title: Effects of verbal information on fear-related reasoning biases in children.
abstract: The present study made an attempt to induce fear-related reasoning biases by providing children with negative information about a novel stimulus. For this purpose, non-clinical children aged 9-12 years (N=318) were shown a picture of an unknown animal for which they received either negative, ambiguous, positive, or no information. Then children completed a series of tests for measuring various types of reasoning biases (i.e., confirmation bias and covariation bias) in relation to this animal. Results indicated that children in the negative and, to a lesser extent, the ambiguous information groups displayed higher scores on tests of fear-related reasoning biases than children in the positive and no information groups. Altogether, these results support the idea that learning via negatively tinted information plays a role in the development of fear-related cognitive distortions in youths.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. muris@fsw.eur.nl
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Muris
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Rassin
authors.forename: Birgit
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mayer
authors.forename: Guus
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Smeets
authors.forename: Jorg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huijding
authors.forename: Daniëlle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Remmerswaal
authors.forename: Andy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Field
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D002648:Child; D003142:Communication; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*