Anxiety sensitivity (AS), namely the fear of anxiety symptoms, has been described as a precursor of sub-threshold anxiety levels. Sexton et al. (2003) posited that increased AS would arise from an elevated neuroticism and that both would act as vulnerability factors for panic disorder (PD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms. Accordingly, this study aimed to (1) evaluate the applicability of this model to a pediatric population and (2) examine the influences of the other Big-Five personality dimensions on the four lower-order dimensions of AS (cognitive, physical, control, and physical) and on social phobia (SP), separation anxiety disorder (SAD) and depression symptoms. 200 children (104 girls) aged between 8 and 12 years old (mean age = 132.52 months, SD = 14.5) completed the Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index ( Silverman et al., 1991 ), the Big Five Questionnaire for Children ( Barbaranelli et al., 2003 ), and the Revised’s Children Anxiety and Depression Scale ( Chorpita et al., 2000 ). Regression analyses confirmed that AS and neuroticism together significantly predicted the presence of PD, OCD, and GAD symptoms but also SP, SAD, and depression symptoms. Moreover, neuroticism interacted with extraversion, conscientiousness and agreeableness to significantly predict SP, GAD, and depression. Surprisingly, the global AS score was only predicted by agreeableness, while AS dimensions also specifically related to openness. Finally, AS dimensions did not predict the presence of specific anxiety symptoms. To conclude, the predicting model of anxiety symptoms in children sets neuroticism and AS on the same level, with an unexpected influence of agreeableness on AS, raising the importance of other trait-like factors in the definition of such models. Moreover, AS should be considered as a unitary construct when predicting the presence of anxiety symptoms in children. Future interventions must consider these associations to help children detect and recognize the symptoms of their anxiety and help them to interpret them correctly.

Anxiety is characterized by an increased attention toward threatening information. Anxious adults displayed such attentional biases in tasks involving both implicit and explicit evaluation of Emotional Facial Expressions (EFE). This study investigated whether anxiety can disturb these two levels of information processing in children processing emotional faces. Second, we also intended to examine whether anxious children exhibit comparable responses to adult and child EFE, as children are particularly confronted to peers' faces in their daily life. To this aims, a sample of children with high levels of anxiety on SCARED and STAI-C scales were compared to healthy children ranging in age from 6 to 9 years. They performed a forcedchoice paradigm, consisting in judging the age (adult/child), the gender (male/ female) and the emotion (anger/happiness) of faces presented one by one on a screen. For each condition, correct answers rates (CA) and Reaction Time (RT) were examined for anxious and non-anxious groups. Results showed that children performed generally more accurately for judging emotion as compared to age or gender. However, this effect was moderated by the face's categories, as all children answered with higher accuracy to adult faces in the gender condition, and to children faces in the age condition, meaning they identify more accurately their peers but the sexual characters are more distinguishable on adult faces. All participants were more efficient to identify anger than happiness, but healthy children answered faster to adult angry faces in all conditions, while anxious children did not show this effect and processed more accurately anger on children faces as compared to adult ones. These results suggest that anxious children paid more attention to their peers' disapproval, while non-anxious children focused rather on adults' disapprobation. Further research might examine the role of the social standing and need of social approval in paediatric anxiety.

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