Pathways to fear in spider phobic children
Abstract
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 information 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.
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Much of the research that has examined pathways to fear has primarily relied upon non-clinical samples.
“Much of the research (Field & Storksen-Coulson, 2007; Merckelbach et al., 1996; Muris & Field, 2010; Ollendick & King, 1991) that has examined these pathways to fear have primarily relied upon non-clinical samples, providing insight into the nature of the development of normative childhood fears.”
From Specific Phobia in Young Children: Associations between the Origins of Fear and Clinical Expression of Phobia Symptoms. (2025) · cites this paper as Merckelbach et al., 1996
Merckelbach et al. (1996) found frequencies of child/parent endorsement for pathways: 40.9/36.4% direct, 17.4/17.4% vicarious/modelling, 4.5/0% informational/instructional, and 45.5/54.4% no pathway.
“The frequency of child/parent endorsement for each of the pathways were: 40.9/36.4% for the direct pathway, 17.4/17.4% for the vicarious/modelling pathway, 4.5/0% for the informational/ instructional pathway, and 45.5/54.4% whom reported no pathway ( ' always been afraid ' ), respectively.”
From Specific Phobia in Young Children: Associations between the Origins of Fear and Clinical Expression of Phobia Symptoms. (2025) · cites this paper as Merckelbach et al., 1996
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- Authors
- Merckelbach, H., Muris, P., & Schouten, E.
- Venue
- Behaviour Research and Therapy
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 1996-11
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 11-12
- Pages
- 935-938
- ISSN
- 0005-7967 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2113966855
- Cited by
- 61
- References
- 24
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 4.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Behaviour Research and Therapy (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Keywords
- spider phobia, childhood phobia, fear acquisition, aversive conditioning, modeling, parent-child agreement
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Animals, Association Learning, Child, Conditioning, Psychological, Fear, Female, Humans, Imitative Behavior, Personality Assessment, Phobic Disorders, Spiders
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