Transmission of Social Fear Through Mother-Child Conversations: Implications for Peer Avoidance and Interpretation Bias

• In Event: Learning to Fear in Childhood: Evidence from Experimental Studies

Abstract

Introduction: Although social fear and anxiety run in families, little is known about how parents transmit social fear to their children. One mechanism by which parents may transfer social fear to their children is provision of verbal information during everyday conversations (Muris et al., 2010). Provision of more negative and less positive information about unfamiliar peers may lead to increases in children’s social fear beliefs; which, in turn, may contribute to anxious thoughts and behaviors (i.e., negative interpretation, peer avoidance). Children high in social anxiety may be more vulnerable to the impact of social information provided by their parents. Using a novel paradigm, we examined whether mothers’ provision of social information during mother-child conversations mediates the association between mothers’ social fear and change in children’s social fear from before to after these conversations, and whether children’s social anxiety moderates the influence of mothers’ statements on children’s social fear. The impact of children’s social fear on anxious behaviors (i.e., interpretation bias, peer avoidance) were also examined.

Method: Participants were 9-year-old children (n=291, 54% female) and their mothers who were recruited for a longitudinal study examining the role of temperament in socioemotional development. During the laboratory visit, mothers were asked to read neutral statements about hypothetical unfamiliar peers whose age and sex matched with their children. Next, mothers were presented with 4 sequential vignettes about their children’s social encounters with these hypothetical peers. Mothers were asked to talk to their children about each vignette for 2 minutes. Mothers’ verbal information was later coded as negative or positive. Children’s social fear beliefs were assessed via a modified version of the Fear Beliefs Questionnaire (Field et al., 2001) before and after the mother-child conversations. Mothers completed a similar fear beliefs questionnaire prior to the vignettes. Children’s behavioral avoidance and social interpretive bias were assessed after mother-child conversations. Children self-reported on their social anxiety using SCARED.

Results: A path model was conducted. As shown in Figure 1, higher levels of maternal fear beliefs predicted more use of negative statements and less use of positive statements during mother-child conversations and predicted more child fear beliefs at post-test relative to pretest. As predicted, child social anxiety moderated the association between mothers’ negative statements and child social fear beliefs, such that children high in social anxiety were more affected by mothers’ negative statements (see Figure 2). The effect of mothers’ fear beliefs on children’s fear beliefs was partially mediated by maternal positive statements, and negative statements among children high in social anxiety. Children’s post-test fear beliefs were positively associated with peer avoidance and negative social interpretations.

Discussion: Our findings suggest that mothers socially transmit social fear to their children through verbal information they provide during mother-child conversations. Children high in social anxiety were particularly impacted by their mothers’ negative statements; whereas mothers’ use of positive statements predicted decreases in social fear beliefs among all children. Targeting mothers’ social fear beliefs and the verbal information they provide to their children may help prevent the intergenerational transmission of social fear.

Authors

• Selin Zeytinoglu, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Santiago Morales, University of Southern California
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lauren White, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daniel S. Pine, National Institutes of Health
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nathan A Fox, University of Maryland - College Park
  Non-Presenting Author