Attention Biases to Threat and Behavioral Inhibition in Early Childhood Shape Adolescent Social Withdrawal

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperament characterized in young children by a heightened sensitivity to novelty, social withdrawal, and anxious behaviors. For many children, these social difficulties dissipate over time. For others, patterns of social withdrawal continue into adolescence. Over ti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Emotion (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2010-06, Vol.10 (3), p.349-357
Main Authors: Pérez-Edgar, Koraly, Bar-Haim, Yair, McDermott, Jennifer Martin, Chronis-Tuscano, Andrea, Pine, Daniel S, Fox, Nathan A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescent Development
Affectivity. Emotion
Anxiety - psychology
Attention
Behavioral Inhibition
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child Development
Cognitive Bias
Developmental psychology
Emotions
Facial Expression
Fear - psychology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Inhibition (Personality)
Inhibition, Psychological
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Personality. Affectivity
Psychiatric Status Rating Scales
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social Alienation - psychology
Social Isolation
Temperament
Threat
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Summary:Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperament characterized in young children by a heightened sensitivity to novelty, social withdrawal, and anxious behaviors. For many children, these social difficulties dissipate over time. For others, patterns of social withdrawal continue into adolescence. Over time, attention biases to threat may influence the stability of BI and its association with social withdrawal, ultimately modulating the risk for anxiety disorders in BI children. However, we know relatively little about the cognitive processes that accompany BI and shape later socioemotional functioning. We examined the relations among BI in childhood, attention biases to threat in adolescence, and adolescent social withdrawal in a longitudinal study ( N = 126, Mean age = 15 years). As has been reported in anxious adults, adolescents who were behaviorally inhibited as toddlers and young children showed heightened attention bias to threat. In addition, attention bias to threat moderated the relation between childhood BI and adolescent social withdrawal.
ISSN:1528-3542
1931-1516
DOI:10.1037/a0018486