The relation between early behavioural inhibition and later social anxiety, independent of attentional biases to threat

ABSTRACT

Early behavioural inhibition, a temperamental characteristic defined by fearful, overly-sensitive, avoidant, or withdrawn reactions to the unknown, is a predictor of later social anxiety. However, not all behaviourally inhibited children develop anxiety problems, and attentional bias to threat has been proposed to moderate the relation between behavioural inhibition and anxiety. The current study aimed to further specify the relation between early behavioural inhibition and later social anxiety by testing this potentially moderating role of childhood attentional bias to threat. Behavioural inhibition was assessed during toddlerhood (age 2.5 years) using laboratory observations of children’s behaviours in response to unknown objects and situations. When children were 7.5 years old, attentional bias was measured in 86 children (46 girls) using both a visual probe task and a visual search task with angry and happy faces. Child social anxiety was measured using questionnaires completed by the child and both parents, and clinical interviews conducted with both parents. Our results showed that while early behavioural inhibition was related to later social anxiety, there was no evidence for a moderation of this relation by attentional bias, suggesting that the relation between early fearful temperament and later social anxiety holds across children, independent of their attentional biases.

KEYWORDS:

• Temperament
• behavioural inhibition
• social anxiety
• attentional bias

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Notes

1 The reliability indices reported here differ slightly from the ones previously reported in Aktar et al. (2019) because (1) we report Spearman-Brown corrected values here and (2) our current sample included slightly fewer children.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Dutch National Science Foundation (grant number VICI 453-09-001 awarded to Susan Bögels and grant number Rubicon 446-16-021 awarded to Evin Aktar).