Individual differences in fear potentiated startle in behaviorally inhibited children

Abstract

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperament characterized during early childhood by increased fearfulness to novelty, social reticence to unfamiliar peers, and heightened risk for the development of anxiety. Heightened startle responses to safety cues have been found among behaviorally inhibited adolescents who have an anxiety disorder suggesting that this measure may serve as a biomarker for the development of anxiety amongst this risk population. However, it is unknown if these aberrant startle patterns emerge prior to the manifestation of anxiety in this temperament group. The current study examined potentiated startle in 7-year-old children characterized with BI early in life. High behaviorally inhibited children displayed increased startle magnitude to safety cues, particularly during the first half of the task, and faster startle responses compared to low behaviorally inhibited children. These findings suggest that aberrant startle responses are apparent in behaviorally inhibited children during early childhood prior to the onset of a disorder and may serve as a possible endophenotype for the development of anxiety

Behavioral Inhibition and Developmental Risk: A Dual-Processing Perspective

“…This lack of specificity in the implementation of both automatic and control processes limits the flexibility and efficiency of information processing. This model is consistent with findings that children with a history of early BI show exaggerated startle responses to safety cues (Barker et al, 2014) and that adolescents with a history of childhood BI and also a lifetime diagnosis of anxiety show the same pattern of startle reactivity to safety cues (Reeb-Sutherland et al, 2009a). This is also consistent with the Perez-Edgar et al (2007) finding that adolescents with a history of childhood BI showed exaggerated amygdala responses to all emotion faces (not just threatening ones) when asked to rate their subjective experiences.…”

“…Such highly reactive infants also display enhanced sensitivity to novelty at 9 months of age compared with less reactive infants, as indexed by exaggerated startle reactions in the presence of an unfamiliar adult, reflecting heightened reactivity of a brainstem-mediated defensive reflex (Schmidt and Fox, 1998). These findings in infants resemble findings in older children, adolescents, and adults, where potentiated startle has been linked to BI and anxiety disorders (Barker et al, 2014;Reeb-Sutherland et al, 2009a, b;Lissek et al, 2005;Mineka and Zinbarg, 2006).…”

Frontal midline theta reflects anxiety and cognitive control: Meta-analytic evidence

“…While the anxious phenotype is complex and multidimensional, there is a growing consensus that elevated reactivity to uncertain threat is a core feature of both the anxiety disorders and trait-like individual differences in anxiety and behavioral inhibition (Barker et al, 2014; Davis et al, 2010; Grupe and Nitschke, 2013; Mushtaq et al, 2011; Reeb-Sutherland et al, 2009). Indeed, elevated anxiety in response to uncertain or ambiguous threat is more discriminative of many anxiety disorders than that elicited by certain threat and prospectively predicts the initial appearance of the disorder (Craske et al, 2012; Davis et al, 2010; Lissek et al, 2005).…”

Contextual startle responses moderate the relation between behavioral inhibition and anxiety in middle childhood

“…Startle to safety cues and threat cues were evaluated as the average startle magnitude during each cue, respectively. Additional details regarding psychophysiological collection and processing are described in full elsewhere (Barker et al, 2013). …”

“…Studies of BI and startle have found that adolescents with a stable history of heightened laboratory-observed BI and a lifetime history of anxiety display increased startle potentiation to safety cues compared to adolescents without a stable history of BI and no lifetime history of anxiety (Reeb-Sutherland et al, 2009). Additionally, 7-year-old children characterized in toddlerhood with high laboratory-observed BI exhibit generalized startle responses to safety cues (Barker, Reeb-Sutherland, & Fox, 2013). However, in both of these studies, startle responses and anxiety were measured concurrently, making it difficult to discern whether altered startle responses predict the later development of anxiety.…”