title: Language of perfectionistic parents predicting child anxiety diagnostic status.
abstract: Previous research has identified parental perfectionism as a risk factor for child anxiety. Yet few studies investigated why parental perfectionism may play such a role. Based on research suggesting parental verbal information and language use are associated with increased child fear beliefs and anxiety, the current study investigated the linguistic style of perfectionistic mothers and its relation to child anxiety. Participants were 71 mother-child dyads. Children were 3-12 years old, 57.7% female, and 30 were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Analyses showed that parental perfectionism was associated with increased second person pronouns, decreased adverbs, negative emotion words, and anger words. Second person pronouns and negative emotion words predicted child anxiety diagnostic status and mediated the relation between maternal perfectionism and child anxiety. These findings suggest that parental perfectionism may be associated with a specific language style that is related to child anxiety. Implications and future directions are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA. Electronic address: nwaffr01@louisville.edu.
authors.forename: Nicholas W
authors.initials: NW
authors.lastname: Affrunti
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA.
authors.forename: Elena M C
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Geronimi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA.
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Woodruff-Borden
mesh_terms: D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations / Q000523:psychology*; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D010549:Personal Satisfaction
keywords: Child anxiety; Internalizing; Language; Perfectionism; Verbal information