Week 6: Cognition & Family Factors Flashcards
Social Information Processing
Again
What do I pay attention to? (encoding) What does it mean? (interpretation) What can I do? (response search) What will I do? (response decision) How well did I do it? (enactment)
First two are well studied in Anxiety Disorders
Attentional Biases in Pediatric Anxiety - Dot Probe
Do anxious youth show an attentional bias for threat related information?
They used an attention trial where they get a target and then two faces, one shows’ emotion, one does not then after a prompt to press a button corresponding to one side of the screen
This tests where there attention was - if focused on emotion, will be faster if the target pops up after the emotional face and not when it pops up after the other one
Angry face neutral face
Happy face neutral face
(happy faces might signal approach and be scary for anxious ppl)
Reaction time how long it takes you to push a key when you see an
asterisk
Half the time the asterisk replaced the neutral face
Half the time the asterisk replaced the emotional face (either angry or happy)
Bias
If you are showing a bias towards angry/happy faces, you will be faster when asterisk replaces that face
If you are showing a bias away from angry/happy faces, you will be faster when asterisk replaces the neutral face
Anxious children show a bias for emotional faces
Faster when asterisk replaced angry/happy faces
RESULTS
Combined results of 6 studies using a dot probe paradigm show attentional bias to threat in anxious versus non anxious children
Interpretation Biases in Pediatric Anxiety - Homophones
Forty children (ages 7 to 9)
Interpretation of homophones Examples Bark Sink Whipping
Have a double meaning, one threatening, one not
Children heard the word and shown two photos representing each of the meanings and asked to point to the meaning of
each word
Total up the number of threatening interpretations
Mean was 7.87/14
Do gender, age, and anxiety predict number of threat
interpretations?
Age does not, sex does not BUT ANXIETY DOES
Family Factors in Pediatric Anxiety - Genes
Genetics
There is evidence that anxiety is heritable
Family Factors in Pediatric Anxiety - Environment (Modeling)
Modeling
-Parents demonstrate anxious responses to children
-Seeing someone else show fear may cause a child to develop fear
-Monkeys develop phobia by watching their parent experience fear
(Mineka et al., 1984)
-Monkeys develop phobia by watching videotaped models experience fear (Cook & Mineka, 1989)
Kids can learn fear from anyone
Family Factors in Pediatric Anxiety - Environment (Information Transmission)
Children aged 6 to 9 heard stories about three animals with which they had no experience: quoll, quokka, cuscus (all Australian marsupials)
Children shown pictures of each animal
One animal was paired with negative story:
“Have you ever heard of a
quoll /cuscus/quokka? Well,
cuscuses/ quolls /quokkas come from Australia … they are very dangerous, and live in dark places in the woods, where they hunt other
creatures with their long sharp teeth and claws”
One animal was paired with a positive story
“Have you ever heard of a
quoll /cuscus/quokka? Well,
cuscuses/ quolls /quokkas come from Australia … they are small and cuddly and their fur is really soft. They are very friendly, and live in the park, where they love playing with children and the other animals”
Does the information received change beliefs?
Does it change behavior?
BELIEF RESULTS
Positive stories dropped fear, negative one’s increased it
BEHAVIOUR RESULTS
Children were shown three boxes and told they contained the animals, and were asked to put their hand into the box to touch the
animals (Note: Each box contained a furry, cuddly stuffed toy)
Negative story made the children take longer to approach the box
Positive information had no effect (same approach time as neutral)
Family Factors in Pediatric Anxiety (Low expectations and reinforcement)
Low expectations
Expect children to have difficulty or not be able to cope
Parental reinforcement of problematic behavior
e.g.
10 year old boy referred for anxiety problems, discussing with his parents how he should respond to a hypothetical scenario in which he noticed a group of children laughing at him
as he approached them to join their handball game.
Boy: I’d just ask them; just go up and say “Can I please join?”
Mom: Do you reckon maybe that they’d let you?
Boy: Maybe
Mother: What sort of games do they usually play?
Boy: Tiggy or handball (*Editorial note: Research team is Australian. Apparently tiggy is tag.)
Father: Do you think they would let you play if it was handball?
Boy: No.
Father: Why?
Boy: I’m not that good at it.
Father: You any good at tiggy
Boy: No.
Mother: Why is this?
Boy: Because I can’t run fast enough.
Mother: So do you think they would let you play or you don’t thnk they would let you play?
Boy: No.
Mother: Would you be brave enough to go and ask in the first place?
Boy: I wouldn’t bother.
Parents feel bad and want to protect child. Stop them from doing it. Teaches a bad lesson
Family Factors in Pediatric Anxiety (Low expectations and reinforcement)
Experiment
Three groups of children
1 Clinically referred for anxiety
2 Clinically referred for ODD
3 Community control group
Presented with 12 ambiguous situations
e.g.
“You see a group of students from another class playing a great game. As you walk over and want to join in, you notice they are
laughing.”
What would you do to solve the problem?
Children and their parents discussed two of the situations for 5 minutes, afterwards children provided a final solution
RESULTS Anxious youth were more likely to come up with avoidant solutions AFTER SPEAKING TO THEIR PARENTS
Parents “protecting them”
OCD came up with more aggressive solutions AFTER SPEAKING TO THEIR PARENTS
Parents saying they should “stick up for themselves”
Summary/Unified model of anxiety
Unified model of anxiety
1 - Biological predisposition towards anxiety
2 - Family factors contribute
3 - Diathesis stress model
Biological diathesis
Family and environmental stress
Life experience shapes the form of the disorder
Social cognitive processing plays a role in symptom maintenance
