Mother knows best: effects of maternal modelling on the acquisition of fear and avoidance behaviour in toddlers

“The importance of modelling as a method of acquisition of fears has been suggested by previous authors (e.g., Rachman, 1977).”

“Examples of experimental designs are the studies of Gerull and Rapee (2002) and De Rosnay, Cooper, Tsigaras, & Murray (2006) in which mothers who were instructed to behave anxiously indeed increased the anxious behavior of their child towards a rubber spider or snake and towards the stranger.”

“Similar effects have been observed in humans (Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“…call facial expressions of emotion “behavior regulators”: Facial expressions function as rewards (Matthews & Wells 1999) and punishments (Blair 1995) that serve to increase and decrease behaviors, as in operant conditioning (for review, see Blair 2003, Gerull & Rappee 2002, Mumme & Fernald 1996).”

“Although ethical constraints prohibit induction of long-lasting phobic-level fears in human participants, several studies have supported the influence of parental modeling on increasing children’s fears at least in the short-term (e.g., Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“Evidence with human participants stems from a study by Gerull and Rapee (2002). The authors demonstrated that toddlers’ approach and avoidance behavior toward toy snakes and spiders was influenced by mothers’ expression of positive or negative emotion.”

“In an experimental design, detrimental effects of mothers’ anxious reactions towards animal stimuli, resulting in higher anxiety levels in the children could be demonstrated (Gerull and Rapee, 2002).”

“Thus, Gerull & Rapee (2002) showed, in a non-anxious sample, how maternal modelled fear and disgust to potentially fear-provoking objects led to the expression of fearful and avoidant responses in 15- to 20-mont-olds.”

“Parents usually serve as the major source of expertise for the modeling of cultural and subcultural expressions and rules regarding emotions (Gerull & Rapee, 2002; Von Salisch, 2001).”

“A recent study, using a learning protocol similar to the one used by Mineka et al., found comparably strong and persistent fear learning in toddlers who observed their mothers’ fearful expressions in response to fearrelevant objects (Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“…toddlers showed increased fear and avoidance of stimuli when mothers reacted negatively towards them and showed increased positive affect and approach to stimuli when mothers reacted positively towards them (Dubi, Rapee, Emerton, & Schniering, 2008; Egliston & Rapee, 2007; Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“Thus, past research verified the development of maladaptive fear and anxiety also occurs by means of observational learning, although the durability of these effects needs to be further investigated (de Rosnay et al., 2006; Dubi et al., 2008; Gerull and Rapee, 2002).”

“…social referencing literature have traditionally been small and equivocal (Feinman et al., 1992), more recent evidence suggests that compared to boys, girls may modify their behavior more strongly when their mother expresses fear toward a referent (Blackford & Walden, 1998; Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“Modeling is an important mechanism through which children acquire fearful behaviors (Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“In humans, we recently demonstrated acquisition of avoidance behavior in 15- to 20-month-old toddlers following exposure to negative expressions from their mothers (Gerull and Rapee 2002).”

“Gerull and Rapee (2002) showed that toddlers would show greater fear expressions and avoidance of novel stimuli if their mothers had previously displayed negative facial expressions towards those stimuli.”

“Facial expressions are also one of the main ways for socially transmitting fear in humans, with the expression of another’s response to stimuli serving as the Pavlovian aversive US (unconditioned stimulus) for the observer (Gerull and Rapee, 2002).”

“Indeed, experimental studies show that infants and young children quickly acquire parental fears [9, 77, 78, 82, 88].”

“Similarly, Gerull and Rapee (2002) found that toddlers demonstrated more fear and avoidance of stimuli that were paired with a negative (rather than a neutral or positive) maternal facial expression.”

“For example, in a sample of mothers without anxiety disorders and their 15 to 20-month-old infants, fear modeling by the mothers was found to be associated with the subsequent fear responses of the infants (Gerull and Rapee, 2002).”

“For instance, children can rapidly learn emotions by observing the facial expression of their mother (Gerull and Rapee, 2002), and their emotional development is all the more important as it contributes to the elaboration of prosocial fairness, altruism and strategic tolerance to uncertainty and…”

“…also impact parent–child relationships, for example, compared to other parents, those with an anxiety disorder are less likely to grant their children autonomy, to be more catastrophizing during child interactions and more likely to demonstrate an overprotective style (Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“More recently, results from a series of prospective studies have shown that children's fear behaviour increased in relation to parents' negative emotional signals (Gerull and Rapee, 2002) or negative information (Field, Argyris, & Knowles, 2001; Field, Hamilton, Knowles, & Plews, 2002; Field & Lawson, 2003; Muris, Bod…”

“The interested reader is directed to other recent articles for this information (Muris et al 1996, 2001, 2002; Gerull and Rapee 2002; Bögels et al 2003; Muris, Bodden, et al 2003; Alden and Taylor 2004; Mineka and Zinbarg 2006; Rosnay et al 2006; Taylor and Alden 2006; Voci et al 2006; Lawson et al…”

“Similar results were obtained in a recent observational study by Gerull and Rapee (2002) who investigated the effects of maternal modeling on the acquisition of fear and avoidance behavior in 15- to 20-month-old toddlers.”

“Evidence for the role of observational learning in the origins of childhood fear and anxiety was provided in an experimental study by Gerull and Rapee (2002).”

“de Rosnay, Cooper, Tsigaras, & Murray, 2006; Gerull & Rapee, 2002 ) fear information from others (e.g.”

“…species are capable of learning to fear a stimulus by observing the behavior of another animal toward it, including sheep (Keller et al., 2004), rats (Kavaliers et al., 2001), cats (John et al., 1968), monkeys (Cook and Mineka, 1989), mice (Jeon et al., 2010), and humans (Gerull and Rapee, 2002).”

“For example, Gerull and Rapee (2002) found that toddlers showed greater fear and avoidance of a stimulus (i.e., rubber snake or rubber spider) that had been paired with a negative maternal expression relative to a stimulus that had been paired with a neutral or positive maternal expression.”

“Babies and children are highly perceptive to the facial expressions of the people they interact with [14, 18].”

“Similarly, Gerull and Rapee (2002) found that toddlers demonstrated more fear and avoidance of stimuli paired with a negative (rather than neutral or positive) maternal facial expression.”

“For example, other negative emotions such as fear and distress are operative in many avoidance responses (e.g., Gerull and Rapee, 2002).”

“Fears are adaptive aspect of development that warn one of dangers and motivate escape or avoidance behavior (Barlow, 2002; Field & Lawson, 2003; Gerull & Rapee, 2002; Gullone, 1999).”

“…facial expressions and avoidance behaviors in response to toy snakes, spiders, flowers, and mushrooms after observing mothers’ negative facial expressions (Dubi, Rapee, Emerton, & Schniering, 2008; Gerull & Rapee, 2002), suggesting that fear-like behaviors can be elicited via social learning.”

“For example, in the study of Gerull and Rapee (2002), 15 to 20 month old infants were shown a rubber snake and spider each paired with a negative or positive expression by their mothers.”

“Children as young as 10 months old have been found to assess unfamiliar people or situations through parental nonverbal fear modeling (Feinman 1992), and this information was retained over time (Gerull and Rapee 2002).”

“They may also display cognitive biases towards threat and avoidance, which they model to their children in the form of expressions of disgust and avoidance behaviour (Barrett, Rapee, Dadds, & Ryan, 1996; Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“For example, Gerull and Rapee (2002) demonstrated that 17-month-old toddlers showed greater fear and avoidance towards a toy spider or snake following negative reactions from their mothers relative to those shown following positive reactions.”

“Other social referencing studies have demonstrated that parental expressions of fear can lead to infant fear or avoidance in response to toy snakes or spiders (Gerull and Rapee 2002) and strangers (de Rosnay et al. 2006).”

“Gerull and Rapee (2002), for example, trained mothers to either express fear and disgust to potentially fear provoking toys or display neutral expressions, when in the presence of their toddler (15-20 months) offspring.”

“For example, cued fear conditioning does not always require an intact hippocampus (Hornik et al., 1987; Gerull and Rapee, 2002; Jeon et al., 2010; E. J. Kim et al., 2010).”

“Gerull and Rapee (2002) showed, for example, that experimentally elicited maternal expressions of fear and disgust led to 15-to 20-month-old infants’ increased avoidance of novel threatening stimuli (i.e., a rubber snake and spider), and we showed the same effect for infant avoidance of an…”

“In a recent study, Gerull and Rapee (2002) showed that mothers could promote anxious and avoidant reactions to novel stimuli in their 17-month-old toddlers through the contingent delivery of negative facial expressions.”

“In addition, this type of associative emotional learning is apparent in toddlers, and is one of the cognitive mechanisms by which fear is acquired early in life (Gerull and Rapee, 2002).”

“…learning and verbal threat information in the acquisition of children’s anxious expectations, avoidant behavior, physiological arousal, long-term fear beliefs, and other anxious symptoms (e.g., Field & Lawson, 2003; Field & Schorah, 2007; Field & Storksen-Coulson, 2007; Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“Human children who see their mothers responding positively to a fear-inducing stimulus are less fearful of the stimulus (Gerull and Rapee, 2002; Egliston and Rapee, 2007).”

“For example, parent perfectionism may relate to higher amounts of overcontrol, while parent interpretation biases may relate to higher amounts of anxious modeling (Gerull and Rapee 2002; Lester et al. 2009).”

“Some evidence has supported an association between anxious parenting and anxiety in middle childhood (Gruner et al. 1999 ;M uris et al.1996 ;W haley et al.1999 )a nd adulthood (Bruch et al. 1989; Rapee and Melville 1997), while some experimental work has demonstrated the ability for very young children to learn fears…”

“Emotion modeling by parents spans a wide range of emotions, including anger (Dollar & Calkins, 2019), sadness (Denham & Kochanoff, 2002), fear (LoBue, Kim, & Delgado, 2019), disgust (Gerull & Rapee, 2002; Shutts et al., 2013), and happiness (Messinger et al., 2019).”

“Particularly, fathers are more likely to tease their children, play rough and encourage risk taking behaviours compared to mothers who adopt a more protective and nurturing perspective (Gerull & Rapee, 2002; Majdand ˇ zi (cid:2) c et al., 2016).”

“Furthermore, experimental and prospective longitudinal research has shown that observing parents responding in an anxious manner leads to an increase in children's anxious responses (e.g. De Rosnay, Cooper, Tsigaras, & Murray, 2006; Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“For example, parents’ fear responses to a novel toy can predict offspring fear and avoidance behaviors.(28) Another experimental approach involves researchers treating parent or offspring symptoms and examining whether symptom improvements in one generation predict improvements in the other.”

“The importance of observational learning in the acquisition of fears in children has also been experimentally established (Gerull & Rapee, 2002).”

“There is some evidence of children learning anxious responding through parent’s modeling of their fears (de Rosnay, Cooper, Tsigaras, & Murray, 2006; Gerull & Rapee, 2002; Muris, Steerneman, Merckelbach, & Meesters, 1996).”

“However, contrary to previous findings in which fearful modeling effects persisted (Gerull & Rapee, 2002) or effects persisted for positive modeling (Egliston & Rapee, 2007), the effects of the conditioned fear response were short lived.”

“In a study by Gerull and Rapee (2002), toddlers showed more behavioral avoidance to a fear relevant toy (i.e., a spider or snake) in which they witnessed their mother showing a negative face, and girls in the study generally responded with more fear than the boys.”