title: Parental educational practices in relation to children's anxiety disorder-related behavior.
abstract: Schoolchildren reported their parents' use of aversive control and positive reinforcement contingencies in their educational interventions, as well as parental non-responsiveness to their requests for educational assistance. They also reported their own levels of six dimensions of anxiety disorder-related phenomena. Both parental use of aversive control and non-responsiveness were directly related to overall levels of child anxiety disorder-related behavior; these correlations were more robust than those observed in previous investigations of more diffuse dimensions of parenting style and trait anxiety. Panic disorder/agoraphobia and Generalized anxiety disorder were the dimensions most strongly correlated with both parental aversive control and non-responsiveness, while Compulsive behavior was uniquely uncorrelated with parental non-responsiveness and uniquely correlated with parental use of positive reinforcement contingencies. Differences in the magnitudes of correlations between anxiety disorder-related dimensions and parental educational practices are interpreted in terms of the probable differential effectiveness of their constituent behaviors in terminating parent-mediated negative reinforcers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, 136 Syngrou Avenue, 17671 Athens, Greece. mellon.robert@gmail.com
authors.forename: Robert C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Mellon
authors.forename: Adrianos G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Moutavelis
mesh_terms: D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology*; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology