Shyness is typically associated with avoidant social behavior and restricted affect in new social situations. However, we know considerably less about how one child's shyness influences another child's behavior and affect in new social situations. Children's shyness was parent-reported when children were age 3 (N = 105, 52 girls, M= 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe risk potentiation model of cognitive control posits that inhibitory control heightens children's risk for problematic outcomes in the context of shyness because it limits shy children's ability to engage flexibly with their environment. Although there is empirical support for the risk potentiation model, most studies have been restricted to parent report of children's outcomes and do not consider the influence of shyness and inhibitory control on other children's social behavior. In the present study, we used an actor-partner interdependence model to examine whether shyness and inhibitory control at Time 1 ( = 105, 52 girls, = 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFShyness is a temperamental trait that refers to fear and wariness in the face of social novelty and is known to have a biological basis. One proposed physiological correlate of shyness has been the change in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) from baseline to a stressor. However, past research linking shyness and RSA change has been mixed, which may be, in part, due to a failure to carefully consider the context under which RSA change is measured and the directionality of relations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe dysregulation of social fear has been widely studied in children's shyness, but we know little about how shy children regulate during unfair treatment. We first characterized developmental patterns of children's shyness (N = 304, n = 153; 74% White, 26% Other) across 2 (M = 2.07), 3 (M = 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGeneration Z (1997-2012) has been characterized in the popular media as more socially inhibited, cautious, and risk averse than prior generations, but are these differences found between generations on an empirical level? And, if so, are these differences observable within generations in response to acute events such as the COVID-19 pandemic? Using a simplified time-lagged design to control for age effects, we examined between-group differences in self-reported shyness in young adult participants ( = 806, age: 17-25 years) at the same developmental age and university from the millennial generation (tested: 1999-2001; = 266, = 19.67 years, 72.9% female) and Generation Z (tested: 2018-2020), the latter generation stratified into ( = 263, = 18.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe risk potentiation model of cognitive control posits that inhibitory control may heighten the risk for problematic outcomes among some temperamental styles characterized by high reactivity. Because shyness is a temperamental style defined as wariness and heightened reactivity to social novelty, we examined whether the interaction between shyness and inhibitory control predicted social support seeking differently depending on context using a between-subjects design. Typically developing preschoolers ( = 167, 52% female, = 4.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough correlates of temperamental regulatory processes in childhood have been well established, there is considerably less work examining correlates and moderators of rudimentary forms of temperamental regulation in infancy. We examined whether infants' physiological regulation indexed via changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) across phases of the Still-Face Paradigm moderated the association between maternal-reported infant regulatory capacity at 8 months (N = 50, M = 8.51 months, SD = 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe prospect of surgery is a unique psychologically threatening context for children, often leading to experiences of preoperative anxiety. Recent research suggests that individual differences in children's temperament may influence responses to the surgical setting. In the present study, we examined whether individual differences in shyness were related to differences in frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) delta-beta correlation, a proposed neural correlate of emotion regulation and dysregulation, among children anticipating surgery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough the mean age of onset of social anxiety disorder (SAD) is during adolescence, we know relatively little about the neurodevelopmental correlates of subsyndromal social anxiety in early adolescence before SAD manifests. Here we examined frontal EEG alpha/delta ratio (a putative proxy of brain maturation) in relation social anxiety symptoms across early adolescence. Resting regional EEG spectral power measures were collected continuously for 4 min (2 min eyes-open, 2 min eyes-closed) in slow (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough inhibitory control is typically associated with positive outcomes, several theoretical frameworks suggest that too little and too much inhibitory control may be problematic. Using a longitudinal, latent variable approach, we examined whether a multi-method index of inhibitory control at Time 1 (N = 105, 52 girls, M = 3.50 years, 87% White) predicted observed social behavior with an unfamiliar peer and maternal report of preschoolers' mental health difficulties at Time 2 (M = 4.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFShyness has long been identified as a vulnerability factor to developing psychosocial problems, but there is heterogeneity in these observed outcomes. One potential factor underlying these relations is individual differences in threat sensitivity. Using a longitudinal design, we examined whether attentional biases toward social threat and safety measured during adulthood moderated the association between shyness measured in emerging adulthood (N = 83, n = 48; M = 23.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough children's self-regulation has been widely regarded as a panacea, there may be individual differences in the adaptiveness of self-regulatory processes depending on temperamental factors. We examined whether individual differences in two conceptually distinct types of self-regulation (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOne long-standing theoretical model of shyness proposes that the origins and maintenance of shyness are associated with an approach-avoidance motivational conflict (Asendorpf, 1990), such that shy individuals are motivated to socially engage (high approach motivation) but are too anxious to do so (high avoidance motivation). However, this model has not been empirically tested in predicting the development of shyness. In two separate longitudinal studies, we used the Carver and White (1994) Behavioral Inhibition and Activation System (BIS/BAS) scales as a proxy of approach-avoidance motivations and growth curve analyses to examine whether individual differences in these hypothesized motivational tendencies were associated with the development of shyness across 3 years from late childhood to adolescence (Study 1, = 1284; 49.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough excessive avoidance has been implicated in mental health problems and socioemotional difficulties, relatively little is known about dynamic changes of avoidance behaviors. We used a latent class growth analysis to examine the temporal course of avoidance behaviors in real time and determined whether the derived classes were distinguishable on temperament and physiological markers of regulation and reactivity (N = 153; M = 4.20 years).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChild Psychiatry Hum Dev
December 2022
Negative emotionality in childhood is typically positively associated with internalizing behaviors, whereas inhibitory control is negatively associated with internalizing behaviors. Recent work, however, has also found that inhibitory control paradoxically increases risk for internalizing behaviors in the context of some reactive temperamental styles. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether inhibitory control moderated the association between negative emotionality and prospective internalizing behaviors in typically developing preschoolers (N = 104, 51 girls, M = 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe authors examined how children's frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) theta/beta ratio-an index of neurocognitive control-changed from baseline to a social stressor, and whether these EEG changes moderated the relation between temperament and anxiety. Children (N = 152; M = 7.82 years, 52% male, 81% White) had their EEG recorded during a baseline and speech anticipation condition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe reactivity-regulation model suggests that the origins and maintenance of shyness results from relatively high levels of reactivity in combination with relatively low levels of regulation. Although this model has received some empirical support, there are still issues regarding directionality of the relations among variables and a dearth of studies examining the joint influence of reactivity and regulation on the prospective development of shyness. Using a longitudinal design, we first examined whether the relations among reactivity, regulation, and shyness were unidirectional or bidirectional in a sample of 1284 children (49.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResults: Young adults born at extremely low birth weight (prenatal adversity; = 64 = 23.14 years, = 1.26 years) had a lower alpha/delta ratio score compared to normal birth weight controls ( 76, = 23.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough children's self-regulation has been conceptualized positively, there may be individual differences in self-regulatory processes, some of which might not be adaptive depending on temperamental factors. We examined whether individual differences in children's self-regulation (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough child maltreatment is a major public health concern, which adversely affects psychological and physical development, we know relatively little concerning psychophysiological and personality factors that may modify risk in children exposed to maltreatment. Using a three-wave, short-term prospective design, we examined the influence of individual differences in two disparate psychophysiological measures of risk (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBecause shy children are at risk for poor academic achievement, it is important to examine factors that contribute to variability in the relation between individual differences in shyness and cognitive functioning before school entry. The authors examined whether on-task facilitative private speech-a proxy of self-regulation-moderated the association between individual differences in shyness and performance on an executive function (EF) task in 52 typically developing 4-year-olds. They found that private speech interacted with shyness to predict performance on the EF task in girls but not in boys.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough inhibitory control (IC) is associated with children's positive adjustment, we know relatively little about factors underlying its development. We examined whether baseline and on-task respiratory sinus arrhythmia [(RSA); a physiological measure of self-regulation] and private speech (a behavioral measure of self-regulation) interacted to confer differences on directly observed IC in 52 typically developing 4-year olds. We found that baseline RSA moderated the association between private speech and IC, such that private speech positively predicted IC in children with relatively higher baseline RSA, but was unrelated to IC in children with relatively lower RSA.
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