The Study of Behavioral Inhibition and Temperamental Shyness Across Four Academic Generations

Trajectories of socially anxious behavior from age 5 to 13: Temperamental and sociocognitive pathways

“…By middle childhood, children who are ineffective at producing and understanding social signals may feel as if they are unable to accurately predict how social interactions will unfold, resulting in sensitivity to situations in which one might be evaluated or the object of social attention. This may negatively influence the child's self‐perceived social efficacy and possibly result in greater social avoidance and concerns related to social evaluation, as captured by the speech task used in our study (Buss, 1986a; Schmidt & Buss, 2010). Over development, there is likely a transaction between a child's ineffective social interactions and their feedback from peers such that a child begins to feel increasingly nervous in future social encounters resulting in increases in social anxiety, and this heightened social anxiety may then result in poorer feedback from peers (Henderson et al, 2018).…”

Do Shy Preschoolers Interact Differently When Learning Language With a Social Robot? An Analysis of Interactional Behavior and Word Learning

“…Additionally, based on our data, we also suggest that future studies examining learning processes such as word learning should create scenarios in which children are tested at multiple time points, because this allows for a more precise focus on the specific learning processes, especially in shy children. On the other hand, given the high incidence of shyness as a normal variation in human personality in the overall population (Zimbardo et al, 1975;Kagan, 1994;Schmidt et al, 2020), our results also demonstrate that a nuanced assessment of shyness (e.g., parental assessment via a standardized questionnaire) is preferable, especially when it is central to the research question. In this vein, it is worth noting that temperamental characteristics are rarely collected in studies, and tests assessing children's linguistic and cognitive abilities are often administered by (almost) unfamiliar interaction partners.…”

“…Extensive past research underlines the prevalence of shyness, indicating that up to 90% of the population experience shyness at some point in their lives with about 15% of individuals displaying a shyness that emerges in early development and remains stable across contexts (Zimbardo et al, 1975;Kagan, 1994;Schmidt et al, 2020). Shyness in children can be conceptualized as an increased and persistent behavioral inhibition in unfamiliar social situations or during perceived social evaluation that can result in withdrawal from interaction (Putnam et al, 2006;Rubin et al, 2009;Barker et al, 2014; see Schmidt and Buss, 2010, for a review).…”

Infant Effortful Control Mediates Relations Between Nondirective Parenting and Internalising-Related Child Behaviours in an Autism-Enriched Infant Cohort

“…Behavioural Inhibition was measured using the IBQ-R Fear subscale at 8 months for our primary analyses (infant distress or an inhibited approach to novel objects, social stimuli or novelty; 13/16 questions on aversive responses to unfamiliar people or places, while 3 probe startle responses to sudden changes). We selected this subscale as a proxy for behavioural inhibition due to the similarity of the questions to Kagan’s original definition (“withdrawal and timidity to the unexpected”; Schmidt et al, 2020 , p.7) and given its explicit definition in the IBQ-R as reflecting behaviour denoting ‘inhibition of approach towards novel and/or intense stimuli’ (Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003). Other multi-method approach studies have used IBQ-R Fear (Crockenberg & Leerkes, 2006 ; Gensthaler et al, 2013 ) and ECBQ Shyness subscales as a proxy of parent-reported behavioural inhibition to complement observed behavioural inhibition (e.g.…”

“…Early behavioural inhibition is defined as ‘a tendency of some children to withdraw and/or exhibit negative affect in response to novel stimuli (people, places, events, and objects)’ (Gartstein et al, 2010 , p. 652) and is broadly characterised as a form of avoidance and distress towards novelty (Fox et al, 2020 ). These behaviours emerge early, and individual differences are stable from 4 months (Rothbart, 1988 ; Schmidt et al, 2020 ). Although not true of all children with a history of behavioural inhibition, those displaying the temperament in infancy are at elevated likelihood of developing anxiety in adulthood (Frenkel et al, 2015 ).…”