The Role of Vicarious Learning in Preventing and Treating Children's Fears

Anxiety is the most common of all childhood psychological disorders. It frequently hinders children's social and academic functioning and can therefore lead to problems in later life. Children can learn to become frightened of certain objects if they witness someone else acting frightened of them. This process is called "vicarious learning". To develop the most effective prevention and treatment programmes for fears acquired in this way it is necessary to understand when and how vicarious learning occurs by investigating the mechanism underpinning it. This is the first aim of the research programme.

As with other anxiety disorders, clinical fears and phobias are associated with specific patterns of responses toward the feared object, including: avoiding it, saying negative things about it, and increased heart rate. Researchers have found that vicarious learning can cause changes in the first two types of response, but to better understand phobias it's important to show changes in heart rate too. Researchers have also shown that anxiety is typically maintained by biased ways of looking and thinking; in particular, anxious individuals tend to notice and pay more attention to their feared object (attentional bias). However, although it is thought likely that these biases begin in childhood, it is not yet known how or why they develop. Hence, we still know relatively little about this very important component of anxiety, therefore limiting our ability to prevent anxiety from developing in children. One probable scenario is that these biases begin following learning experiences with the feared object. The second aim of the research is therefore to see whether vicarious learning can affect heart rate responses to an object and how much attention is paid to it.

A third aim is to evaluate ways of preventing and treating the negative outcomes of vicarious learning. Recent studies show that anxiety is reduced when people are trained to divert their attention away from the object of their fear (attentional training). We will examine whether vicariously learnt fear responses towards animals can be reversed using this type of training. Finally, we will investigate whether vicarious learning can also be used to protect against acquiring fears and eliminate existing fears.

This work is of interest to psychologists, parents and teachers. It will offer guidance on how to minimise the risk of transmitting fears to children and suggest ways to intervene quickly when it is recognised that a child may have been involved in a fear-related vicarious learning event. Finally, the research also has wider implications for how animals and other stimuli are presented to children (e.g. on television, in films, or in books).

Who will benefit?

The proposed research programme has three main aims, to determine: 1) the mechanisms underlying children's vicarious learning of fear; 2) how these fears and their associated physiological responses and cognitive biases develop; and 3) whether children's vicariously acquired fears and associated responses can be prevented and/or reversed. Thus the main non-academic befeficiaries of the research will be children and their families, teachers and other individuals who work with children, mental health practitioners treating children, and policy makers involved in mental health, social welfare and education.

How will they benefit?

End Users:

An important aim of the program is to directly test ways of preventing fears from developing and this will impact positively on children's lives. Findings will inform parents, teachers and others who work with children about potential situations where fears can develop and how to avoid them. The research will also indicate how parents and carers can intervene to reduce the chances of a fear developing if a child does observe someone else's fear or phobia. In addition, research findings will impact on children's and parent's lives by informing mental health practitioners about how fears and phobias are acquired vicariously and how the resulting fear-related responses can be reversed.

Mental Health Professionals:

By understanding the causes, development and mechanisms of vicarious fear learning in children we can develop better ways to prevent children developing fears. The research also directly tests ways of preventing and reversing vicariously learnt fear responses. Attentional training is for example a very current and innovative method of treating anxiety that is directly investigated in relation to vicarious fear learning in children. Thus the research outputs will have positive impact on mental health service practitioners in terms of improving understanding and treating children's fears.

Policy makers:

The aims of the research programme are in line with the aims of current government advisory reports stating the importance of minimising risk factors involved in the development of child mental illness (e.g. Department for Children Schools and Families, 2010; Department of Health, 2010; Jenkins et al., 2008). In addition to obvious emotional and psychological benefits, preventing children developing fear and anxiety has clear economic benefits. Mental illness is extremely costly (Jenkins et al., 2008). Some estimates put the cost to England's economy as high as £77 billion when the wider impacts of mental illness are taken into account (Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, 2003). Anxiety and depression alone lead to an estimated £12 billion per year in loss of output for the UK (Bell et al., 2006). There are currently no figures specifically for the economic impact of childhood anxiety; however, in 2002/03 the overall cost of child mental illness in England was estimated to be around £4.5 billion (Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, 2003). Childhood anxiety is also associated with problems later in life such as anxiety in adulthood (Kim-Cohen, et al., 2003; Weems, 2008), depression (Kovacs et al., 1989) and substance misuse (Kushner et al., 1990). The Layard Report recently outlined economic savings that could be made by treating mental illness in adults (Bell et al., 2006). Consequently, benefits and savings would also be expected by preventing and treating fear and anxiety already occurring in childhood.