The roles of parental verbal communication and child characteristics in the transmission and maintenance of social fears

Background: Although social anxiety runs in families, little is known about how parents and children contribute to the intergenerational transmission of social fears. We examined whether mothers transfer social fear beliefs to their children through verbal communication and how children's behavioral inhibition and social anxiety contribute to this transmission. The associations of children's social fear beliefs with peer avoidance and interpretation bias were also examined. Methods: Participants (N = 291, 54% female) were followed from toddlerhood to middle childhood. Behavioral inhibition was assessed at ages 2 and 3. At the 10-year assessment, mother–child dyads participated in a conversation task. Mothers received ambiguous information about hypothetical peers and then talked to their children about vignettes involving these peers. Mothers' positive and negative statements were coded. Prior to the conversation, dyads reported their own social fear beliefs. Post-conversation, children rated their social fear beliefs and completed symbolic peer avoidance and social interpretive bias tasks. Children self-reported their social anxiety. Results: Mothers' positive statements mediated the paths from maternal social fear beliefs and behavioral inhibition to children's post-conversation social fear beliefs. Mothers' negative statements also mediated the link between mothers' fear beliefs and children's post-conversation fear beliefs, but only among children with heightened anxiety. Children's post-conversation social fear beliefs were, in turn, associated with children's peer avoidance and interpretation bias. Conclusions: Findings suggest that maternal verbal communication serves as a mechanism in the relation between parent and child social fear beliefs, and children's fear beliefs, in turn, predict their symbolic peer avoidance and interpretative biases. Children with heightened anxiety were particularly impacted by their mothers' negative statements, whereas behavioral inhibition predicted fewer maternal positive statements. Targeting mothers' social fear beliefs and verbal communication patterns may help prevent the intergenerational transmission of social fear.