Research into adult anxiety has shown that anxious adults frequently display cognitive biases in the processing of environmental stimuli (MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986). Compared with nonclinic subjects, they are more likely to interpret ambiguous material as threatening and tend to think that negative threatening events are more likely to happen to themselves than anyone else (Butler & Mathews, 1983). One question which has remained
untested is whether cognitive biases in anxious adults are established in adulthood or were already present at a young age. Retrospective studies have indicated that anxious adults often report having experienced high anxiety as children, raising the question of whether some of these cognitive biases were already present in childhood (Mattison, 1992). In studies of aggressive children, for example, Dodge (1986) has found that such children display a bias toward excessive attributions of hostile intentions in others. However, to date, there has not been similar published research with other groups of children.
Some recent research has attempted to examine the way in which feared outcomes are represented in long-term memory (Campbell & Rapee, 1994; Lovibond & Rapee, 1993). These studies have indicated that children seem to represent threatening outcomes in a very similar way to adults. Specifically, feared outcomes seem to be organized along two major factors: physical threat (physical harm) and social threat (negative evaluation). Another interesting research question, then, is whether people with different symptomatologies (predominantly social or physical fears), and different anxiety diagnoses, manifest different interpretation and response biases to ambiguity related specifically to physical or social situations.
In addition to the important role which cognitive factors may play in the maintenance of child anxiety, a large body of research has indicated that child psychopathology generally needs to be understood in the context of family interactional patterns (Dadds, 1987; Patterson & Reid, 1984). While direct observational studies of family processes with anxious children are rare (cf. Dadds, Barrett, Rapee, & Ryan, in press), there exists indirect evidence to support the role of family processes in the development of childhood anxiety.
Epidemiological studies (Klein & Last, 1989) point to the familial transmission of anxiety disorders. Studies of parents of anxious children find that they tend to selectively focus on future negative outcomes for their children’s current activities (Kortlander, Kendall, & Chansky, 1990). Krohne and Hock (1991) have suggested a “two-process model” that deals with the relationship between specific styles of parental child-rearing and coping dispositions in the children. Empirical tests of their model show that high anxiety in a child is significantly related to frequent negative feedback and parental restriction (Krohne & Hock, 1991). Hence, it is plausible that anxious children might learn to expect negative consequences for their behavior and as a result become fearful and avoidant. Recent clinical studies have further confirmed that the involvement of families in the treatment of anxious children is more effective than just treating the child (Barrett, Dadds, Rapee, & Ryan, in press; Dadds, Heard, & Rapee, 1991; King,Hamilton, & Ollendick, 1988).