Anxiety in adolescence : the role of parental behaviours

Parental behaviours have been consistently associated with anxiety in childhood. However previous literature has failed to take a developmental perspective; studies have focused upon younger children or involved a broad age range. This assumes that the same relationship exists between parental behaviours and anxiety in childhood and in adolescence. However, it is not clear whether this assumption is valid. The first paper systematically reviewed the literature examining the relationship between parental behaviours and adolescent anxiety. The findings of the studies reviewed suggest that as in childhood, adolescent anxiety is associated with controlling and rejecting parental behaviour and not associated with parental warmth. However, there were methodological limitations in the studies reviewed and further research, particularly experimental studies are required to provide further information on this relationship. The second paper investigated whether there were developmental differences in the relationship between controlling parental behaviour and child and adolescent anxiety and whether the relationship between these factors is moderated by child and adolescent trait anxiety. Using a repeated measures, experimental design, parental behaviour was manipulated during the preparation for a speech task. Observed anxiety during the speech was assessed for 257-8 and 21 13-14 year olds, as were levels of trait anxiety. There was no significant difference in the level of state anxiety across the two conditions for both age groups. However there was an interaction between child and adolescent trait anxiety and the experimental condition. In contrast to findings in younger children, 7-8 and 13-14 year olds with elevated levels of trait anxiety experienced increased anxiety in the autonomy granting condition, the opposite was found for controlling behaviour. These findings highlight that child and adolescent trait anxiety should be taken into account when examining the relationship between parental autonomy granting behaviour and anxiety in childhood and adolescence.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo