Nighttime Fears and Fantasy–Reality Differentiation in Preschool Children

Abstract

Nighttime fears are very common in preschool years. During these years, children's fantasy-reality differentiation undergoes significant development. Our study was aimed at exploring the links between nighttime fears and fantasy-reality differentiation in preschool children. Eighty children (aged: 4-6 years) suffering from severe nighttime fears were compared with 32 non-fearful controls. Fears were assessed using child and parental reports. Children viewed images depicting fantastic or real entities and situations, and were asked to report whether these were imaginary or could occur in real life. The results revealed that children with nighttime fears demonstrated more fantasy-reality confusion compared to their controls. These differences in fantasy-reality differentiation were more pronounced in younger children. Additional significant associations were found between fantasy-reality differentiation and age and specific characteristics of the stimuli. These preliminary findings, suggesting a developmental delay in fantasy-reality differentiation in children with nighttime fears, have significant theoretical and clinical implications.

Preschool Fantasy-Reality Discrimination: Influences of Trait and Primed Fearfulness

“…One possibility is that, when experiencing fear, fearful children claim that events are fantastic as a way of coping with their emotions and reassuring themselves that undesired events will not occur in real life (Samuels & Taylor, 1994). Another possibility is that for fearful children, the experience of fear is so intense that it overwhelms their judgment (Zisenwine et al, 2013). This second idea is consistent with findings that, compared to nonfearful preschoolers, fearful preschoolers showed increased sympathetic activation to fear inducing stimuli (Talge, Donzella, & Gunnar, 2008).…”

“…Next, preschoolers were presented with 12 line drawings (in random order and one at a time) of fantastic (n = 6) or real (n = 6) situations (Zisenwine et al, 2013). These drawings were paired so that one drawing showed a fantastic situation (e.g., a fairy giving candy, a monster hiding in the closet) and another showed a similar real situation (e.g., a mother giving candy, a closet that is empty).…”

“…In summary, evidence suggests that both increased trait fearfulness (Zisenwine et al, 2013) and the momentary experience of fear (Carrick & Quas, 2006;Samuels & Taylor, 1994) can impair fantasyreality discrimination in preschoolers when these factors were examined separately. In the present study, we assessed trait fearfulness and elicited fear directly to investigate the possibility of a trait by state interaction between these two factors.…”

“…This effect was profound for children with less harmonious relationships with their parents, thus suggesting that fearful young children may be more susceptible to adverse changes in their environment. Zisenwine et al (2013) found that preschoolers enrolled in an intervention treating nighttime fears (e.g., fears of the dark or scary entities) performed worse on a fantasy-reality discrimination task. Thus, fearfulness may predict disrupted processing of fantasy and reality.…”

“…Emotional salience, and particularly fear, has been shown to influence children's fantasy-reality discriminations such that children make more mistakes in emotionally charged situations (Sharon & Woolley, 2004;Zisenwine, Kaplan, Kushnir, & Sadeh, 2013). For example, children exposed to frightening pictures of fantastic and real events performed worse at distinguishing between fantasy and reality than did children exposed to neutral pictures.…”