Self-reported fears: a comparison study of youths with and without an intellectual disability.
Kids with mild-moderate ID show more intense and younger-pattern fears—screen for animal and supernatural phobias.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked the kids about their fears. Half had mild or moderate intellectual disability. Half were typical peers.
Everyone filled out the same fear checklist. The researchers compared the two groups.
What they found
Kids with ID reported more fears overall. Their fear pattern looked like that of younger children.
Animal fears and supernatural fears stood out. These two types best told the groups apart.
How this fits with other research
Johnson et al. (1994) showed adults with ID can give reliable self-reports. This study proves kids can too.
Ramirez et al. (2007) later built the FSAMR for adults. It extends the same fear-survey idea to grown-ups.
Lindsay et al. (2004) validated a mood scale for teens with ID. Together, these papers give you a full toolkit: fears, mood, and general emotions.
Tyler et al. (2021) used parent and teacher reports. The current study used self-report. The two methods do not clash—they simply capture different angles of internalizing problems.
Why it matters
When you assess a child with mild-moderate ID, add a quick fear checklist. Ask about animals, ghosts, and monsters. These items flag the biggest gaps. Use the data to pick targets for exposure or coping-skills training.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Normal fear plays an essential role in human development and experience, and much research attention has been devoted to its study in the general population. In contrast, the normal fears of youths with intellectual disabilities have largely been ignored. The present paper reports the normative fears of 187 youths with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities. Data were also gathered from 372 youths of average intelligence for comparison purposes. All respondents were aged between 7 and 18 years. Fear was assessed using the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-II (FSSC-II), an instrument which has been psychometrically validated in samples with and without disabilities. The youths with disabilities reported significantly higher levels of fearfulness and a greater range of fears than youths without disabilities. The content of their fears was also more likely to resemble those of younger children without disabilities. The fears that best discriminated between the two samples were those related to supernatural phenomena or animals. Included were fears of bees, lizards, ghosts or similar eerie things, and cemeteries. Nevertheless, there was considerable similarity between the two samples. For both samples, females reported a higher level of fearfulness and a greater range of fear than males, and fears of death and danger were endorsed as arousing the strongest fear for all respondents. The theoretical and applied implications of these results are discussed.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 1996 · doi:n/a