The Stability of Threat Perception Abnormalities and Anxiety Disorder Symptoms in Non-Clinical Children

The current study examined the temporal stability of threat perception abnormalities and anxiety disorder symptoms in non-clinical children. One-hundred-and-thirteen primary school children aged 9 to 13 years completed a self-report measure of anxiety disorder symptoms, and were interviewed individuahy using an ambiguous story paradigm from which a number of threat perception indices were derived. The assessment was repeated some 4 weeks later, so that it became possible to study prospective relationships for threat perception abnormalities and anxiety disorder symptoms. Results indicated that, on both occasions, anxiety disorder symptoms were significantly associated with threat perception abnormalities. Furthermore, threat perception abnormalities were moderately stable with test-retest correlations between 0.44 and 0.63 for the various threat indices and a test-retest correlation of 0.61 for the threat perception composite score. Finally, no evidence was obtained for a direct prospective link between threat perception and anxiety disorder symptoms. Implications for the role of threat perception distortions in the maintenance of anxiety complaints in children are briefly discussed.