The development of normal fear: A century of research
Section snippets
Retrospective accounts
More than a century ago, Hall (1897) administered a questionnaire to over 1,000 adults requiring that they provide detailed descriptions of their fears. In this very early study, Hall's findings, which included reports for fears occurring between the ages of less than 4 to 26 years, revealed an age-related decrease of fears relating to meteors, clouds, blood, end of the world, being kidnapped, fairies, loss of orientation, and shyness of strangers. An increase of fear with age was reported for
Observational investigations
The investigations which have been carried out using an observational methodology are few in number (e.g., Jersild & Holmes 1935a, Jones & Jones 1928, Scarr & Salapatek 1970, Valentine 1930). In one of the first observational investigations, Jones and Jones (1928) examined the specific fear of a 6-foot long snake (i.e., a Spilotes Corais) in a sample of children aged 14 months to 10 years and in a sample of adults. Although for children below 2 years of age, no fear of the snake was expressed,
Parent/teacher reports
A somewhat more frequently used method of assessing children's fears has been obtaining third-party reports from parents (e.g., Jersild & Holmes 1935b, Lapouse & Monk 1959) and/or teachers (e.g., Cummings 1944, Cummings 1946). Hagman (1932) was among the first to implement this methodology. The mothers of 70 children aged between 2 and 6 years participated in the study. An average of 2.7 fears per child was reported, with the most common being fears of dogs, doctors, storms, deep water,
Child interviews
Several researchers have gathered data by interviewing children (e.g., Derevensky 1974, Maurer 1965, Sidana 1967, Slee & Cross 1989, Winker 1949) or their parents (e.g., Hall 1897, Hagman 1932, Jersild & Holmes 1935a). One of the earliest interview-based examinations of children's normative fear was conducted by Jersild, Markey, and Jersild (1933). The 398 subjects who were involved in the study were aged between 5 and 12 years and were individually interviewed. During these interviews,
Fear list investigations
Yet another methodology which has been implemented in the assessment of children's fears is the fear list technique for which children are simply asked to list their fears (e.g., Angelino et al. 1956, Angelino and Shedd 1953, Nalven 1970, Pratt 1945). Not surprisingly, this somewhat cognitively demanding technique has generally been implemented with older samples typically above 8 years of age.
Pratt's (1945) study is unusual among those using this methodology because the sample included
Self-report fear survey schedule investigations
The administration of fear survey schedules to groups of children has been the most commonly used method of assessing fear in youth. In fact, in recent years the fear survey schedule has become, with few exceptions, the exclusive assessment tool for fear assessment, so much so that developmental fear research has largely shifted its focus from examining fear itself to evaluating the validity of the fear survey schedule.
In addition to Scherer and Nakamura's (1968) Fear Survey Schedule for
General findings
As reviewed above, the research into normative fear in children and adolescents has varied with regard to methodology and has included retrospective, parent/teacher reports, self-reports (interviews, fear lists, fear survey schedules). Below, the research reported above according to methodology has been classified according to outcome (i.e., age, gender, and socio-economic status differences, fear structure and duration, and cross-cultural/national findings).
Conclusions and future directions
In over one century of fear research, substantial progress has been made. The literature strongly documents a consistent and predictable pattern of fear development between birth through to adulthood. Furthermore, the research has indicated that the developmental trends, for the most part, are consistent across cultures. However, despite much progress there remain unanswered questions. One major issue relates to assessment. As already noted, normal fear is, in present times, overwhelmingly
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