Vicarious learning of children's fears: mechanisms, prevention and reversal

<p>Abstract copyright data collection owner.</p>Mechanisms underpinning vicarious fear learning in childhood: Establishing learning mechanisms was critical for understanding how fears and phobias are vicariously learnt in childhood. Five experiments investigated properties of the conditioned stimulus (CS; Australian marsupials) and unconditioned stimulus (US; the emotional response of a model) in vicarious learning. *Experiment 1 established that vicarious fear learning: (i) is underpinned by CS-US associations, and (ii) can be reversed if the model’s response (US) is subsequently devalued (‘US devaluation’). This was achieved by indicating to the child that the model was not as scared as they appeared to be and may be a useful early intervention to reduce fear. Findings will be published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology (Reynolds, Field & Askew, in press). Experiment 11 found that children show similar increases in fear responses for snakes compared to the marsupials, suggesting that the ‘fear-relevance’ of a stimulus (CS) does not influence vicarious fear learning in 6 to 9-year-olds. Results were published in the journal Emotion (Askew, Dunne, Özdil, Reynolds, & Field, 2013). Some pre-existing experimental data examining the effects of manipulating models’ responses (US) were also re-analysed and written-up, indicating that seeing animals with models expressing disgust leads to increases in children’s disgust, fear and avoidance for animals. These findings were published in Journal of Abnormal Psychology (Askew, Cakir, Poldsam, & Reynolds, 2014). In Experiments 2 and 10, children’s vicariously learnt fear-related responses for one stimulus were also found for a second stimulus that was seen with the first but never together with a fearful model (second-order learning). This may explain why some individuals cannot recall a negative learning experience with their feared stimulus and suggests that possible associations with other stimuli should be investigated during treatment. These findings have been submitted for publication. Finally, an ‘occasion setting’ procedure in Experiment 3 found no evidence that the learning context is influential in vicarious learning. 2) Vicarious learning of threat-related attentional biases and physiological responses: Experiment 4 used video modelling and did not find unequivocal changes in heart rate due to vicarious learning. However, using the picture-picture paradigm, Experiment 5 established that children show increased fear beliefs, avoidance preferences and attentional bias for animals seen with fearful models, and these remained elevated for at least one month. Results also indicated that children take longer to approach these animals and show increases in heart rate when they do. Findings were published in Emotion (Reynolds, Field & Askew, 2014). 3) Prevention and reversal of children's vicariously acquired fear responses: Three experiments successfully identified interventions by which vicarious fear learning in children could be prevented or reversed. Experiment 7 found that fear responses for a stimulus do not increase if children are given neutral (‘latent inhibition’) or positive modelling (‘immunisation’) experiences with the stimulus before vicarious learning (manuscript in preparation). Experiment 9 established that vicariously learnt avoidance preferences, heart rate responses and attentional bias can be unlearnt using positive modelling after learning (‘vicarious counterconditioning’). The findings have been submitted for publication. Experiment 12 investigated the effectiveness of post-learning positive modelling and positive verbal information and found evidence that both reversed vicariously learnt fear responses. Experiment 6 found no evidence that attentional bias modification would successfully reduce fear responses following vicarious learning. <p>Project description:</p>Children can learn to become frightened of animals or objects if they witness someone else's fear of them (‘vicarious learning’). To develop the most effective prevention and treatment programmes for fears acquired in this way it is necessary to understand the mechanisms underpinning learning. This is the first aim of the research programme. Researchers have shown that anxiety is associated with increased heart rate and maintained by biased ways of looking and thinking; in particular, anxious individuals tend to notice and pay more attention to their feared object. However, it is not yet known how or why these attentional biases develop. A further aim is to investigate whether vicarious learning can affect heart rate and the amount of attention paid to an object.The third aim is to evaluate ways of preventing and treating the negative outcomes of vicarious learning. The project will examine whether vicariously learnt fear responses to animals can be reversed by training people to divert their attention away from them. Finally, the research will also investigate whether vicarious learning can also be used to protect against acquiring fears and eliminate existing fears. This work will be of particular interesting to psychologists, teachers and parents