Effects of Parental Behavior on Child Anxiety Regulation

Summary

Does parenting style affect emotion regulation among children who initially demonstrate high levels of fear and anxiety? Although recent correlational research has demonstrated a linkage between parental behaviors, such as excessive intrusiveness, and children's manifestations of fear and anxiety, it is not clear if parenting behaviors directly influence children's ability to regulate these emotions. Alternatively, these parental behaviors may be elicited by children who express fears and anxieties more frequently than other children do. Experimental research designs would offer a more definitive test of these competing explanations of the extant correlational findings. Intervention studies, in particular, can test whether experimentally manipulating current family interaction patterns affects children's ability to regulate emotion. This study provides a preliminary experimental test of the relationship between parental behavior and children's regulation of fear and anxiety. Some 40 clinically anxious youth, aged 6-13, were randomly assigned to a family intervention program for childhood anxiety problems, which includes extensive parent communication training, or a child intervention program without parent-training. By comparing these two interventions, we tested if it was possible to improve parenting behaviors-such as intrusiveness-through intensive parent-training, above and beyond the effects of involving children in a child intervention program. We then tested the impact of this change in parental behaviors on children's ability to regulate fear and anxiety. We hypothesized that parent-training would reduce intrusiveness, which would in turn improve children's anxiety outcomes.

Conditions

• Separation Anxiety Disorder
• Social Phobia
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Family cognitive behavioral therapy

12-16 weekly sessions of family cognitive behavioral therapy, 60-80 minutes each

BEHAVIORAL

Child-focused cognitive behavioral therapy

12-16 weekly sessions of child-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, 60-80 minutes each

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

  collaborator NIH

• University of California, Los Angeles

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jeffrey Wood, Ph.D. · University of California, Los Angeles

• Marian Sigman, Ph.D. · University of California, Los Angeles

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

6 Years

Max Age

13 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2000-03-31

Primary Completion

2004-04-30

Completion

2004-04-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations