3-212 - Anxiety Development during Childhood: The Role of Parental Anxiety, Emotions, Context, and Emotion Regulation.

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

This symposium addresses mechanisms involved in anxiety development during childhood including hyperarousal, socio-emotional information processing, and emotion regulation. In four studies using different indices of physiological activity, the role of parental anxiety and negative affect in children’s socio-emotional processing and emotion regulation is explored.
Paper 1 examines whether parental anxiety disorder affects infants’ physiological reactivity towards novel stimuli. Fathers’ and mothers’ anxiety disorder (AD) rather than social anxiety disorder (SAD) predicts higher heart rate in 4-months-old infants, suggesting that higher arousability is a characteristic of the AD endophenotype, which may affect subsequent development of threat-relevant information processing. In Paper 2, 15-month-old infants’ pupil reactivity to static facial expressions of different emotions and to unfamiliar objects paired with these faces assessed using eye-tracking technology provides support for a negativity bias (i.e., increased reactivity to negative faces). Additionally, this study shows effects of infants’ negative temperament and parental negative affect on pupil reactivity to emotional expressions. Paper 3 presents EEG evidence for enhanced neural regulation in anxious infants in negative situations and young children in low-fear situations. Findings demonstrate the importance of context in early information processing. Finally, Paper 4 presents ERP evidence for cognitive reappraisal as an adaptive strategy to regulate neural reactivity to angry faces in children of anxious mothers.
Together, these studies identify mechanisms involved in anxiety development from infancy to childhood. Jointly, study results illustrate the interplay between predisposition and environment in anxiety development.

Sub Unit

• Developmental Psychopathology

Chair

• Wieke de Vente, University of Amsterdam

Individual Presentations

• Is Social Anxiety Disorder in Parents related to higher Physiological Arousal and Arousability in their Offspring? - Presenting Author: Wieke de Vente, University of Amsterdam; Mirjana Majdandzic, University of Amsterdam; Susan M. Bögels, Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

• Infants’ Processing of Facial Expressions and Referential Cues: Effects of Parental Emotions and Infants’ Negative Temperament. - Presenting Author: Evin Aktar, University of Amsterdam; Dorothy J Mandell, University of Amsterdam; Wieke de Vente, University of Amsterdam; Mirjana Majdandzic, University of Amsterdam; Maartje Raijmakers, University of Amsterdam; Susan M. Bögels, Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

• Context-Based Differences in Delta Beta Coupling and Anxiety Risk in Infancy and Toddlerhood - Presenting Author: Rebecca J Brooker, Montana State University-Bozeman; Randi A. Phelps, Montana State University-Bozeman; Holly A. Howe, Montana State University-Bozeman; Kristin A Buss, Pennsylvania State University; Richard J Davidson, Univ of Wisconsin; H Hill Goldsmith, Univ of Wisconsin-Madison

• Cognitive Reappraisal Buffers the Impact of Maternal Anxiety on Children’s Neural Reactivity to Threat Relevant Stimuli - Presenting Author: Katie Lynn Burkhouse, State University of New York at Binghamton; Max Owens, Binghamton University (SUNY); Brandon E Gibb, Binghamton University (SUNY)