Background: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is highly prevalent around the world, and often develops in childhood. Transfer of SAD from parents-to-children occurs both by genetic transmission as by...Show moreBackground: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is highly prevalent around the world, and often develops in childhood. Transfer of SAD from parents-to-children occurs both by genetic transmission as by environmental transmission, namely by social learning. The verbal information pathway is known as one of the social learning pathways for fear. There are multiple studies on the acquisition of animal fears via the verbal pathway, but studies on social fears are limited. Therefore this study aims to investigate the verbal information pathway as a learning mechanism of social fears. Besides, a proposed risk factor for the development of SAD, behavioral inhibition (BI), is included in the current study as a potential moderator. Methods: The study sample consisted of 68 dyads, with children aged 4-6. Parents provided safety and threat information about two strangers to the children. Fear beliefs were compared between safety and threat condition. In addition, a questionnaire measured children’s BI tendency to study both as a covariate and directly in relation with fear beliefs. Results: When children received threat information fear beliefs were significantly higher compared to when children received safety information about the stranger. There was no interaction effect or main effect with BI. Conclusions: We conclude that 4-to-6-year old children are influenced by parents verbal information about strangers in such a way that threat information compared to safety information creates more fear beliefs. Besides, moderation by BI was not significant in the community sample used in the current study.Show less
