SynthesisClinical child and family psychology review2023
Parent to Offspring Fear Transmission via Modeling in Early Life: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
Synthesis in Clinical child and family psychology review, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Association Between Parent-to-Child Fear Learning Pathways and Anxiety Sensitivity: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Clinical child and family psychology review · 2025Pooled it
- The Role of Parental Verbal Threat Information in Children's Fear Acquisition: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Clinical child and family psychology review · 2024Pooled it
- Managing anxiety-related disorders from pregnancy to parenthood.Archives of gynecology and obstetrics · 2026Review
- Do maternal and paternal social trait anxiety explain individual differences in offspring stress reactions during a social performance task?Personality and individual differences · 2025Article
- Genetic and Environmental Influences on Fear Learning and Generalization.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Intergenerational transmission of maternal prenatal anxiety to infant fearfulness: the mediating role of mother-infant bonding.Archives of women's mental health · 2025Article
- Family risk factors in the acquisition of anxiety: Behavioral inhibition and Social Fear Learning from Parents.Advances in psychiatry and behavioral health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Infants can acquire fears vicariously by observing parents' fearful reactions to novel stimuli in everyday situations (i.e., modeling). To date, no systematic or meta-analytic review examined the role of modeling in parent-child transmission of fear and avoidance in early life. In our systematic review and meta-analysis, we aimed to investigate the effect of modeling parents' fearful reactions on infants' acquisition of fear and avoidance of novel stimuli and explore the moderation of this effect by child behavioral inhibition (BI) and parent trait anxiety. The search conducted in Web Of Science, Pubmed, Embase, and PsycINFO revealed 23 eligible studies for the systematic review and 19 for the meta-analysis. Eligible studies included published studies that measured infant fear and avoidance (infants aged up to 30 months) of novel stimuli following exposure to parental fearful expressions. Meta-analysis findings revealed a significant causal effect of modeling of parental fear on infants' fear [g = .44] and avoidance of novel stimuli [g = .44]. The findings support moderation by child BI on infant avoidance (not fear) acquisition, with the effects being larger for infants with higher BI. However, this moderation was only found, when including both experimental and correlational studies (p > .05), but not when exclusively including experimental studies (p = .17). This meta-analysis provides support for early parent-to-offspring fear transmission: a causal small to medium effect of parents' fearful reactions was shown on infants' fear and avoidance of novel stimuli. Elucidating parent-to-offspring anxiety transmission pathways can inform us about potential fear reduction and prevention strategies.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.