Research Institute of Child Development and Education, Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2013 Feb;54(2):144-56. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2012.02601.x. Epub 2012 Aug 27.
Anxiety aggregates in families. Environmental factors, such as modelling of anxious behaviours, are assumed to play a causal role in the development of child anxiety. We investigated the predictive value of paternal and maternal anxiety (lifetime anxiety disorders and expressed parental anxiety) on infants' fear and avoidance during encounters with social and nonsocial novel stimuli in a social referencing (SR) paradigm.
A total of 122 12-month-old infants participated in this study separately with their fathers and mothers (parents with lifetime: social anxiety disorders [n=47], other types of anxiety disorders [n=33], comorbid social and other types of anxiety disorders [n=52] and without anxiety disorders [n=112]). Infants were confronted with a stranger and a mechanical dinosaur as novel stimuli in two SR situations. Infants' avoidance as well as fear and parents' expressed anxiety were observed. Infants' behavioural inhibition (BI) was separately observed in structured tasks.
Parental lifetime anxiety disorders did not significantly predict infant fear or avoidance. Expressed parental anxiety interacted with BI to significantly predict infant avoidance, revealing a positive association between expressed parental anxiety and infant avoidance among infants with moderate-to-high BI. The association between infant avoidance and expressed parental anxiety was not significantly different for mothers and fathers, pointing to an equally important role of fathers at this young age. Infant fear was significantly predicted by infant BI, but not by expressed parental anxiety.
Infants with a temperamental disposition for anxiety (BI) may learn from both paternal and maternal anxious signals and become avoidant towards novelty when their parents express anxiety. This link between expressed parental anxiety and infant avoidance for moderate-to-high BI children, that seems to hold across contexts and to be independent of lifetime parental anxiety disorders, may be a mechanism explaining early intergenerational transmission of anxiety.
焦虑在家庭中聚集。环境因素，如焦虑行为的模仿，被认为在儿童焦虑的发展中起因果作用。我们调查了父亲和母亲的焦虑（终生焦虑障碍和表达的父母焦虑）对婴儿在社会参照（SR）范式中遇到社交和非社交新刺激时的恐惧和回避的预测价值。
共有 122 名 12 个月大的婴儿分别与他们的父母（父母有终生：社交焦虑障碍 [n=47]、其他类型的焦虑障碍 [n=33]、社交和其他类型的焦虑障碍共病 [n=52] 和没有焦虑障碍 [n=112]）参加了这项研究。婴儿在两个 SR 情况下分别与一个陌生人和一个机械恐龙作为新的刺激物进行了对抗。观察婴儿的回避以及恐惧和父母表达的焦虑。分别在结构化任务中观察婴儿的行为抑制（BI）。
父母的终生焦虑障碍并未显著预测婴儿的恐惧或回避。表达的父母焦虑与 BI 相互作用，显著预测婴儿回避，表明在具有中等到高度 BI 的婴儿中，表达的父母焦虑与婴儿回避之间存在正相关。婴儿回避与表达的父母焦虑之间的关联在母亲和父亲之间没有显著差异，这表明在这个年龄段，父亲同样扮演着重要的角色。婴儿的恐惧明显受到婴儿 BI 的预测，但不受表达的父母焦虑的预测。
具有焦虑气质（BI）的婴儿可能会从父母的焦虑信号中学习，并在父母表达焦虑时对新奇事物变得回避。这种表达的父母焦虑与中等到高度 BI 儿童的婴儿回避之间的联系，似乎在不同的环境中都存在，并且独立于父母的终生焦虑障碍，可能是解释焦虑的早期代际传递的一种机制。
