Childhood behavioral inhibition is associated with impaired mentalizing in adolescence

Abstract

Recent advances suggest that impairment in social cognition (SC) may play a role in the development of social anxiety (SA). However, very few studies have analyzed whether SA fosters poorer social-cognitive development as it leads to social avoidance. This study aimed to analyze whether retrospectively assessed behavioral inhibition (BI) (i.e., an early form of SA) in childhood is associated with a deficit in social cognition operationalized as impairment of mentalizing (MZ) in adolescence. A sample of 256 adolescents (range: 12–18 years; mean age: 14.7 years; SD = 1.7) from general population were assessed for MZ capacities and retrospective BI through self-report and interview measures. Results comparing three groups of adolescents with different levels of childhood BI (low, moderate or high) and controlling for concurrent SA and depression reveal that the higher the level of BI, the lower the level of MZ. These results were consistent for almost all mentalization measures, including when both extreme (i.e., high vs. low BI) and non-extreme (i.e., high vs. moderate BI) were compared in both self-report and interview measures and in both dimensions of MZ (i.e., MZ referred to others’ and to own mental states). These findings support that childhood forms of SA are associated to deficit in SC in adolescence. A possible bi-directional relationship between SA and SC, and the role that it may play in the pathway to clinical SA are discussed.

Associations between schizotypal personality features, mentalizing difficulties and thought problems in a sample of community adolescents

“…This resonates with data suggesting that mentalizing deficits are linked with the level of interpersonal withdrawal in patient samples (Frith, 2014;Sergi et al, 2007;Weijers et al, 2018). Our results are also consistent with recent findings demonstrating links between diminished mentalizing capacities in adolescence and retrospective reports of social anxiety in childhood (Ballespí, Pérez-Domingo, Vives, Sharp, & Barrantes-Vidal, 2018). Young people who withdraw from interpersonal contact in the context of social anxiety, may encounter less social interaction opportunities, essential for developing a capacity to understand mental states (Banerjee & Henderson, 2001).…”

The Relationship Among Mentalization, Mindfulness, Working Memory, and Schizotypal Personality Traits in the General Population

“…However, the factor structure of MZQ is not consistent ( Paridaens, 2017 ; Song and Choi, 2017 ), and our sample size was too small to increase the number of variables and separately investigate the predictive power of different mentalization types. Therefore, like other studies, we decided to include the total MZQ score as a single measure ( Ballespi et al, 2018 ; Hayden et al, 2018 ; Probst et al, 2018 ). Future studies with larger samples may also investigate multiple facets of mindfulness (i.e., observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judgmental, and non-reactive) and its relationship with schizotypy ( Baer et al, 2006 ) by combining questionnaire data with results from structured interviews and real-life observations.…”

"Deep Dive into the Constructive Mind: Relating Interpretive Diversity Understanding to Anxiety Symptoms and Parental Practices in Middle Childhood"

“…Primary school children with social anxiety had difficulties in understanding the links between emotions, intentions, and beliefs in social situations, and were rated as having lower social skills that require insight into others' mental states (Banerjee & Henderson, 2001). Social anxiety in school predicted mentalizing deficits in adolescence (Ballespí et al, 2018). Others, however, found that both low and high levels of mind reading are related to social anxiety symptoms as a function of the individual's clinical anxiety level.…”