Normative development of fears

how are childhood fears assessed?

• directly (and often retrospectively)

• via interviews, questionnaires, parent/teacher reports

characteristics of normal childhood fears

• commonly experienced

• relatively mild

• appear and disappear spontaneously

• follow a predictable pattern

• decrease with age

what did Gullone (2000) find in 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 concerns

what did Baur (1976) find about childhood fears?

• fears in most categories decrease with age (especially for monsters)

• fears of injury increase with age

what is one of the most commonly used questionnaires to assess fear in children?

Fear Survey Schedule for Children (FSSC) (Ollendick, 1983)

key characteristics of the FSSC

• 80 item measure of children’s fear in response to a range of specific stimuli/situations

• measures number, severity, and type of normal fears children experience

what are the reliable factors of the FSSC?

• fear of danger and death

• fear of failure and criticism

• fear of the unknown

• fear of animals

• stress and medical fears

what are some of the methodological issues with the FSSC?

• some of the items are quite outdated and contemporary threats are not included

• may not accurately capture cultural variation in childhood fears

• can only measure what is include so not an exhaustive list

• might not index actual frequency of fears

what are the moderators of childhood fears?

• gender

• cultural variation

• socioeconomic effects

what are the gender effects on childhood fears?

• girls report more fears than boys and fear for death/danger was highest (Ollendick, King & Frary, 1989)

• items that most strongly discriminated between boys and girls included: rats, spiders, snakes, mice, creepy houses, being alone, bad dreams (Gullone & King, 1993)

• high femininity and low masculinity associated with greater anxiety and avoidance

• gender role orientation stronger predictor of fear than child’s biological sex

how does cultural variation affect childhood fears?

• across ‘western’ countries there is lots of consistency (number of fears decreases with age, girls are more fearful than boys, content of fears show similar developmental pattern)

• fear levels may vary as a function of cultural group membership

• cross-cultural differences have been found within-countries

what are the socioeconomic effects on childhood fears?

• lower SES children report more fears

• differences in fears (low SES children = abandonment by parents, death, violence, knives, middle/upper SES children = heights, ill health, roller-coasters, pet’s safety)

• children in low SES environments are exposed to more specific threats and enhanced general feelings of fear and anxiety

what are some observed developmental patterns in terms of childhood fears?

• infants: environmental stimuli (loud noises, separations, unusual stimuli)

• 4-8 years: ghosts, imaginary creatures, and animals

• 10-12 years: social fears, self-injury

what are the theoretical approaches to development of childhood fears?

• evolutionary

• cognitive development

describe the evolutionary approach to development of childhood fears

• natural selection favours individuals who learn rapidly about threats that pose danger to self (facilitates survival)

• fear system evolved to focus on threats at ages at which those threats would have been greatest risk to our ancestors

• some fears may be innate and may not need to be learned

• we may be prepared to rapidly acquire some fears with little or no prior learning

describe the cognitive developmental approach to development of childhood fears

• fear and anxiety originates from conceptualisation of threat

• conceptualisation of threat depends on a child’s cognitive and physical abilities

• as cognitive abilities develop, fear and anxiety become more sophisticated

• range of fear-provoking stimuli broadens and cognitive features of anxiety become more prevalent

what are common fears in infancy?

• environmental stimuli

• separation anxiety

results of the Muris, Merckelbach, Mesters & Van den Brand (2002) study

increased age and cognitive maturation lead to enhanced ability to elaborate on worries, in turn increasing risk for emergence of personal worry

describe the evolutionary case for snake and spider fear

• from 8-10 months, 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

evidence for the evolutionary accounts for snake and spider fear

• infants form faster associations between snakes and fearful stimuli than between snakes and happy stimuli

• infants rapidly detect and show greater attention to snakes and spiders than to control images

evidence against the evolutionary accounts for snake and spider fear

• there is no corroborating evidence of fear

• some studies suggest young children display evidence that they like snakes/spiders

• possible perceptual bias (low level perceptual features of snakes will capture attention)

• 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

results of Rakison & Derringer (2007) perceptual template/rapid detection mechanism study

• infants looked longer at the schematic 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