Behaviorally inhibited preschoolers experience stronger connectivity among social-related neural regions while interacting with a stranger.

ABSTRACT: Social behavioral inhibition (BI), or wariness in response to unfamiliar social stimuli, is a temperament trait that, when present in preschool-age children, predicts neural alterations and anxiety disorders by adolescence. The current study assessed neural functioning associated with BI during the preschool years. Our sample was enriched for BI based on mother report and included 59 preschool-age children (54 % female, M_age = 3.7 years). Children interacted with an unfamiliar experimenter via the Stranger Approach paradigm from the preschool version of Lab-TAB, and neural data were collected simultaneously to measure neural response to an unfamiliar social encounter. Children who exhibited more social BI-related behaviors experienced stronger functional connectivity between mul

SUBMITTER: Aloisio C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12138922 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature