Abstract
This study examined the relations between parental socialization of child anxious behaviors (i.e., reinforcement, punishment, modeling, transmission of information) and child anxiety and related problems at varying child sensitivity levels. Data corresponding to 70 clinic-referred children (M age = 9.86 years; 50 % girls; 49 % Hispanic/Latino, 51 % Caucasian) showed that for children with low (but not high) anxiety sensitivity, anxiety-related parental socialization behaviors were associated with more child anxiety and depression symptoms. Findings also indicated that parental socialization of anxious behaviors and anxiety sensitivity functioned similarly in the prediction of anxiety and depression across Caucasian and Hispanic/Latino children. There were no significant mean level variations across child sociodemographic characteristics in general, but anxiety-promoting parenting behaviors were twice as high in Hispanic/Latino compared to Caucasian families.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by Grant number K01MH086687 awarded to A. Pina as well as a prevention science fellowship awarded to L. Holly, T32 MH018387 27 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the funding agency.
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Holly, L.E., Pina, A.A. Variations in the Influence of Parental Socialization of Anxiety among Clinic Referred Children. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 46, 474–484 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-014-0487-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-014-0487-x