Department of Psychology, Kingston University.
School of Psychology, University of Surrey.
Emotion. 2018 Jun;18(4):528-535. doi: 10.1037/emo0000341. Epub 2017 Jun 1.
Children can learn to fear stimuli vicariously, by observing adults' or peers' responses to them. Given that much of school-age children's time is typically spent with their peers, it is important to establish whether fear learning from peers is as effective or robust as learning from adults, and also whether peers can be successful positive models for reducing fear. During a vicarious fear learning procedure, children (6 to 10 years; N = 60) were shown images of novel animals together with images of adult or peer faces expressing fear. Later they saw their fear-paired animal again together with positive emotional adult or peer faces. Children's fear beliefs and avoidance for the animals increased following vicarious fear learning and decreased following positive vicarious counterconditioning. There was little evidence of differences in learning from adults and peers, demonstrating that for this age group peer models are effective models for both fear acquisition and reduction. (PsycINFO Database Record
儿童可以通过观察成人或同伴对刺激的反应来间接地学习对刺激产生恐惧。鉴于学龄儿童的大部分时间通常都是和同伴一起度过的，因此重要的是要确定从同伴那里学习恐惧是否与从成人那里学习一样有效或稳定，以及同伴是否可以成为成功的减少恐惧的积极榜样。在替代性恐惧学习过程中，（6 至 10 岁；N=60）向儿童展示了新动物的图像以及表达恐惧的成人或同伴的面部图像。之后，他们再次看到了与他们配对的恐惧动物，同时还有成人或同伴的积极情绪面孔。儿童对动物的恐惧信念和回避在替代性恐惧学习后增加，在积极的替代性条件作用后减少。从成人和同伴那里学习的证据很少，这表明对于这个年龄组来说，同伴榜样是获得和减少恐惧的有效榜样。
