The effect of anxiety level, knowledge and parental influence on children's responses to ambiguous situations

Abstract

The factors contributing to anxious children' tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as threatening and to subsequently avoid these situations are considered. The current status of the empirical literature for factors that may contribute to the onset and maintenance of these tendencies is examined. There is initial support indicating that anxious children may know which strategies are helpful in reducing anxiety, but do not use them. This is investigated further in the empirical paper by comparing how children predict another child would respond, with how they report they would respond in the same ambiguous situations. The expected difference between the solutions High-Anxious children would use, and the solutions they themselves would use was not found.

The literature also highlighted the role of the family, particularly as parents of anxious children are likely to be anxious themselves. The interactions between children and their parents may enhanced children's use of avoidant strategies. The empirical paper attempted to empirically manipulate one variable of these interactions. The impact of parents modelling threatening interpretations to the ambiguous situations was manipulated. Children were asked to imagine that their parent modelled either a threatening on non-threatening interpretation to the situations. Children produced more avoidant responses after they imagined their parents had pointed out threat.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

ASCII CitationAtomBibTeXData Cite XMLDublin CoreDublin CoreEP3 XMLEndNoteHTML CitationHTML CitationHTML ListJSONMETSMODSMPEG-21 DIDLOpenURL ContextObjectOpenURL ContextObject in SpanRDF+N-TriplesRDF+N3RDF+XMLRIOXX2 XMLReferReference ManagerSimple Metadata