Longitudinal trajectories of social reticence with unfamiliar peers across early childhood.

ABSTRACT: Behavioral inhibition is a temperament assessed in the toddler period via children's responses to novel contexts, objects, and unfamiliar adults. Social reticence is observed as onlooking, unoccupied behavior in the presence of unfamiliar peers and is linked to earlier behavioral inhibition. In the current study, we assessed behavioral inhibition in a sample of 262 children at ages 2 and 3, and then assessed social reticence in these same children as they interacted with an unfamiliar, same-age, same-sex peer at 2, 3, 4, and 5 years of age. As expected, early behavioral inhibition was related to social reticence at each age. However, multiple trajectories of social reticence were observed including High-Stable, High-Decreasing, and Low-Increasing, with the High-Stable and High-Decreasing t

SUBMITTER: Degnan KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4172493 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature