title: Subjective fear, interference by threat, and fear associations independently predict fear-related behavior in children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Several information-processing models highlight the independent roles of controlled and automatic processes in explaining fearful behavior. Therefore, we investigated whether direct measures of controlled processes and indirect measures of automatic processes predict unique variance components of children's spider fear-related behavior.
  
  
  METHODS
  Seventy-seven children between 8 and 13 years performed an Affective Priming Task (APT) measuring associative bias, a pictorial version of the Emotional Stroop Task (EST) measuring attentional bias, filled out the Spider Anxiety and Disgust Screening for Children (SADS-C) in order to assess self-perceived fear, and took part in a Behavioral Assessment Test (BAT) to measure avoidance of spiders.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The SADS-C, EST, and APT did not correlate with each other. Spider fear-related behavior was best explained by SADS-C, APT, and EST together; they explained 51% of the variance in BAT behavior.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  No children with clinical levels of spider phobia were tested. The direct and the different indirect measures did no correlate with each other.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results indicate that both direct and indirect measures are useful for predicting unique variance components of fear-related behavior in children. The lack of relations between direct and indirect measures may explain why some earlier studies did not find stronger color-naming interference or stronger fear associations in children with high levels of self-reported fear. It also suggests that children with high levels of spider-fearful behavior have different fear-related associations and display higher interference by spider stimuli than children with non-fearful behavior.
authors.affiliation: Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. a.klein@psych.ru.nl
authors.forename: Anke M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Klein
authors.forename: Annelies V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Kleinherenbrink
authors.forename: Carlijn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Simons
authors.forename: Erwin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: de Gier
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Klein
authors.forename: Esther
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Allart
authors.forename: Susan M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Bögels
authors.forename: Eni S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rinck
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011581:Psychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011597:Psychomotor Performance