Poster #207 - High levels of behavioral inhibition and inhibitory control relate to affective responses to peer feedback in young children.

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a relatively stable temperament profile often associated with poor social and emotional outcomes, such as social reticence and anxiety problems (White et al., 2011). Often seen in BI children, “cognitive busyness” describes intrusive, task-irrelevant, self-conscious thoughts. This inefficient allocation of cognitive resources or working memory capacity may lead to poorer performance on executive function tasks and mark lower levels of effortful control ((EC); Wolfe & Bell, 2014). Children scoring higher on EC display similar amounts of positive affect when receiving desirable and non-desirable non-social rewards, compared to low EC children who showed relatively more positive affect after receiving a desirable reward (Kieras et al., 2005). Recent work also suggests that although children are generally pleased when accepted, and disappointed when rejected, by hypothetical peers, shy boys are distressed specifically when accepted by a “peer” with whom they did not wish to play (Howarth et al., 2013). Considering this, we hypothesized that children who scored high on BI and low on EC would be less happy when receiving social feedback contrary to their expectations.

Children (N=118, Mage=6.08, SDage=0.77) participated in a larger study assessing the relations between attention and responses to peer feedback. Participants completed an age-appropriate Flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974) to assess their inhibitory control, a component of EC. Children with < 75% accuracy during the task were excluded from analysis. Participants also completed the Playdate task (Howarth et al., 2013) to assess their sensitivity to peer feedback. Children viewed pictures of “peers” and sorted them into groups—peers with whom they did or did not wish to play. Then they rated their feelings as they received “peer” feedback either accepting or rejecting their bid with higher scores representing happier feelings. Parents completed the Behavioral Inhibition Questionnaire (BIQ; Bishop et al., 2003) to rate their children’s level of BI. For the current analyses, 68 children provided usable data on the variables of interest.

As there were four potential types of feedback children could receive (wanted to play-accepted; wanted to play-rejected; did not want to play-accepted; did not want to play-rejected), we ran four separate linear regressions to test how BI and inhibitory control may relate to responses to peer feedback. Age and reaction times to congruent Flanker trials were entered as continuous control variables. BI and reaction times to incongruent Flanker trials were centered and entered as continuous predictors. We found a significant interaction between BI and inhibitory control only for children’s responses to peer feedback when they did not want to play, but were none-the-less accepted by the “peer” (b=-0.00007, t=-2.95, p=.005). Simple slopes analysis (Figure 1) indicated that children +1SD above the mean in in response times to incongruent trials who were high in BI were less happy when a “peer” they did not want to play with accepted them, suggesting that BI children low in effortful control may experience more discomfort when their expectations for social interactions are not met, particularly if they may need to engage in an unwanted social interaction.

Authors

• Elizabeth Youatt, Penn State
  Presenting Author

• Alicia Vallorani, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Santiago Morales, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Leigha A. MacNeill, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kelley Gunther, Penn State
  Non-Presenting Author

• Koraly Pérez-Edgar, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author