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Objective: Behavioral inhibition (BI) is an infant temperament characterized by heightened reactivity and negative affect in response to novel people and situations. BI is among the earliest and strongest predictors of future anxiety problems. However, not all children with a history of BI will manifest anxiety problems. A growing body of evidence suggests that proactive control skills may help buffer youth with BI from future anxiety difficulties; yet, it remains unclear how temperament may interact with the development of cognitive control to influence anxiety risk. The present study tested whether enhancements in proactive control occurring during adolescence may reduce risk for anxiety among youth with a history of BI.Method: Participants included 185 adolescents (56% female) whose temperament was assessed during toddlerhood. In adolescence, participants completed anxiety assessments and an AX Continuous Performance Test (AX-CPT) to assess cognitive control strategy. Both assessments were administered at age 13 years and again at 15 years.Results: Latent change score modeling revealed that, on average, participants increasingly used proactive control strategies and experienced worsening anxiety from age 13-15 years. Early BI was associated with a smaller anxiety increase from 13-15 years, but only among participants whose proactive control skills improved at mean or greater rates.Conclusion: The present findings suggest that greater proactive control development during adolescence protects youth with high BI from age-related increases in anxiety. Results support a framework that highlights cognitive control as a key moderator of anxiety risk among children with a history of high BI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Behavioral inhibition (BI) is an early childhood temperament characterized by fearful responses to novelty and avoidance of social interactions. During adolescence, a subset of children with stable childhood BI develop social anxiety disorder and concurrently exhibit increased error monitoring. The current study examines whether increased error monitoring in 7-year-old, behaviorally inhibited children prospectively predicts risk for symptoms of social phobia at age 9 years. Method: A total of 291 children were characterized on BI at 24 and 36 months of age. Children were seen again at 7 years of age, when they performed a Flanker task, and event-related potential (ERP) indices of response monitoring were generated. At age 9, self- and maternal-report of social phobia symptoms were obtained. Results: Children high in BI, compared to those low in BI, displayed increased error monitoring at age 7, as indexed by larger (i.e., more negative) error-related negativity (ERN) amplitudes. In addition, early BI was related to later childhood social phobia symptoms at age 9 among children with a large difference in amplitude between ERN and correct-response negativity (CRN) at age 7. Conclusions: Heightened error monitoring predicts risk for later social phobia symptoms in children with high BI. Research assessing response monitoring in children with BI may refine our understanding of the mechanisms underlying risk for later anxiety disorders and inform prevention efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperament identified in early childhood that is a risk factor for later social anxiety. However, mechanisms underlying the development of social anxiety remain unclear. To better understand the emergence of social anxiety, longitudinal studies investigating changes at behavioral neural levels are needed.Method: BI was assessed in the laboratory at 2 and 3 years of age (N = 268). Children returned at 12 years, and an electroencephalogram was recorded while children performed a flanker task under 2 conditions: once while believing they were being observed by peers and once while not being observed. This methodology isolated changes in error monitoring (error-related negativity) and behavior (post-error reaction time slowing) as a function of social context. At 12 years, current social anxiety symptoms and lifetime diagnoses of social anxiety were obtained.Results: Childhood BI prospectively predicted social-specific error-related negativity increases and social anxiety symptoms in adolescence; these symptoms directly related to clinical diagnoses. Serial mediation analysis showed that social error-related negativity changes explained relations between BI and social anxiety symptoms (n = 107) and diagnosis (n = 92), but only insofar as social context also led to increased post-error reaction time slowing (a measure of error preoccupation); this model was not significantly related to generalized anxiety.Conclusion: Results extend prior work on socially induced changes in error monitoring and error preoccupation. These measures could index a neurobehavioral mechanism linking BI to adolescent social anxiety symptoms and diagnosis. This mechanism could relate more strongly to social than to generalized anxiety in the peri-adolescent period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study which examines whether startle reflex responses differ between behaviorally inhibited (BI) adolescents with anxiety disorders compared to those who do not. The study identifies behavioral or physiological markers which may be used to differentiate between BI adolescents with and without anxiety disorders. Results of the study show that the startle response in adolescents posts a high risk for anxiety disorder development, and its pattern is suggestive of abnormal inhibitory fear process.

Background: Behaviorally inhibited (BI) children who also exhibit enhanced response monitoring might be at particularly high risk for anxiety disorders. The current study tests the hypothesis that response monitoring, as manifest in the error-related negativity (ERN), moderates the association between BI and anxiety. Methods: Participants (n = 113; 73 male) assessed for early-childhood BI were re-assessed as adolescents with a clinical interview and a flanker paradigm that generated behavioral data and event-related potentials (ERPs). Risk for anxiety disorders in adolescents was examined as a function of childhood-BI status and adolescent performance on the flanker paradigm. Results: Adolescents with childhood BI displayed ERP evidence of enhanced response monitoring, manifest as large ERNs. The ERN moderated the relationship between early BI and later clinically significant disorders. Conclusions: Physiological measures of response monitoring might moderate associations between early-childhood BI and risk for psychopathology. The subset of children with BI and enhanced response monitoring might face greater risk for later-life clinical anxiety than children with either BI or enhanced response monitoring alone. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]