Maternal modeling and the acquisition of fear and avoidance in toddlers: Influence of stimulus preparedness and child temperament

Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology

Volumn 36, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 499-512

  Dubi, Kathrin ^a   Rapee, Ronald M ^b   Emerton, Jane L ^c   Schniering, Carolyn A ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BASEL   (Switzerland)

^b MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

^c University of Bath   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Fear; Maternal modeling; Stimulus preparedness; Temperament; Toddlers

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR; CHILD BEHAVIOR; CHILD CARE; CONTROLLED STUDY; EMOTION; FEAR; FEMALE; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; INFANT; MALE; MOTHER CHILD RELATION; PRESCHOOL CHILD; SCORING SYSTEM; TEMPERAMENT; TODDLER;

ASSOCIATION LEARNING; AVOIDANCE LEARNING; COMMUNICATION; CONDITIONING (PSYCHOLOGY); FEAR; FEMALE; HUMANS; IMITATIVE BEHAVIOR; INFANT; MALE; MATERNAL BEHAVIOR; TEMPERAMENT;

EID: 41549128599     PISSN: 00910627     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10802-007-9195-3     Document Type: Article

References (98)

1. Andrews, G., Hall, W., Teesson, M., & Henderson, S. (1999). The mental health of Australians. Canberra, Australia: Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care.
2. Antony, M. M., Bieling, P. J., Cox, B. J., Enns, M. W., & Swinson, R. P. (1998). Psychometric properties of the 42-item and 21-item versions of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) in clinical groups and a community sample. Psychological Assessment, 10, 176-181.
3. Askew, C., & Field, A. P. (2007). Vicarious learning and the development of fears in childhood. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 2616-2627.
4. Baldwin, D. A., & Moses, L. J. (1994). Early understanding of referential intent and attentional focus: Evidence from language and emotion. In C. Lewis, & P. Mitchell (Eds.), Children's early understanding of mind (pp. 133-156). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
5. Bandura, A., Blanchard, E. B., & Ritter, B. (1969). Relative efficacy of desensitization and modeling approaches for inducing behavioral, affective, and attitudinal changes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 173-199.
6. Bandura, A., Grusec, J. E., & Menlove, F. L. (1967). Vicarious extinction of avoidance behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 16-23.
7. Bandura, A., & Rosenthal, T. L. (1966). Vicarious classical conditioning as a function of arousal level. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, 54-62.
8. Belsky, J., & Park, S. Y. (2000). Exploring reciprocal parent and child effects in the case of child inhibition in US and Korean samples. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 24, 338-347.
9. Bernstein, G. A., Borchardt, C. M., & Perwien, A. R. (1996). Symptoms of anxiety disorders in normal children. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 29, 759-765.
10. Bishop, G., Spence, S. H., & McDonald, C. (2003). Can parents and teachers provide a reliable and valid report of behavioral inhibition. Child Development, 74, 1899-1917.
11. Blackford, J. U., & Walden, T. A. (1998). Individual differences in social referencing. Infant Behavior and Development, 21, 89-102.
12. Bloom, L. (1998). Language acquisition in its developmental context. In D. Kuhn, & R. S. Siegler (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology, Vol. 2 (Cognition, perception, and language. (5th ed.) pp. 309-370. New York: Wiley.
13. Brown, T. A., Chorpita, B. F., Korotitsch, W., & Barlow, D. H. (1997). Psychometric properties of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) in clinical samples. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35, 79-89.
14. Capps, L., Sigman, M., Sena, R., Henker, B., & Whalen, C. (1996). Fear, anxiety and perceived control in children of agoraphobic parents. Journal of Child Psychology, Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 37, 445-452.
15. Cicchetti, D. V., & Sparrow, S. S. (1981). Developing criteria for establishing the interrater reliability of specific items in a given inventory. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 86, 127-137.
16. Cook, E. W., Hodes, R. L., & Lang, P. J. (1986). Preparedness and phobia: Effect of stimulus content on human visceral conditioning. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 195-207.
17. Cook, M., & Mineka, S. (1989). Observational conditioning of fear to fear-relevant versus fear-irrelevant stimuli in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 98, 448-459.
18. Cook, M., & Mineka, S. (1990). Selective associations in the observational conditioning of fear in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Animal Behavior Processes, 16, 372-389.
19. De Jong, P. J., Andrea, H., & Muris, P. (1997). Spider phobia in children: Disgust and fear before and after treatment. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35, 559-562.
20. De Rosnay, M., Cooper, P. J., Tsigaras, N., & Murray, L. (2006). Transmission of social anxiety from mother to infant: An experimental study using a social referencing paradigm. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44, 1165-1175.
21. Dimberg, U. (1986). Facial reactions to fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli. Biological Psychology, 23, 153-161.
22. Egliston, K.-A., & Rapee, R. M. (2007). Inhibition of fear acquisition in toddlers following positive modelling by their mothers. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 1871-1882.
23. Ehlers, A. (1993). Somatic symptoms and panic attacks: A retrospective study of learning experiences. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 31, 269-278.
24. Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D. J., & Pethick, S. J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59 (Serial No. 242).
25. Fergusson, D. M., Horwood, L. J., & Lynskey, M. T. (1993). Prevalence and comorbidity of DSM-III diagnoses in a birth cohort of 15 year olds. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 32, 1127-1134.
26. Field, A. P. (2006). The behavioral inhibition system and the verbal information pathway to children's fears. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 35, 337-345.
27. Field, A. P., Argyris, N. G., & Knowles, K. A. (2001). Who's afraid of the big bad wolf: A prospective paradigm to test Rachman's indirect pathways in children. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39, 1259-1276.
28. Field, A. P., Hamilton, S. J., Knowles, K. A., & Plews, E. L. (2003). Fear information and social phobic beliefs in children: A prospective paradigm and preliminary results. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 41, 113-123.
29. Field, A. P., & Lawson, J. (2003). Fear information and the development of fears during childhood: Effects on implicit fear responses and behavioural avoidance. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 41, 1277-1293.
30. Fleiss, J. L. (1981). Statistical methods for rates and proportions (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.
31. Fullard, W. B., McDevitt, S. C., & Carey, W. B. (1984). Assessing temperament in one- to three-year old children. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 9, 205-216.
32. Garcia-Coll, C., Kagan, J., & Reznick, J. S. (1984). Behavioral inhibition in young children. Child Development, 55, 1005-1019.
33. Gerull, F. C., & Rapee, R. M. (2002). Mother knows best: Effects of maternal modeling on the acquisition of fear and avoidance behavior in toddlers. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40, 279-287.
34. Gunnar, M. R., & Stone, C. (1984). The effects of positive maternal affect on infant responses to pleasant, ambiguous, and fear-provoking toys. Child Development, 55, 1231-1236.
35. Hirshberg, L. M., & Svejda, M. (1990). When infants look to their parents: I. Infants' social referencing of mothers compared to fathers. Child Development, 61, 1175-1186.
36. Hornik, R., & Gunnar, M. R. (1988). A descriptive analysis of infant social referencing. Child Development, 59, 626-634.
37. Hornik, R., Risenhoover, N., & Gunnar, M. R. (1987). The effect of maternal positive, neutral, and negative affective communications on infant responses to new toys. Child Development, 58, 937-944.
38. Hudson, J. L., & Rapee, R. M. (2004). From anxious temperament to disorder: An etiological model of generalized anxiety disorder. In R. G. Heimberg, C. L. Turk, & D. S. Mennin (Eds.), Generalized anxiety disorder: Advances in research and practice (pp. 51-74). New York: Guilford.
39. Kagan, J., Reznick, J. S., Clarke, C., Snidman, N., & Garcia-Coll, C. (1984). Behavioral inhibition to the unfamiliar. Child Development, 55, 2212-2225.
40. Kagan, J., Reznick, J. S., & Snidman, N. (1987). The physiology and psychology of behavioral inhibition in children. Child Development, 58, 1459-1473.
41. Kessler, R. C., McGonagle, K. A., Zhao, S., Nelson, C. B., Hughes, M., Eshleman, S., et al. (1994). Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders in the United States: Results from the national comorbidity survey. Archives of General Psychiatry, 51, 8-19.
42. King, N. J., Gullone, E., & Ollendick, T. H. (1998). Etiology of childhood phobias: Current status of Rachman's three pathways theory. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36, 297-309.
43. Klinnert, M. D. (1984). The regulation of infant behavior by maternal facial expression. Infant Behavior and Development, 7, 447-465.
44. Klinnert, M. D., Emde, R. N., Butterfield, P., & Campos, J. J. (1986). Social referencing: The infant's use of emotional signals from a friendly adult with mother present. Developmental Psychology, 22, 427-432.
45. Lang, P. J., Davis, M., & Öhman, A. (2000). Fear and anxiety: Animal models and human cognitive psychophysiology. Journal of Affective Disorders, 61, 137-159.
46. Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F. (1995a). Manual for the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (2nd ed.). Sydney: Psychology Foundation.
47. Lovibond, P. F., & Lovibond, S. H. (1995b). The structure of negative emotional states: Comparison of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) with the Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 33, 335-342.
48. Marks, I. (1987). Fears, phobias, and rituals: Panic, anxiety, and their disorders. New York: Oxford University Press.
49. McNally, R. (1987). Preparedness and phobias: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 283-303.
50. McNally, R., & Reiss, G. (1982). The preparedness theory of phobias and human safety-signal conditioning. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 20, 153-159.
51. Menzies, R. G., & Clarke, J. C. (1993). The etiology of childhood water phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 31, 499-501.
52. Menzies, R. G., & Clarke, J. C. (1995). The etiology of phobias: A nonassociative account. Clinical Psychological Review, 15, 23-48.
53. Merckelbach, H., De Jong, P. J., Muris, P., & Van den Hout, M. A. (1996). The etiology of specific phobias: A review. Clinical Psychology Review, 16, 337-361.
54. Merckelbach, H., Muris, P., & Schouten, E. (1996). Pathways to fear in spider phobic children. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 34, 935-938.
55. Mineka, S. (1985). Animal models of anxiety-based disorders: Their usefulness and limitations. In A. Tuma, & J. Maser (Eds.), Anxiety and the anxiety disorders (pp. 199-244). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
56. Mineka, S., & Cook, M. (1993). Mechanisms involved in the observational conditioning of fear. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 122, 23-38.
57. Mineka, S., Davidson, M., Cook, M., & Keir, R. (1984). Observational conditioning of snake fear in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 93, 355-372.
58. Mineka, S., & Öhman, A. (2002). Phobias and preparedness: The selective, automatic, and encapsulated nature of fear. Biological Psychiatry, 52, 927-937.
59. Mineka, S., & Zinbarg, R. (1996). Conditioning and ethological models of anxiety disorders: Stress-in-dynamic-context anxiety models. In D. Hope (Ed.), Perspectives on anxiety, panic, and fear (43rd annual Nebraska symposium on motivation). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
60. Moses, L. J., Baldwin, D. A., Rosicky, J. G., & Tidball, G. (2001). Evidence for referential understanding in the emotions domain at twelve and eighteen months. Child Development, 72, 718-735.
61. Mumme, D. L., Fernald, A., & Herrera, C. (1996). Infant's responses to facial and vocal emotional signals in a social referencing paradigm. Child Development, 67, 3219-3237.
62. Muris, P., Bodden, D., Merckelbach, H., Ollendick, T. H., & King, N. (2003). Fear of the beast: A prospective study on the effects of negative information on childhood fear. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 41, 195-208.
63. Muris, P., & Merckelbach, H. (2001). The etiology of childhood specific phobia: A multifactorial model. In M. W. Vasey, & M. R. Dadds (Eds.), The developmental psychopathology of anxiety (pp. 355-385). New York: Oxford University Press.
64. Muris, P., Steerneman, P., Merckelbach, H., & Meesters, C. (1996). The role of parental fearfulness and modeling in children's fears. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 34, 265-268.
65. Murray, L., Cooper, P. J., de Rosnay, M., Pearson, J., & Sack, C. (in press). Intergenerational transmission of maternal social anxiety: The role of social referencing processes. Child Development.
66. Neal, J. A., Edelmann, R. J., & Glachan, M. (2002). Behavioral inhibition and symptoms of anxiety and depression: Is there a specific relationship with social phobia. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41, 361-374.
67. Öhman, A. (1979). Fear relevance, autonomic conditioning, and phobias: A laboratory model. In P.-O. Sjöden, S. Bates, & W. S. Dockens III (Eds.), Trends in behavior therapy (pp. 107-134). New York: Academic Press.
68. Öhman, A. (1986). Face the beast and fear the face: Animal and social fears as prototypes for evolutionary analyses of emotion. Psychophysiology, 23, 123-145.
69. Öhman, A. (1993). Stimulus prepotency and fear learning: Data and theory. In N. Birbaumer, & A. Öhman (Eds.), The structure of emotion: Psychophysiological, cognitive, and clinical aspects (pp. 218-239). Seattle, WA: Hogrefe & Huber.
70. Öhman, A., Dimberg, U., & Öst, L.-G. (1985). Biological constraints on the learned fear response. In S. Reiss, & R. Bootzin (Eds.), Theoretical issues in behavior therapy (pp. 123-175). New York: Academic.
71. Öhman, A., Eriksson, A., & Olofsson, C. (1975). One-trial learning and superior resistance to extinction of autonomic responses conditioned to potentially phobic stimuli. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 88, 619-627.
72. Öhman, A., Fredrikson, M., Hugdahl, K., & Rimmö, P.-A. (1976). The premise of equipotentiality in human classical conditioning: Conditioned electrodermal responses to potentially phobic stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 105, 313-337.
73. Öhman, A., Hamm, A., & Hugdahl, K. (2000). Cognition and the autonomic nervous system: Orienting, anticipation, and conditioning. In J. T. Cacioppo, L. G. Tassinary, & G. G. Berntson (Eds.), Handbook of Psychophysiology (pp. 522-575). New York: Cambridge University Press.
74. Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review, 108, 483-522.
75. Ollendick, T. H., & King, N. J. (1991). Origins of childhood fears: An evaluation of Rachman's theory of fear acquisition. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 29, 117-123.
76. Öst, L. G. (1987). Age of onset in different phobias. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 96, 223-229.
77. Öst, L. G., & Hugdahl, K. (1981). Acquisition of phobias and anxiety response pattern in clinical patients. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 19, 439-447.
78. Pedlow, R., Sanson, A., Prior, M., & Oberklaid, F. (1993). Stability of maternally reported temperament from infancy to 8 years. Developmental Psychology, 29, 998-1007.
79. Pine, D. S., Klein, R. G., Mannuzza, S., Moulton, J. L., Lissek, S., Guardino, M., et al. (2005). Face-emotion processing in offspring at risk for panic disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 44, 664-672.
80. Prior, M., Sanson, A., Oberklaid, F., & Northam, E. (1987). Measurement of temperament in one to three year old children. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 10, 121-132.
81. Prior, M., Smart, D., Sanson, A., & Oberklaid, F. (2000). Pathways from infancy to adolescence: Australian Temperament Project 1983-2000. Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies.
82. Rachman, S. (1977). The conditioning theory of fear acquisition: A critical examination. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 15, 375-387.
83. Rachman, S. (1991). Neoconditioning and the classical theory of fear acquisition. Clinical Psychology Review, 17, 47-67.
84. Rapee, R. M. (2001). The development of generalized anxiety disorder. In M. W. Vasey, & M. R. Dadds (Eds.), The developmental psychopathology of anxiety (pp. 481-503). New York: Oxford University Press.
85. Rapee, R. M., & Spence, S. H. (2004). The etiology of social phobia: Empirical evidence and an initial model. Clinical Psychology Review, 24, 737-767.
86. Repacholi, B. M. (1998). Infant's use of attentional cues to identify the referent of another person's emotional expression. Developmental Psychology, 34, 1017-1025.
87. Reznick, J. S., Kagan, J., Snidman, N., Gersten, M., Baak, K., & Rosenberg, A. (1986). Inhibited and uninhibited children: A follow-up study. Child Development, 57, 660-680.
88. Rosen, W. D., Adamson, L. B., & Bakeman, R. (1992). An experimental investigation of infant social referencing: Mothers' messages and gender differences. Developmental Psychology, 28, 1172-1178.
89. Sawchuk, C. N., Lohr, J. M., Westendorf, D. H., Meunier, S. A., & Tolin, D. F. (2002). Emotional responding to fearful and disgusting stimuli in specific phobics. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40, 1031-1046.
90. Seligman, M. E. P. (1971). Phobias and preparedness. Behavior Therapy, 2, 307-320.
91. Sewell, J., Oberklaid, F., Prior, M., Sanson, A., & Kyrios, M. (1988). Temperament in Australian toddlers. Australian Pediatric Journal, 24, 343-345.
92. Shrout, P. E., & Fleiss, J. L. (1979). Intraclass correlations: Uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 420-428.
93. Siegler, R., DeLoache, J., & Eisenberg, N. (2003). How children develop. New York: Worth.
94. Thunberg, M., & Dimberg, U. (2000). Gender differences in facial reactions to fear-relevant stimuli. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 24, 45-51.
95. Verhulst, F. C., Van der Ende, J., Ferdinand, R. F., & Kasius, M. C. (1997). The prevalence of DSM-III-R diagnoses in a national sample of Dutch adolescents. Archives of General Psychiatry, 54, 329-336.
96. Watt, M. C., & Stewart, S. H. (2000). Anxiety sensitivity mediates the relationships between childhood learning experiences and elevated hypochondriacal concerns in young adulthood. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 49, 107-118.
97. Watt, M. C., Stewart, S. H., & Cox, B. J. (1998). A retrospective study of the learning history origins of anxiety sensitivity. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36, 505-525.
98. Weems, C. F., & Stickle, T. R. (2005). Anxiety disorders in childhood: Casting a nomological net. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 8, 107-134.