The Role of Parental Verbal Threat Information in Children's Fear Acquisition: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Abstract

Children can acquire fears of novel stimuli as a result of listening to parental verbal threat information about these stimuli (i.e., instructional learning). While empirical studies have shown that learning via parental information occurs, the effect size of parental verbal threat information on child fear of a novel stimulus has not yet been measured in a meta-analysis. We conducted a systematic review and meta analysis to assess the effect of parents' verbal statements on their children's fear acquisition. Additionally, we explored potential moderators of this effect, namely, parent and child anxiety levels, as well as child age. WebOfScience, Pubmed, Medline, and PsycINFO were used to identify eligible studies that assessed children's (30 months to 18 years old) fear of novel stimuli after being exposed to parental verbal threat information. We selected 17 studies for the meta-analysis and 18 for the systematic review. The meta-analysis revealed a significant causal effect of parental verbal threat information on children's fear reaction towards novel stimuli [g = 1.26]. No evidence was found for a moderation of verbal learning effects, neither by child or parent anxiety levels nor by child age. The effect of parents' verbal threat information on children's fear of novel stimuli is large and not dependent on anxiety levels or child age.