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From Maternal Personality to Young Adult Social Anxiety Through Children’s Error Processing in Social Contexts

Fri, March 24, 12:00 to 1:30pm, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 3, Meeting Room 355 E

Abstract

Caregivers’ personality traits such as shyness and sociability have been proposed to contribute to the development of children’s social anxiety through possible shared heritability or children’s social learning from caregiver socialization (Zeytinoglu et al., 2022). However, the mechanisms linking caregiver personality with children’s social anxiety are not well understood. One neurocognitive mechanism that may connect this relation is children’s error processing. Previous research has shown that socially anxious children are hypersensitive to making errors (i.e., “error monitoring” indexed by error-related negativity [ERN]) and slow to respond after making errors (i.e., “error preoccupation” indexed by post-error slowing) in social relative to non-social contexts (Buzzell et al., 2017). This may be due to enhanced detection of “social threat” in social contexts. By focusing on the rewarding and safe aspects of social interactions (rather than threats), caregivers high in extraversion/sociability may promote the development of a less sensitive error processing system, that may set children’s path to low social anxiety. We examined pathways from maternal extraversion/sociability at age 4 to young adults’ social anxiety at age 18 through children’s error processing (i.e., error monitoring and preoccupation) in social relative to non-social contexts at age 12.

291 children (54% female) and their mothers were selected for a longitudinal study based on infant temperament. Maternal sociability/extraversion was measured as the average of Cheek and Buss Inventory’s sociability scale and NEO-FFI’s extraversion scale from the 4-year assessment. At age 12, children completed a modified Flanker task, while EEG was recorded, twice: once they were told they were being observed by peers (“social condition”) and once while not being observed (“non-social condition”). Error monitoring in social contexts (“social-effect ERN”) was computed as the reversed score of the difference between children’s ERN magnitudes (from frontocentral EEG electrodes) in the social and non-social conditions. Higher scores reflected increased error monitoring. Error preoccupation in social contexts (“social-effect preoccupation”) was computed as the difference in post-error slowing across the two conditions, with higher scores reflecting increased error preoccupation (Buzzell et al., 2017). At age 18, participants rated their social anxiety symptoms on the Screen for Adult Anxiety Related Disorders.

A serial mediation model was tested. As shown in Figure 1, maternal sociability/extraversion inversely predicted children’s error monitoring (β= -.24, p=.01), which in turn positively predicted error preoccupation (β= .23, p=02). Error preoccupation, in turn, predicted social anxiety in young adulthood (β=.43, p<.001). Serial indirect effects linking maternal sociability/extraversion to young adult anxiety through hypersensitive error processing (i.e., error monitoring followed by error preoccupation) were significant (β=-.02, CI[-.05,-.001]).

We identified a developmental pathway from maternal extraversion/sociability to young adults’ social anxiety through children’s error processing in social contexts. Greater maternal extraversion/sociability predicted reduced young adult social anxiety through dampened error processing in social contexts. More extraverted/social mothers may socialize their children to be less sensitive to social threat cues, setting the path to lower social anxiety in young adulthood. Identifying the specific parenting behaviors linking maternal extraversion/sociability with children’s error processing and social anxiety are needed to enhance social anxiety prevention efforts.

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