Behavioral inhibition and social maladjustment: The moderation role of social behaviors during cooperative and competitive peer interactions.

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperamental characterized in early childhood by intense wariness and negative affect toward novelty, and is linked to children's emotional symptoms and peer problems. How children behave or respond toward diverse social contexts can influence the relation between BI and social adjustment. This study investigated the effect of children's affiliative and antagonistic behavior in cooperative and competitive contexts on the relation between early BI and social adjustment using a longitudinal design.

The roles of temperamental inhibition in affective and cognitive empathy in Chinese toddlers.

Empathy, crucial to harmonious interpersonal relationships and moral development, has both affective and cognitive components. Previous studies found that toddlers' temperamental inhibition may influence their empathy, but mainly focused on emotional response to others' distress. Little is known about whether inhibited children's poor empathy is due to high reactivity and social withdrawal when sharing others' affective states, such as distress (affective empathy), or to a difficulty in comprehending and inferring others' perspective (cognitive empathy).