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Poster #202 - Children’s spontaneous coping with fear of real/ imaginary creatures and parents’ reaction to children’s fear

Sat, March 23, 8:00 to 9:15am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

While extensive research has examined young children’s anxiety problems, studies have usually focused more on describing the nature and prevalence of fears, and less on the spontaneous ways children and parents cope with these fears. Our study aimed to address this gap by investigating young children’s coping with real/ imaginary threats and relate this to the way parents cope with their child’s fear. There is evidence to suggest that different sources of fear, i.e. fear of real versus imaginary things, might elicit different strategies for managing anxiety (Sayfan & Lagattuta, 2008; 2009), which is why we investigated fear of both real and imaginary creatures. We also investigated the way parents’ coping strategies with the child’s fear during a pretend scenario were connected with their actual strategies used to cope with children’s negative emotions in real life. Lastly, the study examined the interplay between children and parents’ coping and individual differences in children’s anxiety and depression. We evaluated 136 Romanian children (ages 4-8; M age = 6.1 years, SD = 1.14; 54% girls) and their parents. In order to assess children’s coping with fear of real and imaginary creatures we created two short stories based on Sayfan & Lagattuta’s 2009 study, and accompanied them with new pictures. The stories depict a child reacting to an ambiguous stimulus which they think is an imaginary/real frightening creature (a monster or a snake). Children were asked to suggest strategies the character could use to alleviate his/her fear. Parents read the same two stories, but with their own child as the protagonist. In order to measure coping, parents were asked to choose what they would do to reduce their child’s fear. Additionally, we administered the Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale (Fabes et al., 1990). In order to measure anxiety, parents completed either the Spence Preschool Anxiety Scale (Spence et al., 2001), or the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS; Chorpita et al., 2000). Preliminary results showed that children and parents described a wide repertoire of answers, which we grouped under 7 strategies (behavioral strategies: approach and avoidance; cognitive strategies: reappraisal, distraction, acceptance; emotional strategies: response focused and suppression) (see Figure 1). Children preferred cognitive strategies when coping with imaginary entities and behavioral ones for real creatures. In contrast, parents believed the best strategies for managing their child’s fear of imaginary creatures were cognitive ones, whereas behavioral strategies were best for fear of real entities. Regarding children’s fear of imaginary creatures, avoidance strategies were associated with higher depression, whereas for real entities, children’s avoidance was linked with higher overall anxiety. Finally, reappraisal and distraction used by parents in the pretend scenario were associated with emotion focused strategies in real-life, whereas acceptance was linked with expressive encouragement. These results help shed more light into the spontaneous ways children cope with anxiety and how parents might shape this process.

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