Content-specific interpretation biases in clinically anxious children.
Behav Res Ther
; 121: 103452, 2019 10.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31430687
ABSTRACT
Cognitive theories of anxiety suggest that anxious children interpret negatively only those materials specifically related to the content of their anxiety. So far, there are only a few studies available that report on this postulated content-specificity of interpretation processes across different anxiety disorders in children, and most of them focused on social anxiety. Therefore, we examined interpretation bias and its content-specificity in a group of clinically anxious children between the ages of 6-12 years with various anxiety disorders, using an "ambiguous scenarios" task. Children were asked to finish scenarios that were related to either social threat, general threat, or separation threat. In total, 105 clinically anxious children, 21 control children and their mothers were assessed with the ADIS-C/P and the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale. As expected, clinically anxious children provided significantly more negative endings to the scenarios than control children. Within the clinically anxious group, specific interpretation biases were found Interpretation of scenarios related to social threat, general threat, and separation threat were only predicted by the children's self-reported levels of social anxiety, generalized anxiety, and separation anxiety, respectively. These findings support the content-specificity hypothesis that clinically anxious children display interpretation biases that are specific to fear-relevant stimuli.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Ansiedade
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Transtornos de Ansiedade
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Medo
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
Limite:
Child
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Female
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Humans
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Male
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2019
Tipo de documento:
Article