Effects of Parental Behavior on Child Anxiety Regulation

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Does parental communication style affect emotion regulation among children who initially exhibit high levels of fear and anxiety? Although recent correlational research has demonstrated a linkage between parental communication behaviors, such as excessive catastrophizing, and children?s manifestations of fear and anxiety, it is not clear if parental communication behaviors directly influence children?s ability to regulate these emotions. Intervention studies can test whether experimentally manipulating current family interaction patterns affects children?s ability to regulate fear and anxiety. The proposed research will provide a preliminary experimental test of the relationship between parental communication behavior and children?s regulation of anxiety. Some 40 clinically anxious youth, aged 7-13, will be randomly assigned to a family intervention program for childhood anxiety problems, which includes extensive parent communication training, or a child intervention program without parent-training. The relative impact of the family intervention program versus the child intervention program for improving parental communication behaviors -- such as catastrophizing -- will be evaluated. Then, the impact of changes in parental communication behaviors on children?s ability to regulate fear and anxiety will be tested. Observed parenting and child anxiety as well as physiological arousal will serve as primary outcome measures.