PARENT-CHILD INTERACTIONS IN FAMILIES WITH ANXIOUS CHILD

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal will be conducted in conjunction with an already awarded NIH K-Award given to Dr. Moira Rynn. That study will examine the effects of sertaline on reduction of anxious symptoms in children in an 8-week psychopharmacological trial. The assessments for the current study will be added to the protocol for the K-Award. While there are undoubtedly biological and societal contributions to the etiology and maintenance of childhood anxiety, parent-child relationships are also likely contributors. The current proposal seeks to better understand the nature of these relationships by examining the nature of interactions between parents and their anxious children. In additional to attributional styles (and biases), parents' use of psychological control has been observed as a correlate of children's anxious behavior and, together, these two constructs wilt be the focus of this proposal. Three areas of inquiry will guide this work: (I) description of the interactional styles of families with anxious children, (2) the impact of changes in the expression of children's symptoms on parenting behavior; and (3) an exploration of the mediational rote of psychological control in the relation between parent and child internalizing symptoms. Parent's use of psychological control, family expressions of attributional biases, children's expression of anxious symptoms, and parent's expression of anxious symptoms will be evaluated at pro-treatment and again 8-weeks later at post-treatment, The current proposal is unique in its design because child participants will undergo psychopharmacological intervention that has previously been found to reduce anxious symptoms by 50% in 90% of the sample. The intervention itself, therefore, will: (1) significantly reduce children's symptoms, and (2) have no direct impact on parenting behavior. This type of experimental manipulation of child behavior and the resultant impact of parenting provides a rare opportunity to examine the relationship between these constructs.