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Continuity and Discontinuity of Behavioral Inhibition and Exuberance: Psychophysiological and Behavioral Influences across the First Four Years of Life
Author(s) -
Fox Nathan A.,
Henderson Heather A.,
Rubin Kenneth H.,
Calkins Susan D.,
Schmidt Louis A.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8624.00262
Subject(s) - temperament , behavioral inhibition , psychology , behavioral syndrome , electroencephalography , developmental psychology , behavioral activation , reactivity (psychology) , personality , neuroscience , cognition , psychiatry , social psychology , medicine , anxiety , alternative medicine , pathology
Four‐month‐old infants were screened ( N = 433) for temperamental patterns thought to predict behavioral inhibition, including motor reactivity and the expression of negative affect. Those selected ( N = 153) were assessed at multiple age points across the first 4 years of life for behavioral signs of inhibition as well as psychophysiological markers of frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry. Four‐month temperament was modestly predictive of behavioral inhibition over the first 2 years of life and of behavioral reticence at age 4. Those infants who remained continuously inhibited displayed right frontal EEG asymmetry as early as 9 months of age while those who changed from inhibited to noninhibited did not. Change in behavioral inhibition was related to experience of nonparental care. A second group of infants, selected at 4 months of age for patterns of behavior thought to predict temperamental exuberance, displayed a high degree of continuity over time in these behaviors.