Behavioral Inhibition and Anxiety: The Moderating Roles of Inhibitory Control and Attention Shifting

Abstract

Behavioral inhibition (BI), a temperament identified in early childhood, is associated with social reticence in childhood and an increased risk for anxiety problems in adolescence and adulthood. However, not all behaviorally inhibited children remain reticent or develop an anxiety disorder. One possible mechanism accounting for the variability in the developmental trajectories of BI is a child’s ability to successfully recruit cognitive processes involved in the regulation of negative reactivity. However, separate cognitive processes may differentially moderate the association between BI and later anxiety problems. The goal of the current study was to examine how two cognitive processes - attention shifting and inhibitory control - laboratory assessed at 48 months of age moderated the association between 24-month BI and anxiety symptoms in the preschool years. Results revealed that high levels of attention shifting decreased the risk for anxiety symptoms in children with high levels of BI, whereas high levels of inhibitory control increased this risk for anxiety symptoms. These findings suggest that different cognitive processes may influence relative levels of risk or adaptation depending upon a child’s temperamental reactivity.

Behavioral Inhibition and Developmental Risk: A Dual-Processing Perspective

“…In this model, cognitive states associated with controlled processing such as response monitoring, planfulness, and holding rules in working memory function to maintain, prolong, and amplify initial automatic biases. Findings demonstrating increased risk for anxiety among BI children with high levels of inhibitory control (eg, White et al, 2011) are consistent with this model and with findings in the literature relating heightened performance monitoring to anxious apprehension/worry (see Moser et al, 2013). The idea of risk potentiation and a positive feedback loop is also supported by the repeated finding that despite comparable behavioral performance, children with a history of BI show exaggerated neural responses on performance monitoring Lahat et al (in press) and conflict detection tasks under affectively neutral (Lahat et al, in press;Lamm et al, 2014) and emotionally salient (Jarcho et al, 2013 conditions.…”

“…For example, White et al (2011) examined the relations between BI assessed at 24 months and two separate control processes, attention shifting and inhibitory control, assessed in the laboratory at age 4. The authors further examined how BI and these different control processes related to anxiety symptoms at 4 and 5 years of age.…”

“…Specifically, the influence of behavioral indices of control on risk for children with a history of BI depends on the particular control process being assessed. For example, White et al (2011) found that performance on an attention shifting task was indeed protective against the development of anxiety in children with early BI. But importantly, in the same sample of children, performance on an inhibitory control task was not only not protective, but conferred increased risk for later anxiety.…”

Using the ICF Framework to Explore the Multiple Interacting Factors Associated with Developmental Coordination Disorder

“…For children with DCD, problems in this domain include difficulty with behavioural inhibition, which describes a fearful style of reacting when confronted with a novel task. Behavioural inhibition is also linked to increased social reticence and a heightened risk for developing anxiety problems [73]. The difficulty that these children have with learning to perform a new task may be related to a problems in effortful control, defined as the ability to suppress dominant responses (i.e., fear and anxiety).…”

Early Violence Exposure and Executive Function: Implications for Psychopathology and Other Cautionary Points

“…In particular, compromised self-regulation may be related to developmental trajectories that lead to psychopathology. One important aspect of self-regulation that has been linked to both externalizing and internalizing problems [Clark, Prior, & Kinsella, 2002;Hajcak, Franklin, Foa, & Simons, 2008;McDermott et al, 2009;Séguin & Zelazo, 2005;Wåhlstedt, Thorell, & Bohlin, 2008;Weinberg, Olvet, & Hajcak, 2010;White, McDermott, Degnan, Henderson, & Fox, 2011] is executive function: the control over thought and action in situations that require problem solving [Zelazo, Carlson, & Kesek, 2008].…”