BackgroundParental overprotection has commonly been implicated in the development and maintenance of childhood anxiety disorders. Overprotection has been assessed using questionnaire and observational methods interchangeably; however, the extent to which these methods access the same construct has received little attention. Edwards et al. (2008, 2010) developed a promising parent-report measure of overprotection (OP) and reported that, with parents of pre-school children, the measure correlated with observational assessments and predicted changes in child anxiety symptoms. We aimed to validate the use of the OP measure with mothers of children in middle childhood, and examine its association with child and parental anxiety.MethodsMothers of 90 children (60 clinically anxious, 30 non-anxious) aged 7–12 years completed the measure and engaged in a series of mildly stressful tasks with their child.ResultsThe internal reliability of the measure was good and scores correlated significantly with observations of maternal overprotection in a challenging puzzle task. Contrary to expectations, OP was not significantly associated with child anxiety status or symptoms, but was significantly associated with maternal anxiety symptoms.LimitationsParticipants were predominantly from affluent social groups and of non-minority status. Overprotection is a broad construct, the use of specific sub-dimensions of behavioural constructs may be preferable.ConclusionsThe findings support the use of the OP measure to assess parental overprotection among 7–12 year-old children; however, they suggest that parental responses may be more closely related to the degree of parental rather than child anxiety.

We developed a brief, informant-report interview for assessing autism spectrum conditions (ASC) in adults, called the Developmental, Dimensional and Diagnostic Interview-Adult Version (3Di-Adult); and completed a preliminary evaluation. Informant reports were collected for participants with ASC (n = 39), a non-clinical comparison group (n = 29) and a clinical comparison group (n = 20) who had non-autistic mental health conditions. Mean administration time was 38 min (50 min for ASC). Internal consistency (αs ≥ 0.93) and inter-rater agreement (ICCs ≥ 0.99) were high. When discriminating ASC from non-ASC, the 3Di-Adult showed excellent sensitivity (95%) and specificity (92%). The 3Di-Adult shows promise as a psychometrically sound and time-efficient interview for collecting standardised informant reports for DSM-5 assessments of ASC in adults, in research and clinical practice.

HighlightsChildren with social anxiety disorder were assigned to CBM-I training or no training.We measured the effects on interpretation bias and social anxiety.CBM-I was not associated with greater change in interpretations than no training.Social anxiety symptoms and diagnoses were not influenced by CBM-I training.More intensive CBM-I training may be required.

HighlightsParent-delivered CBT is effective for child anxiety when parent is also highly anxious.Little evidence that improvements in parent tolerance are associated with treatment gains.Adjunct treatment to target parent’s tolerance may not be necessary.Tolerance improves as child anxiety improves, even if not targeted.

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