Fearing the unknown: Exploring risk factors for anxiety in children with nighttime fears.

Abstract

Nighttime fears (NF) commonly occur in children aged 4 - 7 years of age. However, there are cases where fears persist into late childhood, and can impact on daily functioning and sleep behaviour. NF have been associated with symptoms of generalised anxiety, fear, and separation anxiety. Research in anxiety in children has highlighted key risk factors, such as behavioural inhibition and attention control, in the emergence of anxiety disorders in later life. Once factor, fear of the unknown, is a relatively new idea which has limited research into its role in anxiety development. Fear of the unknown is defined as ‘an individual’s dispositional incapacity to endure the aversive response triggered by the perceived absence of salient, key, or sufficient information’ (Carleton, 2016b; p. 31). and has been recognised to be distinctly different that intolerance of uncertainty, another important risk factor for anxiety. The current project investigated the risk factors for anxiety and the impact of nighttime fear (NF) in childhood and later adolescence. Prevalence of NF in children across the ages of 4-12 years concurrently and associations with anxiety and fear were investigated, measuring cognitive risk factors such as attentional control (AC), behavioural inhibition (BI) and fear of the unknown (FOTU). The aim was to understand the emergence and stability of NF in childhood, investigating associations between key variables in the context of risk factors, including child temperamental risk and the presence of fears and phobias in parents, including NF. A systematic review & meta-analysis, a triadic report survey and lab based/online experiment was conducted to further our understanding of risk factors of anxiety, specifically looking children with NF. The overall findings suggest multiple key components to further investigate regarding NF acquisition, as well as better understanding of treatments and interventions as well as a deeper look into the differences between unknowns and uncertainty.

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Identifiers

ORCID for David James Keep: orcid.org/0009-0005-3080-1495

ORCID for Matthew Garner: orcid.org/0000-0001-9481-2226

ORCID for Dennis Golm: orcid.org/0000-0002-2950-7935

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