Inhibition of fear acquisition in toddlers following positive modelling by their mothers
Section snippets
Participants
Analyses were based on a sample of 77 toddler–mother pairs. The participants were volunteers recruited through day-care centres and newspaper advertisements in the Sydney metropolitan area. All toddlers were healthy, full-term, and from English-speaking or bi-lingual families. Most of the children (97%) were from two-parent families residing in predominantly middle-class areas of Sydney. There were 40 boys and 37 girls and ages ranged from 12 to 21 months (M=15.9 months, SD=2.6 months). More
Participant characteristics
Participant characteristics for each of the three experimental groups are reported in Table 1. One-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and chi-square tests indicated that the groups did not differ significantly in mean age F(2, 74)=.28, p=.76, sex distribution χ2(2, n=77)=.94, p=.63, birth order χ2 (4, n=77)=3.16, p=.53, or ethnic background χ2(8, n=77)=13.23, p=.10. Nor was there a significant difference between groups in number of siblings F(2, 74)=.96, p=.39, mean maternal age F(2, 74)=.02, p
Discussion
The results of the current study provide support for the hypothesis that maternal modelling of positive affect can interfere with subsequent observational learning of fear in young children. This result is similar to that found by Mineka and Cook (1986) who showed that monkeys exposed to a model behaving non-fearfully with snake stimuli were immunised against the effects of subsequent fear conditioning. The fact that the modelling group showed a significant increase in positive affect relative
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