Strangers and Spiders: How
Young Children with Williams
Syndrome Respond to Social and
Non-social Fear-eliciting Events
-
1
Boston University School of Medicine, Laboratory of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, United States
Statement of Purpose: An abundance of research consistently describes children with Williams syndrome (WS) as extremely social and eager to approach and interact with strangers (Jones et al., 2000; Mervis et al., 2003). Children with WS are also reported to have high levels of anxiety and to exhibit specific fears and even phobias (Dykens, 2003). These behavioral tendencies suggest that children with WS may respond differently when confronted with social and non-social fear-evoking situations. Because previous findings were almost exclusively based on parental reports, the need remains for observational and laboratory-based measures of temperamental propensities in children with WS. This study explores behavioral responses to social and non-social fear-eliciting stimuli in children with WS using standardized laboratory-based assessment methods.
Methods: Participants were 14 children with WS (mean age = 50.1 mos., range 26 – 74 mos.), compared to 12 age- and IQ-matched children with Down syndrome (DS) and 15 age-matched typically developing (TD) children. Participants were administered 9 episodes from a lab-based assessment of temperament (Lab-TAB, Preschool Version, Goldsmith et al., 1999), including episodes designed to elicit social and non-social fear. In the “Stranger Approach” episode children encounter an unfamiliar person, in the “Scary Mask” episode they meet a research assistant wearing a wolf mask, and in two other episodes they are asked to touch fear-eliciting objects (a jumping spider toy and a large gorilla mask). These episodes were videotaped and behaviors were coded according to manual instructions for emotional responses including: fearful facial affect, approach and avoidance behaviors, vocal distress, and postural fear.
Results: As expected, in a social context children with WS exhibited significantly less facial fear than the TD or DS groups (p<.01) and were more likely to approach the stranger than children in either control group (p<.05). Somewhat surprisingly, WS children were also less tentative than controls towards both “non-social” stimuli (p<.05), i.e. the jumping spider and gorilla mask. In response to a person wearing a wolf mask, children with WS responded similarly to TD controls and showed less postural fear than the DS group (p<.05). When compared across episodes, however, both WS and DS children showed significantly more facial and postural fear to the masked person than to the non-social stimuli (p<.05).
Discussion: These results suggest a complex pattern of responses to fear-eliciting situations in children with WS that may not fall neatly along social and non-social lines. Confirming prior research on sociability in WS children, this group showed the least fear when confronted with an unfamiliar person. Contrary to what was expected, children with WS were also less fearful when presented with non-social stimuli. The ambiguity of the situation of encountering a familiar masked person may have been particularly troubling to the children with developmental disorders relative to the other stimuli, though the WS and TD groups may have been better able to puzzle out the socially “playful” nature of the situation than the DS group. The complex pattern of results in this study points to a need for further systematic laboratory-based investigations of social and non-social fearrelated behaviors and the need to clarify how temperamental dispositions (e.g. disinhibition) and anxiety influence this behavior in children with WS.
Conference:
12th International Professional Conference on Williams Syndrome, Garden Grove,CA, United States, 13 Jul - 14 Jul, 2008.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Multidisciplinary Poster Session
Citation:
Lindeke
M,
Skwerer
DP,
Ciciolla
L and
Flusberg
HT
(2009). Strangers and Spiders: How
Young Children with Williams
Syndrome Respond to Social and
Non-social Fear-eliciting Events.
Conference Abstract:
12th International Professional Conference on Williams Syndrome.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.07.048
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Received:
04 May 2009;
Published Online:
04 May 2009.
*
Correspondence:
M. Lindeke, Boston University School of Medicine, Laboratory of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Boston, United States, lindeke@bu.edu