Priming of perceived control in young children as a buffer against fear-inducing events

Young children (aged 5 and 6) watched videotaped fairy tales that acted to prime child control versus adult control over frightening events. Subsequently, they watched an ambiguous videotape of a child having a medical exam; tapes were varied for presence or absence of fear cues (facial expressions shown by actors). We predicted that children primed for child control versus adult control would show information-processing error patterns that paralleled those previously found for children who were dispositionally high or low in perceived control. As expected, children primed for child control showed processing enhancement whereas those primed for adult control showed processing deficits after witnessing fear cues. Attentional disengagement was found to mediate processing errors. Perceived control--dispositional or temporary--was interpreted as an important organizer of attention to and processing of potentially threatening events.