Responses to an unfamiliar adult were examined in infants of mothers with social phobia (N= 79) and infants of nonanxious comparison mothers (N= 77) at 10 and 14 months in a social referencing paradigm. On each occasion, a female stranger first interacted with the mother and then approached and interacted with the infant. Over time, infants of mothers with social phobia showed increasing avoidance of the stranger, particularly when they were behaviorally inhibited. In boys, maternal social phobia was associated with increasing fearful responses. Infant avoidance was predicted by expressed maternal anxiety and low levels of encouragement to interact with the stranger. The findings are discussed in relation to theories concerning the intergenerational transmission of social anxiety.

Mothers with social phobia show specific parenting difficulties, and their infants show early signs of reduced social responsiveness that are related to both individual infant differences and a lack of maternal encouragement to engage in social interactions.

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Individuals with social phobia display social information processing biases yet their aetiological significance is unclear. Infants of mothers with social phobia and control infants' responses were assessed at 10 days, 10 and 16 weeks, and 10 months to faces versus non-faces, variations in intensity of emotional expressions, and gaze direction. Infant temperament and maternal behaviours were also assessed. Both groups showed a preference for faces over non-faces at 10 days and 10 weeks, and full faces over profiles at 16 weeks; they also looked more to high vs. low intensity angry faces at 10 weeks, and fearful faces at 10 months; however, index infants' initial orientation and overall looking to high-intensity fear faces was relatively less Correspondence should be addressed to: Summers for assistance, variously, with recruitment and assessment of study participants, and coding of interaction data. We thank Nancy Snidman and Jerome Kagan for their support with assessment of infant behavioural inhibition. We thank Mark Johnson, John Morton and Francesca Simion for their invaluable advice on the design of this study. than controls at 10 weeks. This was not explained by infant temperament or maternal behaviours. The findings suggest that offspring of mothers with social phobia show processing biases to emotional expressions in infancy.

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