Assessing fears and related anxieties in children and adolescents with learning disabilities or mild mental retardation.

The team gave a fear survey to students with learning disabilities or mild mental retardation. They asked kids and teens to rate how much different things scare them.

The survey looked at age, gender, and disability type. The goal was to see which kids report the most fear and worry.

Adolescent boys with mild mental retardation had the highest fear of failure and criticism. Girls reported more total fears and general worry than boys.

Younger students showed more overall anxiety. The results show fear is not the same across age, gender, or disability.

Lemons et al. (2015) later tested the same worry scales in youth with autism. They also found that parent and child answers rarely match, so using both voices matters.

Antezana et al. (2019) and Eussen et al. (2016) show girls with autism display different symptoms than boys. Together these papers warn that gender changes how kids show fear and anxiety across diagnoses.

Shyu et al. (2026) link social anxiety to poor quality of life in autistic teens. The 2007 fear survey foreshadowed this by showing anxiety peaks in boys with cognitive delays.

When you assess anxiety in kids with LD or mild ID, ask separate questions about fear of failure and total worry. Expect boys entering puberty to score high on failure items and girls to endorse more items overall. Use these patterns to pick targets for coping skills and self-advocacy training.