Risk and Resilience Factors for Vicarious Fear Learning in Childhood

焦虑是儿童最常见的心理障碍。它可能会对儿童的社会和学习功能产生负面影响，并在以后的生活中导致问题。通常几十年都不寻求治疗，焦虑症通过旷工和医疗服务成本产生了巨大的经济影响。焦虑在家庭中普遍存在，焦虑父母的孩子更有可能也患有焦虑症。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，焦虑并不是我们通过基因遗传的，而是很可能通过非遗传环境因素传递的。在这种亲子传播中，一种被称为替代性学习(从别人身上学习)的学习形式和育儿方式似乎特别重要。大量实验证据表明，如果孩子们看到父母或陌生人表现出害怕动物的行为，他们的认知恐惧(认为动物很可怕)、行为恐惧(想要躲避动物)和生理恐惧(心率增加)都会增加。但至关重要的是，这一领域的研究也表明，在替代恐惧的学习经历中，孩子们学习恐惧的程度存在很大差异。一些孩子在恐惧方面表现出非常大的增长，而另一些孩子对替代性恐惧学习的适应能力要强得多。这项拟议的研究的第一个主要目的是确定父母教养方式、父母气质和孩子气质因素的组合，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的能力。我们将调查父母教养方式以及子女和父母气质中的哪些因素对于提高家庭内对恐惧学习的韧性或易感性特别重要。这些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韧性或易感性的因素。与恐惧学习一样，在实验研究和临床实践中，儿童对减少恐惧程序的反应存在很大的个体差异。因此，第二个主要研究目的是找出父母教养方式、父母气质和孩子气质因素之间的交互作用，以增加治疗的成败。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，他们观察到某人与他们害怕的动物或物体进行了积极的互动。这项研究的主要目的是建立一个新的证据基础，通过提高我们对影响恐惧发展和治疗反应性的主要影响的理解，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。它将指导如何培养幼儿的韧性，以及在可能导致有害情绪学习的负面事件发生后，家庭和与儿童一起工作的人如何进行干预。通过这种方式，它有望帮助恐惧预防计划的发展，并形成心理工具包或“急救”的基础，在认识到孩子可能参与了替代恐惧学习事件时，提出快速干预的方法。这些发现也有望引起那些参与开发恐惧和焦虑治疗方法的人的兴趣，因为他们提出了一些应该有针对性的因素，以使治疗更加成功。

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.