Family risk factors in the acquisition of anxiety: Behavioral inhibition and Social Fear Learning from Parents.

Anxiety runs in families, likely reflecting shared genetic risk and shared exposure to signals of threat and fear messaging. Children begin to internalize these signals from the earliest months of life, providing a causal or treatment mechanism that is tractable to intervention. The data suggest that while temperamentally fearful children differentially respond to parental verbal and nonverbal signaling, the impact may be more powerful prior to early childhood.