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 Additionally, children with higher behavioral inhibition (BI), who are more cautious and withdrawn in novel situations, can be more open to the effects of parental remarks than children with lower BI.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
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
