title: Stimulus fear-relevance and the vicarious learning pathway to childhood fears.
abstract: Enhanced fear learning for fear-relevant stimuli has been demonstrated in procedures with adults in the laboratory. Three experiments investigated the effect of stimulus fear-relevance on vicarious fear learning in children (aged 6-11 years). Pictures of stimuli with different levels of fear-relevance (flowers, caterpillars, snakes, worms, and Australian marsupials) were presented alone or together with scared faces. In line with previous studies, children's fear beliefs and avoidance preferences increased for stimuli they had seen with scared faces. However, in contrast to evidence with adults, learning was mostly similar for all stimulus types irrespective of fear-relevance. The results support a proposal that stimulus preparedness is bypassed when children observationally learn threat-related information from adults.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Askew
authors.forename: Güler
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dunne
authors.forename: Zehra
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Özdil
authors.forename: Gemma
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Reynolds
authors.forename: Andy P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Field
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000845:Annelida; D001315:Australia; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D003071:Cognition; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D035264:Flowers; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008394:Marsupialia; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D057566:Self Report; D012911:Snakes; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires