Development of anxiety disorders is associated with neurobiological changes in areas that are a critical part of the fear neurocircuitry. Fear conditioning paradigms can offer insight into the mechanisms underlying the neurobiological ontogeny of anxiety. A small number of studies have focused on the effects of age and anxiety separately in school age children. The present study aimed to investigate these effects in 8-13 year old children with higher and lower trait anxiety. We examined differential fear conditioning and extinction using skin conductance responses and fear-potentiated startle in 60 children recruited from a low-income urban population. The results indicated that children under 10 years of age show poor discrimination of conditioned stimuli, and that anxiety increases fear responses during fear acquisition. After controlling for age and trauma exposure, fear-potentiated startle to the safety cue predicted child anxiety levels suggesting that impaired safety signal learning may be a risk factor for anxiety disorders in adulthood. Identifying risk phenotypes in children may provide opportunities for early intervention and prevention of illness.

Background A growing number of studies indicate that low income, African American men and women living in urban environments are at high risk for trauma exposure, which may have intergenerational effects. The current study employed psychophysiological methods to describe biomarkers of anxiety in children of traumatized mothers. Methods Study participants were recruited from a highly traumatized urban population, comprising mother-child pairs (n=36) that included school-age children. Mothers were assessed for childhood abuse with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, as well as symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The children were measured for dark-enhanced startle responses and heart-rate variability. Results Dark-enhanced startle was found to be higher in children whose mothers had high levels of childhood physical abuse, as compared to children whose mothers had low levels of physical abuse. During the habituation phase of the startle experiment, children whose mothers had high levels of childhood emotional abuse had higher sympathetic system activation compared to children of mothers with low emotional abuse. These effects remained significant after accounting for maternal symptoms of PTSD and depression, as well as for the child’s trauma exposure. Conclusion These results demonstrate that children of mothers who have history of childhood physical and emotional abuse have higher dark-enhanced startle as well as greater sympathetic nervous system activation than children of mothers who do not report a history of childhood physical and emotional abuse, and emphasize the utility of physiological measures as pervasive biomarkers of psychopathology that can easily be measured in children.

The purpose of this study was to examine students' and teachers' perceptions of their relationship. Eighty-nine African American children in Grades 3 through 6 and their teachers independently rated the quality of the teacher-child relationship and completed a range of questionnaires regarding the children's school-related adjustment. Teacher and child reports on the quality of the relationship were correlated significantly (r = 0.33, p < 0.01). Positive teacher-child relationships, as reported by children, predicted several school outcome variables above and beyond teacher ratings of the relationship. Specifically, they predicted better classroom rule compliance, more interest in school, more feelings of connectedness towards school and more involvement in school-related activities. Generally teachers' perceptions of the relationships were best at predicting teacher rated outcomes and children's perceptions of the relationships were best at predicting children's rated outcomes, highlighting the importance of considering both children's and teachers' points of view as well as the likely contributions of shared method and informant variances. Findings suggest that teacher efforts to improve their sensitivity to child needs and supportiveness of students can have a broader influence on children's overall school functioning. This study also calls for the development of intervention studies to enhance the quality of teacher-child relationships and better examine the direction of the effects suggested by this study.Children growing up in American inner cities face numerous stressors such as poverty and exposure to violence that increase their risk for 346 School Psychology International

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