Changing the Environment to Improve the Outlook

An Interview with Developmental Psychologist Nathan Fox

Abstract: Research by Nathan Fox and other scientists shows how changes in environmental conditions can help temper the negative effects of a child’s predisposition toward fearfulness and anxiety. If certain negative triggers are eliminated or modified, a child’s genetic tendency toward inappropriate fearfulness and anxiety may be overcome—or not expressed in the first place—resulting in long-term benefits for the individual and society. These children can benefit greatly through positive early intervention by parents, health care providers, teachers and others.

Council Member Nathan A. Fox is Professor of Human Development at the University of Maryland, College Park. A developmental psychologist, he has examined the interface of brain development and temperament. He has served as associate editor of Developmental Psychology and as editor of Infant Behavior and Development. He was president of Division 7 of the American Psychological Association, and a member of the Research Network on Early Experience and Brain Development. He earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Harvard University.

Your work is about children who are anxious and fearful. How do children become so fearful?

First, well-supported children can overcome their genetic blueprinting, but identifying that blueprinting early is essential. Our research shows how a stressful environment interacts with a genetic predisposition to fearfulness to create fearful children. Both parts of that equation—genes and environment—are necessary for the problem to surface. Think of it as similar to having an allergy to peanuts; you only get ill if you eat peanuts. Similarly, children can have an inherited tendency but never develop fearfulness, because they don’t grow up in a particularly stressful situation. Our research tries to identify how teachers, parents and others can create the optimal environment in which children can grow up, so that these tendencies toward fearfulness are not expressed in the first place, or are overcome.

How would we recognize this problem in children?

The difficulty these children experience is a social difficulty—a fearfulness when facing novel situations or unfamiliar people, including children their own age. We can identify the fearful temperament early in the first year of life. The brain circuitry that these children have is distinct and different from that of other children. You might think of this circuitry as wiring that lowers the threshold to react to stress and alters the fundamental foundation of their brain architecture.

Add to that susceptibility an exposure to stress, which can, over time, result in brain architecture that develops a hypersensitivity to any new situation. These are children who, even as infants, get very upset, even when introduced to very mild but novel auditory or visual stimuli—a brightly colored mobile, unfamiliar sounds, or people talking all at once. Such children represent about 15 percent of the population. There is a high probability that they will show temperamental fearfulness a year or two later.