Attention Biases to Threat Link Behavioral Inhibition to Social Withdrawal over Time in Very Young Children

Abstract

Behaviorally inhibited children display a temperamental profile characterized by social withdrawal and anxious behaviors. Previous research, focused largely on adolescents, suggests that attention biases to threat may sustain high levels of behavioral inhibition (BI) over time, helping link early temperament to social outcomes. However, no prior studies examine the association between attention bias and BI before adolescence. The current study examined the interrelations among BI, attention biases to threat, and social withdrawal already manifest in early childhood. Children (N=187, 83 Male, Mage=61.96 months) were characterized for BI in toddlerhood (24 & 36 months). At 5 years, they completed an attention bias task and concurrent social withdrawal was measured. As expected, BI in toddlerhood predicted high levels of social withdrawal in early childhood. However, this relation was moderated by attention bias. The BI-withdrawal association was only evident for children who displayed an attention bias toward threat. The data provide further support for models associating attention with socioemotional development and the later emergence of clinical anxiety.

The dot-probe task to measure emotional attention: A suitable measure in comparative studies?

“…In these younger populations, attentional biases for emotional stimuli are usually not found (Heim-Dreger, Kohlmann, Eschenbeck, & Burkhardt, 2006;Pérez-Edgar et al, 2011;Roy et al, 2008;Susa, Pitică, Benga, & Miclea, 2012;Waters, Kokkoris, Mogg, Bradley, & Pine, 2010;Waters, Mogg, Bradley, & Pine, 2008), although a recent study found avoidance of negative faces and vigilance for positive faces in 8-year-old children (Brown et al, 2013). Brown et al (2013) used a combination of facial expressions as negative stimuli whereas the other studies only used angry expressions, which might explain the different results.…”

Threat perception predicts cognitive behavioral therapy outcomes in anxious children

“…Waters and colleagues [13] found that, in children with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, only severe anxiety or the presence of social phobia was linked to attentional bias to threat on a visual probe task using faces. Similarly, Perez-Edgar and colleagues [14] found that behaviorally inhibited preschoolers (vulnerable to social anxiety) showed more stable forms of social withdrawal if they oriented towards threats in a dot-probe task than if they did not. Complicating these diagnostic specificity findings, however, is the high degree of comorbidity found among anxiety disorders in prepubertal children [1].…”

Affect-biased attention as emotion regulation

“…They are also associated with behavioral outcomes early in development. For example, a recent study demonstrated that attentional biases to threat predicted whether temperamentally inhibited children would demonstrate social withdrawal behaviors at age five [63]. Moreover, recent research has extended ABM training to anxiety reduction in children, as well.…”