Anxiety is the most common mental health problem affecting children. It has significant consequences, affecting children’s academic performance, family well-being and social relationships. Furthermore, if left untreated, child anxiety can lead to longer term mental health problems including anxiety and depression in adulthood. In this symposium, we present research which aims to advance current understanding of anxiety, with a specific focus on children. The first presentation (Dodd) focuses on attentional processes associated with anxiety in preschool-aged children. Extensive research has examined the role of aberrant attentional processes, in particular, attentional biases for threat, in adults and an emerging body of research has extended this work to children. However, to date very little is known about the role of attention to threat in early anxiety. In this study, a child-friendly eyetracking task is used alongside measures of attentional control and child anxiety to begin to capture early associations. The second presentation (Osmanagaoglu) outlines novel tasks developed to explore reactions to uncertainty in children aged 8-11 years. Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) shows strong associations with anxiety in adults and children but the field is heavily reliant on self-report questionnaires. This study aims to develop tasks that are suitable for use with children that may be able to capture individual differences in reactions to uncertainty. The third presentation (Pearcey) focuses on how cognitive and social processes that underpin childhood anxiety disorders cluster together and how this is associated with traditional diagnostic boundaries. The final presentation (Reardon) addresses the practical question of how we may best screen for anxiety in school-aged children. In this presentation, the development of a new short-form version of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale will be outlined and initial evidence regarding its psychometric properties will be provided.

Dr Helen Dodd is an associate professor of developmental psychopathology at the university of reading. Her research focuses on the development of anxiety disorders in children. She has a specific interest in early risk factors for anxiety and cognitive processes that underpin anxiety risk. Her latest research is funded by a future research leaders fellowship from the economic and social research council, UK. She has also received funding from the Royal Society and the Australian research council. Helen completed her PhD in cognitive science at the Macquarie Centre for cognitive science in Sydney, Australia in 2009. She was then a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for emotional health, Macquarie university until 2011. In this role, she worked with Jennifer Hudson on a longitudinal study examining risk factors for child anxiety. In 2011 Helen moved to the university of east Anglia, UK before joining the University of reading in 2013. Helen’s research is published in international clinical psychology journals. She has received early career awards from the British psychological society and anxiety and depression association of America in recognition of her work. Helen supervises a number of doctoral students and is a senior member of the anxiety and depression in young people (ANDY) research group at the University of Reading.