Infant Attachment Security and Early Childhood Behavioral Inhibition Interact to Predict Adolescent Social Anxiety Symptoms

Behavioral inhibition (BI) during the preschool years can be defined as a biologically-based wariness when exposed to novel people, situations and activities, and has been associated with an increased risk of developing anxiety symptoms. Although BI is not a unitary concept, to date, few studies aimed to characterize different subgroups of children, using multidimensional parental measures, and compare them in terms of anxiety symptoms. This study aimed to identify different profiles of children with BI and explore potential differences concerning anxiety symptoms. One hundred and eight mothers of children with a mean age of 54 months completed the Behavioral Inhibition Questionnaire and the Preschool Anxiety Scale. Two profiles of children were identified: children with high and medium levels of BI. Children with high levels of BI displayed more generalized anxiety, social anxiety and physical injury fears symptoms than children with average BI levels. These differences were of greater magnitude for social anxiety symptoms. These findings highlight the importance of early intervention with children who display high levels of BI as early as the preschool years.

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Levels of early-childhood behavioral inhibition predict distinct neurodevelopmental pathways to pediatric anxiety

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291718003999 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 50 (1) ◽

pp. 96-106 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Rany Abend ◽

Caroline Swetlitz ◽

Lauren K. White ◽

Tomer Shechner ◽

Yair Bar-Haim ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Behavioral Inhibition ◽

Attention Bias ◽

Anxiety Symptoms ◽

Childhood And Adolescence ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Linear Mixed Effects ◽

Pediatric Anxiety ◽

History Of ◽

Bias Attention

AbstractBackgroundAnxiety symptoms gradually emerge during childhood and adolescence. Individual differences in behavioral inhibition (BI), an early-childhood temperament, may shape developmental paths through which these symptoms arise. Cross-sectional research suggests that level of early-childhood BI moderates associations between later anxiety symptoms and threat-related amygdala–prefrontal cortex (PFC) circuitry function. However, no study has characterized these associations longitudinally. Here, we tested whether level of early-childhood BI predicts distinct evolving associations between amygdala–PFC function and anxiety symptoms across development.MethodsEighty-seven children previously assessed for BI level in early childhood provided data at ages 10 and/or 13 years, consisting of assessments of anxiety and an fMRI-based dot-probe task (including threat, happy, and neutral stimuli). Using linear-mixed-effects models, we investigated longitudinal changes in associations between anxiety symptoms and threat-related amygdala–PFC connectivity, as a function of early-childhood BI.ResultsIn children with a history of high early-childhood BI, anxiety symptoms became, with age, morenegativelyassociated with right amygdala–left dorsolateral-PFC connectivity when attention was to be maintained on threat. In contrast, with age, low-BI children showed an increasinglypositiveanxiety–connectivity association during the same task condition. Behaviorally, at age 10, anxiety symptoms did not relate to fluctuations in attention bias (attention bias variability, ABV) in either group; by age 13, low-BI children showed a negative anxiety–ABV association, whereas high-BI children showed a positive anxiety–ABV association.ConclusionsEarly-childhood BI levels predict distinct neurodevelopmental pathways to pediatric anxiety symptoms. These pathways involve distinct relations among brain function, behavior, and anxiety symptoms, which may inform diagnosis and treatment.

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