Behavioral Inhibition Predicts Blunted Positive Affect During Preschoolers’ Play With Unfamiliar Peers: A Longitudinal Study.

• In Event: Emotional Competence from Infancy to Late Childhood

Abstract

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is an early temperamental trait characterized by aversive reactions to novel situations and unfamiliar others (Fox et al., 2005). BI is associated with difficulties forming high quality relationships with peers later in life (Rubin et al., 2009). One way in which BI may impact the quality of these relationships is by altering expressions of affect during interactions with unfamiliar peers. While BI has been linked to trait affectivity (e.g., Viana et al., 2017), scant research investigates its associations with state affect during initial peer interactions. Yet, these interactions are a crucial first step in real-world friendship formation. Thus, the present study employed a longitudinal one-with-many design, wherein one child (i.e., the target child) was followed from ages 2 to 5 as they interacted with a different unfamiliar playmate at each year, to investigate whether the target child’s: 1) expressions of affect were consistent across different playmates, 2) early BI predicted their affective expressions with different playmates across time, and 3) affective expressions were reciprocated by their playmates.

Participants included 292 target children (156 girls). At 2 years of age, the target children’s BI were assessed through an aggregate of parent report on the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire (Goldsmith, 1996) and an in-lab observation of the standard BI paradigm (Fox et al., 2001). Specifically, a combination of proximity and latency codes were applied to children's responses to novel contexts, objects, and adult strangers to assess BI. At each subsequent visit, the target child was paired with a different same-sex, same-age, unfamiliar peer, and both were observed during 10 minutes of free play. The frequency and intensity of children’s positive affect (e.g., smiling) and negative affect (e.g., crying, aggression) were rated. Given the hierarchical structure of the data, whereby the interactions with unfamiliar peers (level-1) were nested within the target child (level-2), multilevel modeling was used.

Intraclass correlations revealed that target children's positive and negative affect varied significantly across interactions with different play partners (see Table 1). Multilevel modeling showed that target children with higher BI at age 2 displayed less positive affect on average across unfamiliar playmates from ages 2 to 5, controlling for age, gender, and the partner’s positive affect (see Table 2). In contrast, target children’s BI was not related to average levels of negative affect. Finally, affective expressions were reciprocated by unfamiliar playmates (i.e., lower positive and higher negative affect expressed by the target child were mirrored by the unfamiliar playmate).

Our longitudinal dyadic study shows that young children’s affective expressions are impacted by both individual traits and social context, holding important implications for both basic and applied work on BI and interpersonal processes. Early BI showed lasting effects on target children’s positive affect expressions, which may reduce the quality of initial interactions and hence, the likelihood of a new playmate becoming a friend. Findings also revealed that affective expressions were reciprocal between unfamiliar playmates, suggesting that they may be a potential avenue for relational interventions aimed at bolstering friendship formation among young children.

Authors

• Linda Sosa-Hernandez, University of Waterloo
  Presenting Author

• Kathryn A Degnan, Catholic University of America
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nathan A Fox, University of Maryland - College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Heather Henderson, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author