SHORTER COMMUNICATIONS Pathways to fear in spider phobic children

Summary--Twenty-two children with spider phobia were interviewed about the origins of their fear. More specifically, children were asked about conditioning events, modeling experiences, and negative in-formation transmission. To evaluate the reliability of the information provided by the children, parents were independently interviewed about the origins of their children's phobias. While 46 % of the children claimed to have always been afraid, 41 % ascribed the onset of their fear to aversive conditioning events. The large majority of these events were confirmed by parents. These findings cast doubts on a strong version of the non-associative account of spider phobia, i.e. the idea that spider phobia is acquired in the complete absence of learning experiences. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Lt