This model assumes that people associate a neutral stimulus with traumatic events, which then leads to a fear reaction. Traditionally, a direct traumatic experience with the objects of fear was considered to be the dominant path to the development of clinical fears and phobias, as emphasized in the conditional model of fear development ( Askew and Field, 2008). Thus, normative fears of adults and children might develop into clinical fears that disrupt mental health not only during the crisis, but also afterwards. However, the crisis is still ongoing, and it is not clear when it will end. People's fears related to COVID-19 seem to be normative during the pandemic and have the adaptive function of inducing people to take care of themselves and others.

Various studies conducted during the ongoing pandemic showed negative effects of the pandemic on children's mental health ( Brown et al., 2020 Jiao et al., 2020 Orgilés et al., 2020 Pisano et al., 2020 Smirni et al., 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has raised many important questions related to children's coping mechanisms in stressful situations, as well as to their general psychological functioning during global health crises. The results of the study emphasize the importance of caregivers' behavior during global health crises and provide some clues as to what caregivers may do to protect their children's mental health in such circumstances. Furthermore, children's exposure to negative information related to COVID-19, provided by their teachers and peers or stemming from the media, directly contributed to the level of children's fear. The more the parents were afraid of COVID-19, the more they expressed this (either verbally or through their behavior), which in turn led to an increase in the children's fear of COVID-19. The results of our path analysis provide support for Rachman's notion of indirect pathways. Parents' anxiety, children's age, and children's general fearfulness were used as covariates. The parents assessed their own fear of COVID-19 and trait anxiety. The children assessed their fear of COVID-19, general fearfulness, negative information transmission, and modeling by their parents, as well as the level of exposure to negative information outside their home.

The survey was conducted online during the COVID-19 national state of emergency in the Republic of Serbia.

The sample consisted of 376 children (59.6% girls), aged 7–19 ( M age = 12.77, SD age = 3.57), and one of their parents ( M age = 42.88, SD age = 6.00). The study aims to explore the contribution of these three factors to the level of children's fear of COVID-19. Besides the direct contact with the objects of fear, this model also includes two indirect pathways to fear acquisition: negative information transmission and modeling. The present study is couched within Rachman's three-pathway theory of fear acquisition ( Rachman, 1977, 1991). 2Laboratory for Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.1Institute for Educational Research, Belgrade, Serbia.Ana Radanović 1,2 *, Isidora Micić 2, Svetlana Pavlović 2 and Ksenija Krstić 2

Fear of growing up test