Fear-related associations in children of parents with an anxiety disorder.

Background And Objectives: Children of parents with an anxiety disorder are at elevated risk for developing an anxiety disorder themselves. According to cognitive theories, a possible risk factor is the development of schema-related associations. This study is the first to investigate whether children of anxious parents display fear-related associations and whether these associations relate to parental anxiety.

Biases in Interpretation as a Vulnerability Factor for Children of Parents With an Anxiety Disorder.

Objective: Children of parents with an anxiety disorder have a higher risk of developing an anxiety disorder than children of parents without an anxiety disorder. Parental anxiety is not regarded as a causal risk factor itself, but is likely to be mediated via other mechanisms, for example via cognitive factors. We investigated whether children of parents with an anxiety disorder would show an interpretation bias corresponding to the diagnosis of their parent.

The Role of Cognitive Factors in Childhood Social Anxiety: Social Threat Thoughts and Social Skills Perception.

Models of cognitive processing in anxiety disorders state that socially anxious children display several distorted cognitive processes that maintain their anxiety. The present study investigated the role of social threat thoughts and social skills perception in relation to childhood trait and state social anxiety. In total, 141 children varying in their levels of social anxiety performed a short speech task in front of a camera and filled out self-reports about their trait social anxiety, state anxiety, social skills perception and social threat thoughts.

"What I believe is true": Belief-confirming reasoning bias in social anxiety disorder.

Background And Objectives: Research shows that people tend to consider believable conclusions as valid and unbelievable conclusions as invalid (belief bias). When applied to anxiogenic beliefs, this belief bias could well hinder the correction of dysfunctional convictions. Previous work has shown that high socially anxious students indeed display such fear-confirming, belief biased, reasoning.

A new instrument to assess participant motivation for involvement in preventive interventions.

The Nijmegen Motivation List for Prevention (NML-P) is a new instrument to assess the motivation of participants for involvement in preventive group interventions. The aim of the current study was to explore the underlying dimensions of the NML-P and the predictive potential of the instrument for those participating in a psychoeducational preventive group intervention for depression: the Coping with Depression course. Principal component analyses revealed four components: readiness to participate, social support, doubt, and burden.