Testing a Cognitive Pathway Between Temperament and Childhood Anxiety

Abstract

Though early fearful temperament is a robust predictor of anxiety disorder symptoms it remains unclear what links these two factors. Cognitive theories of anxiety have recently implicated individual differences in attentional control and worry as mediators of this relation; however, this pathway remains largely untested in youth. The current study examined the associations between fearful temperament, attentional control, worry, and anxiety during a period critical for the development of attentional control and worry. Participants were 152 parent-child dyads between the ages of 7 and 12 years old. Parents completed measures of child temperament and executive function, and children completed measures of worry and anxiety symptoms. A serial multiple mediator analysis was conducted with PROCESS for SPSS to examine a cognitive pathway between temperament and anxiety in this cross-sectional sample. Overall the data supported the study hypotheses. Attentional control and worry serially mediated the relation between temperament and anxiety, with worry mediating the relation between attentional control and anxiety. The study also tested two reversed mediational models and found that the directionality in the proposed model was unique. These findings suggest that children who are more fearful are less able to control their attention. Among these children, worry may emerge as a low effort cognitive process, which contributes to increased anxiety.