Journal of abnormal child psychology
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J Abnorm Child Psychol · Oct 2016
No Significant Evidence of Cognitive Biases for Emotional Stimuli in Children At-Risk of Developing Anxiety Disorders.
This paper explores whether the increased vulnerability of children of anxious parents to develop anxiety disorders may be partially explained by these children having increased cognitive biases towards threat compared with children of non-anxious parents. Parents completed questionnaires about their child's anxiety symptoms. ⋯ In addition, there were no significant differences between at-risk children and children of non-anxious parents in the number of threat interpretations made for the ambiguous situations questionnaire. It is possible that these cognitive biases only become present subsequent to the development of an anxiety disorder, or only in older at-risk children.