Infant learning from fathers in a social referencing paradigm: a registered report

Abstract

Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent mental disorders among children worldwide. The exposure to parents’ anxious behaviours represents an environmental risk factor for offspring anxiety and infant behavioural inhibition is prospectively associated with the broad class of anxiety disorders. However, fathers have been largely neglected in the study of child anxiety and their causal role in its intergenerational transmission remains to be investigated. In this experiment, we will test the impact of experimentally-manipulating fathers’ socially anxious behaviours on their infants’ behavioural and emotional responses to a stranger in a social referencing paradigm. Moreover, we will investigate the moderating role of infant behavioural inhibition. Twelve to 14-month-old infants (N sample size = XX; M age = XX; SD = XX) recruited in the county of Hampshire, United Kingdom, will participate in the study with their non-anxious fathers, who will be trained to interact in a neutral or anxious manner with two different male strangers. All infants will experience two conditions: (i) father interacting in a neutral (i.e., non-anxious) manner with the stranger, and (ii) father interacting in a socially anxious manner with a different stranger. The order of each condition and the order of stranger presentation will be counterbalanced. This experimental study will help shed light on the causal role of fathers’ anxious behaviours in the intergenerational transmission of anxiety.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Francesca Zecchinato: orcid.org/0000-0002-4639-8830

ORCID for Jana Kreppner: orcid.org/0000-0003-3527-9083

ORCID for Peter J. Lawrence: orcid.org/0000-0001-6181-433X

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