Parent- and Child-Factors in Specific Phobias: The Interplay of Overprotection and Negative Affectivity
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Parent- and Child-Factors in Specific Phobias: The Interplay of Overprotection and Negative Affectivity Nicole N. Capriola-Hall 1 & Jordan A. Booker 2 & Thomas H. Ollendick 3
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Specific phobias are among the most prevalent anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. Although brief and intensive treatments are evidence-based interventions (Davis III et al. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 15, 233–256, 2019), up to one-third of youth do not show significant change in their symptoms following these interventions. Hence, consideration of additional factors influencing treatment response is necessary. Child-factors such as temperament and parent-factors such as parenting behaviors both contribute to the development of specific phobias and their maintenance over time. Specifically, we addressed child temperament (negative affectivity) and parenting behaviors (overprotection) that could uniquely predict clinical outcomes for specific phobias and that might interact to inform goodness-of-fit in the context of these interventions. We also considered whether child- and/or parent-gender shaped the effects of temperament or parenting on clinical outcomes. Participants were 125 treatment-seeking youth (M age = 8.80 years; age range = 6–15 years; 51.5% girls) who met criteria for specific phobia and their mothers and fathers. Mothers’ reports of children’s negative affectivity uniquely predicted poorer specific phobia symptom severity and global clinical adjustment at post-treatment. Interaction effects were supported between parental overprotection and child negative affectivity for post-treatment fearfulness. The direction of these effects differed between fathers and mothers, suggesting that goodness-of-fit is important to consider, and that parent gender may provide additional nuance to considerations of parent-child fit indices. Keywords Negative affectivity . Overprotection . Specific phobias . One session treatment
Specific phobias are the most common anxiety disorders in children and adolescents (Merikangas et al. 2010). Moreover, specific phobias serve as risk factors for academic and social difficulties (Essau et al. 2000; Silverman and Moreno 2005), as well as the later development of anxiety, mood, and substance use disorders (Kagan and Snidman 1999; Kendall et al. 2004). Currently, one-session treatment—a treatment based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and delivered in a single 3-hour session—is empirically supported as a brief, intensive evidence-based intervention to treat youth with
* Nicole N. Capriola-Hall [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
2
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
3
Child Study Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
specific phobias (Davis III et al. 2019). Although generally regarded as an effective treatment, a small but significant minority of youth continue to retain their specific phobi
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