There were a number of unexpected non-significant findings in our study that warrant some discussion.
The most notable non-significant result was child state anxiety (i.e., SUDS) before and after
the task, which was not significantly affected by different rearing behaviors. Anticipatory anxiety sig- nificantly decreased for all participants from pre- to post-experimental manipulation, which suggests
a practice and/or habituation effect over time. Post-task anxiety significantly decreased for clinically
anxious children only, yet it remained stable and low for the non-anxious group. Notably, the interaction
is largely due to anxious children commencing at a higher state anxiety level at baseline and
acclimating over time. Task anxiety in children, therefore, was not significantly affected by different
perfectionistic rearing behaviors. The finding is unexpected given that verbal instructions for the task
at baseline for all children attempted to induce evaluative threat through verbal reference to scoring
results and comparison with peers. Previous studies have found that the salience of evaluative threat
is associated with the extent of negative affect experienced by perfectionists (Frost et al., 1995). It is
likely that the evaluative threat element in our current task might not have been sufficiently salient to
increase state anxiety or that the task may have been too easy.