Search

The present study investigated the relationship between parental rough-and-tumble (R&T) play and young children's anxiety symptoms. Parents of 105 non-clinical children (61 boys and 44 girls aged between 2 and 6 years) completed indices of childhood anxiety symptoms and parental trait anxiety and overprotection, as well as the Parental Play and Care Questionnaire, which was developed for the purpose of this study to assess parental R&T play and care activities. Results showed that fathers exhibited more R&T play towards their offspring, while mothers more often engaged in care activities. As predicted, trait anxiety and overprotection of mothers were positively related to child anxiety symptoms. No support was found for the idea that parental R&T play would be negatively related to childhood anxiety. However, an interaction effect of fathers' trait anxiety and R&T play on anxiety symptoms of the child was found: children tended to display higher levels of anxiety symptoms when their low trait anxious fathers were more involved in R&T play. The results provide support for the notion that mothers and fathers have unique parenting roles, which may have a differential impact on the development of anxiety symptoms in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research expands our understanding of cognitive and affective morality by exploring associations with callous-unemotional (CU) traits and externalizing symptoms. Participants were 46 8- to 12-year-old boys from the community who completed the Affective Morality Index, the Youth Self-Report, and the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits. A pattern of results was found indicating that in particular the combination of high CU traits and high externalizing symptoms was associated with lack of affective morality, and an increased perceived likelihood of recommitting antisocial acts (recidivism). The implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The current study investigated the connection between aggression and the perception of threat in a group of children with learning and behavior problems (N = 103). Aggression was assessed by means of the aggressive behavior subscales of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), Teacher Report Form (TRF), and Youth Self-Report (YSR). Perception of threat was measured by studying children's reactions to a series of stories depicting ambiguous social situations. Results demonstrated small but significant correlations between self-reported aggression (as indexed by the YSR) and threat perception abnormalities. That is, high levels of aggression were associated with a high frequency of threat perception, high ratings of threat, high levels of negative feelings and cognitions, and an early detection of threat. Furthermore, no substantial connections emerged between children's level of aggression as rated by parents (CBCL) and teachers (TRF) and threat perception indices. Finally, regression analyses revealed that in particular YSR social problems was a better predictor of most threat perception abnormalities than YSR aggressive behavior. Implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

The present study assessed fear of hurricanes in children who had been confronted with this natural event (i.e., Antillean children, n=161). Their fear levels were compared to those of children who are unfamiliar with such an event (i.e., Belgian children, n=185). Antillean children reported significantly higher levels of fear of storms than Belgian children did, thus providing support for the notion that exposure to dangerous events promotes children's fears of those events. Surprisingly, however, Antillean children had lower scores on the 'Hurricanes' item than Belgian children. Plausibly, differences in how children interpreted this item may have accounted for this unexpected finding. That is, ratings of Antillean children were probably based on actual experiences with hurricanes, whereas scores of Belgian children presumably reflected appraisal of threat in case they would be confronted with such an event. Implications of this finding for the assessment of childhood fears are briefly discussed.

The FSSC-Hawaii (FSSC-HI; Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 12, 437-461) is a modified version of the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (FSSC-R; Behaviour Research and Therapy, 21, 685-692) that includes a number of contemporary fear stimuli and situations (e.g., "drugs", "being raped", "AIDS"). The psychometric properties of the FSSC-HI were examined in a large sample of Belgium adolescents (n = 551) aged 12-19 years. Results showed that a five- and seven-factor model both provided satisfactory fits for the structure of the FSSC-HI. Furthermore, the internal consistency of the scale was good and this appeared to be true for the five-factor as well as the seven-factor solution. Support was found for the convergent validity of the FSSC-HI. That is, FSSC-HI scores correlated in a meaningful way with scores on alternative measures of childhood anxiety. Finally, a considerable number of the "new" fear items were found to rank high in the top 10 of most common fears. The implications for the assessment of fears in children and adolescents are briefly discussed.