title: Parents' Verbal Communication and Childhood Anxiety: A Systematic Review.
abstract: Parents' verbal communication to their child, particularly the expression of fear-relevant information (e.g., attributions of threat to the environment), is considered to play a key role in children's fears and anxiety. This review considers the extent to which parental verbal communication is associated with child anxiety by examining research that has employed objective observational methods. Using a systematic search strategy, we identified 15 studies that addressed this question. These studies provided some evidence that particular fear-relevant features of parental verbal communication are associated with child anxiety under certain conditions. However, the scope for drawing reliable, general conclusions was limited by extensive methodological variation between studies, particularly in terms of the features of parental verbal communication examined and the context in which communication took place, how child anxiety was measured, and inconsistent consideration of factors that may moderate the verbal communication-child anxiety relationship. We discuss ways in which future research can contribute to this developing evidence base and reduce further methodological inconsistency so as to inform interventions for children with anxiety problems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AL, UK. r.s.percy@reading.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Ray
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Percy
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AL, UK. c.creswell@reading.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Cathy
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Creswell
authors.affiliation: Psychology, Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.|Clinical & Experimental Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.
authors.forename: Matt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Garner
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AL, UK.
authors.forename: Doireann
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: O'Brien
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AL, UK.|Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
authors.forename: Lynne
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Murray
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D014705:Verbal Behavior
keywords: Child anxiety; Parenting; Verbal communication