Recent research has indicated that vicarious learning can lead to increases in children's fear beliefs and avoidance preferences for stimuli and that these fear responses can subsequently be reversed using positive modeling (counterconditioning). The current study investigated children's vicariously acquired avoidance behavior, physiological responses (heart rate), and attentional bias for stimuli and whether these could also be reduced via counterconditioning. Ninety-six (49 boys, 47 girls) 7- to 11-year-olds received vicarious fear learning for novel stimuli and were then randomly assigned to a counterconditioning, extinction, or control group. Fear beliefs and avoidance preferences were measured pre- and post-learning, whereas avoidance behavior, heart rate, and attentional bias were all measured post-learning. Control group children showed increases in fear beliefs and avoidance preferences for animals seen in vicarious fear learning trials. In addition, significantly greater avoidance behavior, heart rate responding, and attentional bias were observed for these animals compared to a control animal. In contrast, vicariously acquired avoidance preferences of children in the counterconditioning group were significantly reduced post-positive modeling, and these children also did not show the heightened heart rate responding to fear-paired animals. Children in the extinction group demonstrated comparable responses to the control group; thus the extinction procedure showed no effect on any fear measures. The findings suggest that counterconditioning with positive modelling can be used as an effective early intervention to reduce the behavioral and physiological effects of vicarious fear learning in childhood.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 May 2016.
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#12,238,175
of 34,358,242 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology
#682
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Outputs of similar age
#131,117
of 338,192 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology
#15
of 28 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,358,242 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 64th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,287 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 17.1. This one is in the 46th percentile – i.e., 46% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 28 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 46th percentile – i.e., 46% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
