Children’s Fear towards COVID-19: The Role of Parental Verbal Threat Information

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Solicited Content: COVID-19 Related

Abstract

Fear and anxiety run in families and can be transmitted from parents to children via environmental pathways (Rachman, 1977; Rachman 1991). Children can acquire fear of novel situations or stimuli from parents’ verbal communication of threat information about these situations or stimuli (Muris and Field, 2010). Despite accumulating evidence on a significant causal effect of parental verbal communication of threat on offspring fear in experimental lab designs, research on this link is scarce in the context of novel and potential threatening situations that parents themselves confront in real life, such as a pandemic.
An earlier study, investigating the link between parents’ verbal threat information on child fear acquisition in the context of the swine flu pandemic, reported a significant link between parents’ communication of threat about the swine flu and offspring fear towards the swine flu (Remmerswaal & Muris, 2011). This study also confirmed a direct positive link between parents’ and offspring fear of the swine flu, which was partly accounted for by parents who are more scared of the swine flu being more likely to communicate threat information about the swine flu to their children.
This ongoing study (Current N=34) aims to investigate the role of parental verbal communication of threat information as a mechanism in the parent-to-offspring transmission of fears in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We will investigate the associations between parent and offspring fear towards COVID-19, and parental verbal information, and explore the links of COVID-19 fear to general anxiety dispositions of parents and children.
The sample will consist of (anticipated N = 80) children aged 8 to 18 years and their parents, recruited from the community sample using online advertisements and flyers. The data collection for this study started in August 2020. Assuming a similar pace in the data collection, we should be able to complete data collection of 80 families approximately in January 2021. Parents and their children are asked to fill in online questionnaires measuring parent and child general anxiety levels (SCARED, Screen for Child/Parent Anxiety Related Emotional Disorder), fear of COVID-19 (adapted from Fears of Swine Flu Questionnaire by Remmerswaal & Muris, 2011) and parent verbal transmission of fear.
We hypothesize that parents’ fear of COVID-19 will be related to their children’s fear of COVID-19. Furthermore, we expect that this link will be partly explained by anxious parents being more likely to communicate threat information about COVID-19 to their children. Furthermore, we will explore whether the relationship between parental verbal threat information and children’s fear of COVID-19 is stronger in the case of higher levels of trait fear/anxiety in the parents or children.
To investigate the hypotheses separate regression analyses will be performed. The mediation model, in which transmission of threat information about COVID-19 from parents acted as a mediator in the association between parental fear of COVID-19 and child fear of COVID-19, will be tested using regression analyses and the approach by Baron and Kenny (1986).
The clinical implications for the family, such as prevention strategies in the case of COVID-19 and future potential conflicts will be discussed.

Authors

• Cosima Nimphy, Universiteit Leiden
  Presenting Author

• Evin Aktar, Leiden University
  Non-Presenting Author