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Cognitive Conflict Links Behavioural Inhibition and Social Problem Solving During Social Exclusion in Childhood
Author(s) -
Lahat Ayelet,
Walker Olga L.,
Lamm Connie,
Degnan Kathryn A.,
Henderson Heather A.,
Fox Nathan A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
infant and child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.87
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1522-7219
pISSN - 1522-7227
DOI - 10.1002/icd.1845
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , temperament , assertiveness , cognition , affect (linguistics) , social exclusion , social inhibition , longitudinal study , social anxiety , social psychology , personality , anxiety , statistics , mathematics , communication , neuroscience , psychiatry , economics , economic growth
Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperament characterized by heightened negative affect and social reticence to unfamiliar peers. In a longitudinal study, 291 infants were assessed for BI at 24 and 36 months of age. At age 7, N2 amplitude was measured during a Flanker task. Also at age 7, children experienced social exclusion in the lab during an interaction with an unfamiliar peer and an experimenter. Our findings indicate that children characterized as high in BI, relative to those low in BI, had larger (i.e., more negative) N2 amplitudes. Additionally, among children with a large N2, BI was positively related to withdrawal and negatively related to assertiveness during social exclusion. These findings suggest that variations in conflict detection among behaviorally inhibited children plays a role in their social behavior during stressful social situations. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.