Poster #231 - The Relation of Child Inhibitory Control to Withdrawal: Moderating Role of Fear

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Being withdrawn in social interactions has been related to a variety of negative outcomes, including social-emotional problems and school difficulties (Rubin, Coplan, & Bowker, 2009). When in social contexts, children, particularly those high in fear, can use their inhibitory control to regulate a dominant response of withdrawal and activate a more appropriate response of social interaction. However, relations among fear, inhibitory control, and withdrawal are complex and often are examined during highly fearful contexts and/or with children identified to be highly fearful or inhibited. To add to this literature, we used a normative sample of toddlers and explored their fear and withdrawal in a non-threatening novel situation that involved interaction with a person new to the children. We also examined whether withdrawal observed in this particular situation would be generalized to broader contexts as reported by mothers. We expected that children’s ability to use their inhibitory control to regulate their withdrawal tendencies during the task would depend on the intensity of their fear felt in the situation, which would then related to more general withdrawal behaviors reported by mothers. We tested a moderated mediation model (see Figure 1); controlling for child age and sex, we expected that higher levels of inhibitory control would be related to lower levels of social withdrawal reported by mothers via observed withdrawal when levels of fear were low but not when levels of fear were high.

Toddlers (n=140) participated in a 2-minute puppet task where experimenters played a puppet game with them. Fear (0-3 scale) and withdrawal from the puppet and/or the experimenter (0-2 scale) were coded in 5-second epochs. Mean scores were calculated for fear and withdrawal. Mothers completed the inhibitory control subscale of the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire and the withdrawal subscale of the Child Behavior Checklist.

The moderated mediation analysis was based on 5000 bootstrapped samples using 95% confidence intervals (Preacher & Hayes, 2004). A direct effect from child inhibitory control to child regulation was found (see Table 1). Moderated mediation analysis showed that higher levels of inhibitory control were indirectly associated with lower levels of maternal report of withdrawal behaviors via observed withdrawal in the puppet task, when child fear was low but not when child fear was high, controlling for child age and sex.

Our findings suggest that children’s ability to utilize inhibitory control may decrease children’s withdrawal behaviors. However, high levels of fear experienced by children in situations where the possible threat is low may interfere with children’s inhibitory control, which then had implications for their social withdrawal behaviors in other contexts. When children are highly fearful in a relatively controllable situation, they may not be capable of flexibly using inhibitory control to actively control dominant responses of withdrawal and activate more appropriate responses of social interaction. Therefore, whether children are able to use their inhibitory control to regulate their withdrawal tendency may depend on the intensity of their fear felt in a context that is low in threat, which can be generalized to other contexts.

Authors

• Lin Tan, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• Cynthia L Smith, Virginia Tech
  Non-Presenting Author