Risk and Resilience Factors for Vicarious Fear Learning in Childhood

焦虑是儿童最常见的心理障碍。它会对儿童的社会和学业功能产生负面影响，并导致他们以后的生活出现问题。通常几十年都不寻求治疗，如果根本不寻求治疗，焦虑症通过缺勤和医疗服务成本产生巨大的经济影响。焦虑是家族遗传，父母焦虑的孩子更有可能患上焦虑症。然而，这种代际传播的原因尚不清楚。最近对双胞胎的研究表明，焦虑不是通过基因遗传的，而是最有可能通过非基因环境因素遗传的。一种被称为替代学习（通过观察他人学习）的学习形式和父母的教育方式在这种父母对孩子的传播中显得尤为重要。大量研究对动物恐惧的替代学习的实验证据表明，如果孩子们看到父母或陌生人对动物感到害怕，他们的认知恐惧（认为动物很可怕）、行为恐惧（想要避开动物）和生理恐惧（心率加快）都会增加。但至关重要的是，该领域的研究还表明，在替代恐惧学习经历中，孩子们在学习恐惧的程度上差异很大。有些孩子的恐惧表现得非常明显，而另一些孩子对替代恐惧学习的适应能力要强得多。该研究的第一个主要目的是确定父母教养方式、父母气质和儿童气质因素的组合，这些因素共同作用，增加或减少儿童（7-10岁）从父母那里替代学习恐惧。我们将调查父母教养方式、孩子和父母气质的哪些因素对增加家庭中对恐惧学习的适应力或易感性特别重要。研究结果有望增加我们对恐惧如何在家庭中代际传播的理解，并确定增加儿童对恐惧发展的适应力或易感性的因素。与恐惧学习一样，在实验研究和临床实践中发现，儿童对减少恐惧程序的反应存在巨大的个体差异。因此，第二个主要研究目的是确定父母教养方式、父母气质和孩子气质因素相互作用，增加治疗的成功或失败。这将帮助我们理解为什么有些孩子比其他孩子更容易接受基于模型的恐惧干预，在这种干预中，他们观察到有人与他们害怕的动物或物体积极互动。这项研究的总体目标是建立一个新的证据基础，通过提高我们对恐惧发展和治疗反应的主要影响的理解，帮助为未来儿童恐惧干预、预防和治疗的发展提供信息。这项研究将引起心理学家、家长和从事儿童工作的组织的兴趣。它将为如何培养幼儿的适应力，以及家庭和儿童工作人员如何在可能导致有害情绪学习的负面事件后进行干预提供指导。通过这种方式，它有望帮助制定恐惧预防计划，并形成心理工具包或“急救”的基础，当认识到孩子可能已经参与了替代的恐惧学习事件时，建议快速干预的方法。这些发现也有望引起那些参与开发治疗恐惧和焦虑的方法的人的兴趣，因为这些发现表明了应该针对哪些因素来使治疗更成功。

Anxiety is the most common childhood psychological disorder. It can impact negatively on children's social and academic functioning and lead to problems in later life. Treatment is often not sought for decades, if at all, and anxiety disorders have an enormous economic effect via absenteeism and costs to the health service. Anxiety runs in families, with children of anxious parents more likely to also have an anxiety disorder. However, the reasons for this intergenerational transmission are not clear. Recent research with twins suggests that rather than being something we inherit through our genes, anxiety is most likely passed on via non-genetic environmental factors. A form of learning called vicarious learning (learning from watching others) and parenting style appear to be especially important in this parent to child transmission. A wealth of experimental evidence looking at vicarious learning of fear of animals shows that children's cognitive fear (thinking animals are scary), behavioural fear (wanting to avoid the animals) and physiological fear (having increased heart rate) can increase if they observe a parent or stranger acting frightened of the animal. But crucially, research in this area also shows that children differ greatly in how much they learn to fear during a vicarious fear learning experience. Some children show very large increases in fear, while others have much greater resilience to vicarious fear learning. The first main aim of the proposed research is to identify the combination of parenting style, parent temperament and child temperament factors that work together to increase or decrease children's (aged 7-10) vicarious learning of fear from a parent. We will investigate which elements of parenting style and child and parent temperament are particularly important for increasing resilience or susceptibility to fear learning within the family. The research findings are expected to increase our understanding of how fear is intergenerationally transmitted within families and identify the factors that increase children's resilience or susceptibility to fear development. As with fear learning, large individual differences between children's responsiveness to fear reduction procedures are found in experimental research, as well as in clinical practice. Therefore, the second main research aim is to identify the parenting style, parent temperament and child temperament factors that interact to increase the success or failure of treatment. This will help us understand why some children are more receptive than others to modelling-based fear interventions in which they observe someone interacting positively with their feared animal or object. The overarching aim of the research is to create a new evidence base that will help inform the development of future fear interventions, preventions and treatments for children by improving our understanding of the main influences on fear development and treatment responsiveness. The research will be of interest to psychologists, parents and organisations working with children. It will offer guidance on how to build resilience in young children and how families and those working with children can intervene following a negative event that might lead to harmful emotional learning. In this way it is expected to aid the development of fear prevention programmes and form the basis of a psychological toolkit or 'first-aid', suggesting ways to intervene quickly when it is recognised that a child may have been involved in a vicarious fear learning event. The findings are also expected to be of interest to those involved in developing treatments for fear and anxiety by suggesting factors that should be targeted to make treatment more successful.