Inhibited and Uninhibited Types of Children

Abstract

An initial group of 100 children who were not selected a priori on any behavioral features were observed in laboratory settings at 14, 20, 32, and 48 months and their behaviors coded for inhibition and lack of inhibition to the unfamiliar. The children who had been extremely inhibited or uninhibited at both 14 and 20 months differed significantly at 4 years of age in behavior and cardiac acceleration to cognitive stress. However, for the entire sample, there was no significant relation between degree of inhibited behavior at 14 or 20 months, on the one hand, and inhibition at 4 years of age, on the other, nor any relation between behavior and heart rate acceleration. These results suggest that the constructs inhibited and uninhibited to the unfamiliar refer to children who fall at the extremes of a phenotypic continuum from shyness and restraint to sociability and affective spontaneity.

Attachment-based intervention for enhancing sensitive discipline in mothers of 1- to 3-year-old children at risk for externalizing behavior problems: A randomized controlled trial.

“…The use of the ICQ (Bates et al, 1979) to assess temperament limits the temperamental dimension included in the current intervention to difficultness. Other dimensions may be more important from the perspective of differential susceptibility, such as behavioral inhibition (Kagan, Reznick, & Gibbons, 1989), fearfulness (Kochanska, 1995), or emotional reactivity (Belsky, 2005;Klein Velderman et al, 2006).…”

Childhood Derivatives of High and Low Reactivity in Infancy

“…The authors regard a shy or sociable response style with strangers, whether peers or adults, as only one feature of two broader temperamental categories called inhibited and uninhibited to the unfamiliar (DiLalla, Kagan, & Reznick, 1994;Kagan, Reznick, & Gibbons, 1989;Kagan, Reznick, & Snidman, 1988). Inhibited children react to unfamiliar incentives with an initial avoidance, distress, or subdued emotion when they reach the age when discrepancy elicits uncertainty, usually by 9-12 months.…”

The Biological Diary of a Woman: Physiological Consequences of Status and Social Evaluative Threat

“…Heart rate scores were used in order to examine the overall stress response. By using change scores instead of a repeated measures ANOVA, the amplitude of the stress response could be observed and tested in relation to status instead of isolated measurement scores (Caplan and Jones 1975;Houston 1972;Kagan et al 1989;Massey et al 2014;Vrana et al 1989). Results revealed a significant difference between dominance groups (F (1, 64)=3.39, p=.048).…”

“…Heart rate change scores were figured by subtracting the heart rate at time one from time two and time two from the heart rate at time three. Heart rate change scores were used based on previous literature demonstrating the amplitude of the stress response instead of isolated measurement (Caplan and Jones 1975;Houston 1972;Kagan et al 1989;Massey et al 2014;Vrana et al 1989). …”