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Fear information and social phobic beliefs in children: a prospective paradigm and preliminary results

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Abstract

This paper presents a first attempt to develop a prospective paradigm to test Rachman’s (Behav. Res. Ther. 15 (1977) 375) theory of fear acquisition for social fears. Following the prospective paradigm for animal fears developed by Field et al. (Behav. Res. Ther. 39 (2001) 1259) an attempt is made to adapt this paradigm to look at the effect of fear information in the development of social fears. A large group of normal children (N=135)who were at an age (10–13 years) at which social concerns are most pertinent were tested using this paradigm. They were given positive, negative or neutral information about three social situations: public speaking, eating in public, and meeting a new group of children. Children’s fear beliefs were measured before and after the information was given and the information was given by a teacher, a same age peer or no information was given (a control). The results indicate that although information can change social fear beliefs it is dependent upon the type of social activity and who provides the information. The implications of these initial results for our understanding of both the role of fear information in the development of social fear beliefs, and the limitations of this current paradigm are discussed.

Introduction

Fear information has long been assumed to play a major role in the acquisition of phobias (Rachman, 1977). Although there is some evidence that adult phobics (Muris, Merckelbach, Gadet and Moulaert, 2000, Ollendick and King, 1991) and anxious children (Ollendick & King, 1991) will attribute their fear, at least in part, to negative information most of the available evidence is based upon retrospective accounts. These reports are often made some 10–20 years after the onset of their phobia and so are prone to memory bias and forgetting of potentially important learning episodes (see King, Gullone, & Ollendick, 1998). Although improvements have been made such as corroborating patient evidence with retrospective parental reports (Merckelbach, Muris, & Schouten, 1996), a better approach is to look at the effect of information prospectively. Field, Argyris, and Knowles (2001) developed such a paradigm; in two experiments, 7–9 year olds received either positive or negative information about previously un-encountered monsters. Field et al.’s results demonstrated that children’s fear beliefs towards the monster about which they had received negative information significantly increased. What is more, these effects were stronger when an adult provided the information—when a peer provided the information fear beliefs did not change significantly. These effects can also be found when real animals (unfamiliar to children in the UK) are used as stimuli. For example, Field, Bodinetz, and Howley (2002) and Field (2002) used Australian marsupials (the quoll, quokka and cuscus) as stimulus materials and found that negative information significantly increased children’s fear beliefs. Also, Muris, Bodden, Merckelbach, Ollendick, and King (in press) recently adapted Field et al.’s (2001) paradigm and showed that the effect of negative information would persist a week after it was given.

These prospective studies have all been limited to the use of negative information to change fear beliefs about animals. This study extends Field et al.’s work to look at how negative information might affect fear beliefs about social situations. Normative fears about social situations are at their highest during early adolescence (Field & Davey, 2001), and social phobia typically develops at this age too, so an older sample than that of Field et al. (2001) was used for whom negative information about social situations would be pertinent. It is hypothesized that negative information should affect fear beliefs about social situations and, because of the importance of peers during early adolescence, there should be an effect when a peer provides the information (unlike in Field et al.’s (2001) younger sample).

Section snippets

Design

Three different sources of information were used in this experiment: a teacher, a peer and a control condition (in which no information was given). Three different social situations were also used: eating in public (eat), giving a talk to a large group (public speaking), or meeting a new group of people (group). For a given group of children they would be given positive information about one activity, negative information about a different activity and neutral information about the final

Results

Fig. 1 shows the mean fear beliefs before and after information for the three different activities depending on whether the information was positive, negative or neutral and whether it was presented by a teacher, a peer or not presented at all. For the group activity all fear beliefs increased, regardless of the source of information or the type of information—even when no information was given. Generally in the control group fear beliefs remain unchanged, as we would expect. When the teacher

Discussion

The most important contribution of this study is to describe a prospective paradigm in which to look at how social fear beliefs develop in children. Recent prospective paradigms such as Field et al. (2001, 2002) and Field (2002) have focused on animal fears, so this current study is important in starting to develop a similar paradigm for the social domain. The results do show some interesting things, but also illustrate the need for refinements to the paradigm. The main finding was that giving

Summary and conclusions

This study has explored a paradigm with which the role of information in the development of social fear beliefs can be investigated. Although there is basic support for Rachman’s (1977) idea that information affects fear beliefs, preliminary data suggest that the relationship between information and fear beliefs may not be as straightforward as first thought: the interaction between the type of information, who gives it, and the fear-relevant concerns of the children may be considerably more

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by ESRC grant R000239591 to Andy Field. We would like to thank the staff and pupils of Frensham Heights Primary School, Frensham, Surrey, London Meed Primary School, Burgess Hill, West Sussex and Southway Primary School, Burgess Hill, West Sussex for their co-operation in this study.

References (20)

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