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Developmental Trajectories of Anxiety Symptoms in Early Adolescence: The Influence of Anxiety Sensitivity

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Abstract

Children and adolescents seem to suffer from anxiety disorders at rates similar to adults. Interestingly, anxiety symptoms appear to generally decline over time within children as evidenced by lower rates in early and middle adolescence. There is some evidence that there may be heterogeneous subpopulations of adolescent children with different trajectories of anxiety symptoms, including a class of adolescents with elevated levels of anxiety that do not dissipate over time. Anxiety sensitivity has been identified as an important risk factor in the development of anxiety psychopathology. This study prospectively examined the development of anxiety symptoms in a sample of 277 adolescents (M age = 11.52; 44 % female, 56 % male) over a 3 year period including the influence of anxiety sensitivity on this development. Further, this study investigated whether there were distinct classes of adolescents based on their anxiety symptom trajectories and including anxiety sensitivity as a predictor. Consistent with other reports, findings indicated an overall decline in anxiety symptoms over time in the sample. However, three classes of adolescents were found with distinct anxiety symptom trajectories and anxiety sensitivity was an important predictor of class membership. Adolescents with elevated anxiety sensitivity scores were more likely to be classified as having high and increasing anxiety symptoms over time versus having moderate to low and decreasing anxiety symptoms over time. There are important implications for identification of adolescents and children who are at risk for the development of an anxiety disorder.

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Notes

  1. This study was conducted using Baseline and Time 1 data from the current study.

  2. Multiple group growth curve analysis was conducted using age instead of time to determine whether age effects could produce biased parameter estimates (e.g., Mehta and West 2000). Across the three age-groups comprising 98 % of the sample (i.e., 10, 11, and 12 year-olds), invariance testing revealed no differences for the anxiety model (Δ χ2 = 8.07, Δ df = 16, p = 0.95) or the depression model (Δ χ2 = 13.58, Δ df = 16, p = 0.63). Therefore, age was pooled in this study.

  3. Conditional models were also examined by RCADS anxiety disorders, independently. There were few substantive differences. Nonsignificant slope values were found for GAD, PD, and SP, and CASI scores only marginally predicted the slopes for GAD and PD. Therefore, we examined aggregated anxiety disorder symptoms.

  4. Because there was one child with information missing on one of the predictor variables, and MPLUS does not include cases with missing information on the predictor variables in GMM, 275 children were used in this analysis.

  5. Although the four-class model did not fit better than the three-class model, the classes that emerged in this model were consistent with the theoretical model of anxiety symptom trajectories proposed by Weems (2008), with the high-increasing class ostensibly dividing into a moderate-increasing class and a high-stable class.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Florida State University, P.O. Box 3064301, Tallahasssee, FL, 32306-4301, USA

    Nicholas P. Allan, Daniel W. Capron & Norman B. Schmidt

  2. Center for Addictions, Personality, and Emotion Research, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742-4411, USA

    Carl W. Lejuez, Elizabeth K. Reynolds & Laura MacPherson

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  1. Nicholas P. Allan
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Correspondence to Norman B. Schmidt.

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This work was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (R01 DA18647) given to the third author. Views expressed herein are those of the authors and have neither been reviewed nor approved by the granting agency.

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Allan, N.P., Capron, D.W., Lejuez, C.W. et al. Developmental Trajectories of Anxiety Symptoms in Early Adolescence: The Influence of Anxiety Sensitivity. J Abnorm Child Psychol 42, 589–600 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9806-0

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