Connecting Childhood Wariness to Adolescent Social Anxiety through the Brain and Peer Experiences.

Connecting Childhood Wariness to Adolescent Social Anxiety through the Brain and Peer Experiences. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2019 Apr 26;: Authors: Jarcho JM, Grossman HY, Guyer AE, Quarmley M, Smith AR, Fox NA, Leibenluft E, Pine DS, Nelson EE Abstract Wariness in early childhood manifests as shy, inhibited behavior in novel social situations and is associated with increased risk for developing social anxiety. In youth with childhood wariness, exposure to a potent social stressor, such as peer victimization, may potentiate brain-based sensitivity to unpredictable social contexts, thereby increasing risk for developing social anxiety. To test brain-based associations between early childhood wariness, self-reported peer victimization, and current social anxiety symptoms, we quantified neural responses to different social contexts in low- and high-victimized pre-adolescents with varying levels of early childhood wariness. Measures of early childhood wariness were obtained annually from ages 2-to-7-years. At age 11, participants were characterized as having low (N = 20) or high (N = 27) peer victimization. To index their neural responses to peer evaluation, participants completed an fMRI-based Virtual School paradigm (Jarcho et al. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 13, 21-31, 2013a). In highly victimized, relative to low-victimized participants, wariness was differentially related to right amygdala response based on the valenc...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: J Abnorm Child Psychol Source Type: research