normative development of fears

Question 1

childhood fears

Answer 1

• Assessed directly (and often retrospectively) using child interviews, questionnaires, parent/teacher report.
  
  • Normal childhood fears are:
  • Commonly experienced/universal?
  • Relatively mild.
  • Appear and disappear spontaneously.
  • Follow a predictable pattern?
  • Decrease with age?
    · Gullone (2000) reviewed interview studies with 4-19 year olds:
  • Average number of fears is 2-5 per child.
  • Tend to elicit general themes e.g. animals, death/injury, the unknown, social concern

Question 2

fear survey schedule for children - revised

Answer 2

· Ollendick (1983):
- 80 item measure of children’s fear in response to a range of specific stimuli/situations (none, some, a lot).
· Measures number, severity and type of normal fears children experience.
· Five reliable factors:
- Fear of danger and death (e.g. being hit by a car or truck).
- Fear of failure and criticism (e.g. looking foolish).
- Fear of the unknown (e.g. going to bed in the dark).
- Fear of animals (e.g. snakes).
- Stress and medical fears (e.g. getting an injection from the doctor).

Question 3

methodological issues

Answer 3

· Some of the items are quite outdated and contemporary threats (e.g. climate change) not included (Fishkin, Rohrbach & Anderson-Johnson, 1997; Lengua, Long, Smith & Meltzoff, 2005).
· May not adequately capture cultural variation in childhood fears.
· Can only measure what is included, not an exhaustive list (see Muris, Merckelbach, Meesters & Van Lier, 1997).
· Might not index actual frequency of fears (McCathie & Spence, 1991).

Question 4

Ollendick, King and Fray, 1989

Answer 4

· 1185 children and adolescents (395 aged 7-10, 449 aged 11-13, 341 aged 14-16).
· Recruited in USA and Australia.
· Average of 14 fears reported (see also Ollendick, Yang, King, Dong & Akande, 1996).
· Top fears relate to dangerous situations and physical harm.
· Children who identified as girls report more fears than children who identified as boys
· Fears highest for death/danger items

Question 5

moderation of childhood fears

Answer 5

1. Gender
   
   2. Cultural variation
2. Socioeconomic effects

Question 6

gender effects

Answer 6

• Gullone and King (1993) - items that most strongly discriminated between boys and girls, e.g., rats, spiders, snakes, mice, creepy houses, being alone, bad dreams
  
  • Gender effects may have be explained by biological sex differences and/or gender role orientation
  • High femininity and low masculinity associated with greater anxiety and avoidance (Ginsburg and Silverman, 2000; Muris, Meesters and Knoops, 2005)
  • Gender role orientation stronger predictor of fear than child’s biological sex (Brody, Hay and Vandewater, 1990)

Question 7

cultural variation

Answer 7

· Across “Western” countries lots of consistency:
- Number of fears decreases with age
- Girls more fearful than boys
- Content of fears appears to show similar developmental pattern (but also some idiosyncrasies e.g., sharks in Australia)
· Fear levels may vary as a function of cultural group membership
· Cross-cultural differences have been found within-countries - e.g., in the USA, hispanic youth display higher fear and anxiety than white youth

Question 8

cultural variation 2

Answer 8

· Ollendick et al. (1996)
- 1200 participants aged 7-17 years in Nigeria, China, USA and Australia
· Differences in intensity and patterns of fears:
- Nigeria > China > America = Australia.
- Girls > boys apart from Nigeria.
- Fears decreased with age only in USA and Australian samples. No age differences in Nigerian sample and peak in anxiety in late childhood (10-14yrs) in Chinese sample.
- Common fears primarily death/danger related but more social-evaluative and safety-related fear in Nigerian and Chinese samples.
- Idiosyncratic fears – ghosts in China, looking foolish in USA, ocean in Nigeria, guns in Australia.
· Socialisation practices?
- Collectivist cultures emphasise self-control, social inhibition and compliance with social norms which might fuel greater fear and anxiety.

Question 9

socioeconomic effects

Answer 9

· Lower SES children report more fears (Croake, 1969; Croake & Knox, 1973; Sidana, 1975).
· Differences in content of fears:
- Low SES: animals, strange people, abandonment by parents, death, violence, knives.
- Middle/Upper SES: heights, ill health, rollercoasters, pet’s safety.
· Children in low SES environments are exposed to more specific threats and enhanced general feelings of fear and anxiety.

Question 10

developmental patterns

Answer 10

Often widely argued that childhood fears show a predictable developmental pattern
· Predictable developmental pattern?
- Infants: environmental stimuli (loud noises, separation, unusual stimuli).
- 4-8 years: ghosts, imaginary creatures, and animals.
- 10-12 years: social fears, self-injury.
· Some evidence that this patterns maps on to the age of onset of phobias (Field & Davey, 2001; Muris & Field, 2011):
- Height/water phobia begins in infancy.
- Animal phobias start between 7-9.
- Social fears in pre-adolescence.
· BUT
· Some researchers argue that some fears may be innate and present from very early in development e.g. snakes, spiders.

Question 11

developmental patterns 2

Answer 11

· Some research consistent with a predictable pattern but results are mixed and sometimes hard to interpret across studies.
· Bauer (1976):
- Fear of monsters and ghosts decreases with age.
- Fear of bodily injury and physical danger increases with age.
· Muris, Merckelbach, Gadet & Moulaert (2000):
- Fears and scary dreams more common in 7-9 year olds compared to 10-12 year olds.
- Worry more common in 10-12 year olds than 4 – 6 year olds.

Question 12

developmental patterns 3

Answer 12

· Westenberg, Drewes, Goedhart, Siebelink & Treffers, 2004:
- 882 participants aged 8-18 years.
- Assessed social and physical fears using the FSSC-R.

Question 13

theoretical approaches

Answer 13

· Suggests some fears can be learned through conditioning experiences i.e., verbal information, vicarious learning.
· Some fears may be innate or we might be prepared to learn them very rapidly and at an early age

Question 14

evolutionary approach

Answer 14

· Natural selection favours individuals who rapidly learn about threats that pose a danger to self because this facilitates survival.
· Fear system evolved to focus on threats at ages at which those threats would have been greatest risk to our ancestors (Ohman, Dimberg & Ost, 1985).
· Some fears may be innate and may not need to be learned at all (Poulton & Menzies, 2002).
· We may be prepared to rapidly acquire some fears with little or no prior learning.

Question 15

cognitive development

Answer 15

· Fear and anxiety originates from conceptualisation of threat.
· Conceptualisation of threat depends on a child’s cognitive and physical abilities (Vasey, 1993).
· As cognitive abilities (e.g. biological regulation, memory, self-control, theory of mind, counterfactual reasoning) develop, fear and anxiety become more sophisticated.
· Range of fear-provoking stimuli broadens and cognitive features of anxiety (e.g. worry) become more prevalent.

Question 16

fears in infancy

Answer 16

common fear:
- environmental stimuli
- separation anxiety
evolutionary account:
- young children are defenseless so adaptive to fear wide range of environmental stimuli.
- fear and avoidance keeps infant within protective distance of caregiver, maximising survival
cognitive account:
- cognitive capacities are limited so fear is directed at immediate, concrete environmental threats.
- by 9 months, children develop ability to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar faces so separation anxiety, fear of strangers emerges.

Question 17

fears in early/middle childhood

Answer 17

common fears:
- imaginary creatures, fear of the dark
- fear of small animals
evolutionary account:
- young children begin to explore environment more independently, increasing risk from predators and dangerous environment
- fear systems evolved to prioritise rapid learning about threats from animals
cognitive account:
- development of magical thinking and poor fantasy-reality distinction may account for fear of monsters.
- fear of animals/unknown emerges with increased physical mobility and awareness of external environment

Question 18

fears in adolescence

Answer 18

common fears:
- social fears and evaluation
- fear of injury to self
- more generalised worry
evolutionary account:
- social position within a group may mean difference between survival or not
- fear system evolved to prioritise rapid learning about threats in the social world
cognitive account:
- abstract thinking and understanding of cause-effect broadens range of fear-provoking stimuli and allows more cognitive features of fear to emerge
- increase egocentrism leads to sensitisation to evaluations/insults to self

Question 19

Muris, Merckelbach, Misters and Van den Brand (2002)

Answer 19

• N = 248 children aged 3-14 years
• measured main worry using interview and ability to catastrophise
• cognitive maturation measured using Piagetian conservation tasks
• increased age and cognitive matiration lead to enhanced ability to elaborate on worries, in turn increasing risk for emergence of personal worry

Question 20

the evolutionary case for snake and spider fear

Answer 20

· Some fears may be present from birth or very early in development.
· Between 8-10mths, evolutionary accounts argue that infants demonstrate negative responses and rapid detection indicative of innate fear of snakes and spiders.
- Negative responses are universal across cultures.
- Seen across a variety of nonhuman animals.
Infant responses fit with evolutionary explanations about adaptive significance of avoiding animals that might threaten their survival.

Question 21

in support of evolutionary accounts

Answer 21

· Infants form faster associations between snakes and fearful stimuli than between snakes and happy stimuli:
- E.g. 16-month-olds look longer at a snake video than a video of another animal (paired side-by-side) while listening to a fearful voice but not happy voice (DeLoache & LoBue, 2009).
- E.g. 11-month-old girls learn to associate snake images with fear emoticons but don’t learn same associations between control images and happy/fear emoticons (Rakison, 2009).
· Infants rapidly detect and show greater attention to snakes and spiders than to control images e.g. flowers, mushrooms:
- E.g. 9-12 mth olds turn more quickly to look at snakes than flowers when images presented side by side (LoBue & DeLoache, 2010).
- E.g. 3-5 year olds find a snake/spider target more rapidly among a matrix of control distractors compared to finding a different target (e.g. a frog) (LoBue & DeLoache, 2008; LoBue, 2010).

Question 22

but is it fear?

Answer 22

· Are biased perceptual responses to snakes and spiders really indicative of fear?
· No corroborating behavioural evidence of fear (LoBue & Rakison, 2013):
- They don’t avoid looking at videos of snakes relative to other animals.
- They are not more reticent to touch images of snakes/spiders.
- Parents report child fear but does this reflect parents’ attitudes and not children’s emotions?
· Some studies suggest young children display evidence that they like snakes/spiders:
- Spend more time interacting with live animals than novel toys during free play session (LoBue et al., 2013).
- Attempt to “pick up” moving snake images when on a screen

Question 23

or is it a perceptual bias?

Answer 23

· Rather than fear snakes/spiders may hold a ‘special status’ – they capture attention rapidly and this may then allow rapid learning of fear (LoBue & Adolph, 2019).
· Don’t need fear for this to happen - low level perceptual features of snakes will capture attention:
- Children show greater/faster attention to coiled lines or curvilinear shapes which are ‘snake-shaped’ (LoBue, 2014).
- If snake images are uncoiled or just the snake face is shown then attention is no different compared to other stimuli (LoBue & DeLoache, 2011).
· Young infants may have evolved a ‘perceptual template’ which allows them to rapidly detect/attend to things that have shape/movement characteristics typical of snakes/spiders.

Question 24

Rakison and Derringer (2007)

Answer 24

• looked at whether 5 month old infants possess a perceptual template which specifies a mental representation of a spider’s basic shape and configuration.
• measured attention by measuring visual fixation
• if infants have a perceptual template, then they should look longer at the ‘real’ spider than the reconfigured/scrambled spider

Question 25

rapid detection mechanism

Answer 25

• infants looked longer at the schemantic spider than the reconfigured and scrambled spider - consistent with possession of an innate perceptual template
• no significant difference in visual fixation times when spider images did not contain typical curvilinear body and leg shape
• suggests perceptual template specifies the structure of spiders e.g., curved body and legs

Question 26

to conclude - the case of snakes and spiders

Answer 26

· Is snake/spider fear innate?
- Unlikely – no behavioural evidence of fear in infants.
- How can we explain unlearning of fears for most people?
· Or are snake/spider fears prepared?
- Possibly – rapid detection of snake/spider-like stimuli in very young infants is not inconsistent with prepared learning view.
- If we attend to them rapidly then gives an opportunity to learn to fear them quickly.
- But threat is not necessary for rapid detection.

Question 27

summary

Answer 27

· Fear is relatively common in childhood.
· Moderators of childhood fear (intensity and content) include gender, culture and socioeconomic variation.
· Some evidence for a developmental pattern of fears that is predictable.
· Evolutionary and cognitive developmental explanations for pattern of fears.