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Temperament and Early Experience Form Social Behavior
Author(s) -
FOX NATHAN A.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1196/annals.1315.025
Subject(s) - temperament , psychology , developmental psychology , personality , behavioral inhibition , distress , anxiety , vigilance (psychology) , clinical psychology , social psychology , cognitive psychology , psychiatry
A bstract : Individual differences in the way persons respond to stimulation can have important consequences for their ability to learn and their choice of vocation. Temperament is the study of such individual differences, being thought of as the behavioral style of an individual. Common to all approaches in the study of temperament are the notions that it can be identified in infancy, is fairly stable across development, and influences adult personality. We have identified a specific temperament type in infancy that involves heightened distress to novel and unfamiliar stimuli. Infants who exhibit this temperament are likely, as they get older, to display behavioral inhibition—wariness and heightened vigilance of the unfamiliar—particularly in social situations. Our work has also described the underlying biology of this temperament and has linked it to neural systems supporting fear responses in animals. Children displaying behavioral inhibition are at‐risk for behavioral problems related to anxiety and social withdrawal.