Understanding mechanisms that may underlie the development and maintenance of anxiety in children and adolescents: Cognitive biases and parenting behaviours
Anxiety is one of the most common forms of psychopathology in children and adolescents. Understanding the mechanisms that underlie the development and maintenance of this disorder is therefore critical. A variety of factors that interact with one another are likely to contribute to the risk and perp...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | unknown |
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2017
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.26686/wgtn.17067755.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Understanding_mechanisms_that_may_underlie_the_development_and_maintenance_of_anxiety_in_children_and_adolescents_Cognitive_biases_and_parenting_behaviours/17067755 |
| Summary: | Anxiety is one of the most common forms of psychopathology in children and adolescents. Understanding the mechanisms that underlie the development and maintenance of this disorder is therefore critical. A variety of factors that interact with one another are likely to contribute to the risk and perpetuation of anxiety in young people. Moreover, risk and maintaining factors can occur at both an individual and environmental level. Cognitive biases are one such factor occurring at an individual level that are investigated in Study 1 and Study 2 of this thesis. Cognitive biases are also predicted to have associations with particular kinds of parenting behaviours, and Study 3 investigated these parenting behaviours. Study 3, therefore, provides a bridge between individual level cognitive mechanisms and possible environmental contexts that may contribute to the risk and maintenance of anxiety in young people. In Study 1, the relationships amongst anxiety, interpretation bias, and memory bias were investigated in children (M = 10.1 years, SD = 0.8). Children with higher levels of anxiety exhibit interpretation biases; a tendency to interpret ambiguous information in a negative manner. Moreover, interpretation biases are predicted to create negative memories for ambiguous information. In Study 1, 62 children heard ambiguous information about a novel animal and their interpretation and recall for this information was assessed. Interpretation bias was significantly associated with memory bias; children who interpreted the ambiguous information in a negative way also reported a greater number of negative memories for this information. Children with higher levels of anxiety also reported a greater number of negative memories. In Study 2 the relationship between interpretation bias and memory bias was investigated within an experimental paradigm, to understand whether there was evidence for a causal relationship between these cognitive biases. Children (M = 9.7 years, SD = 1.1) heard a series of ambiguous vignettes, and each ... |
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