly at them. Targets were either the participant’s own child or an unfamiliar child. The objective was to explore whether parental self-efficacy impacts how parents feel after direct eye contact with their child and if parental care influenced this relationship. Our findings did not support these expectations. The study provides further grounds for the link between parental selfefficacy and parental care. Additional implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.Show less
