Battaglia Marco, Ogliari Anna, Zanoni Annalisa, Citterio Alessandra, Pozzoli Uberto, Giorda Roberto, Maffei Cesare, Marino Cecilia
Department of Psychology, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University at the Department of Neuropsychiatric Sciences, Istituto Scientifico San Raffaele, Milan, Italy.
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005 Jan;62(1):85-94. doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.62.1.85.
Childhood shyness can predate social anxiety disorder and may be associated with biased discrimination of facial expressions of emotions.
To determine whether childhood shyness, or the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism genotype, can predict participants' visual event-related potentials in response to expressions of children of similar ages.
Study group drawn from an inception cohort of 149 subjects characterized 1 year before the present study by their degree of shyness.
Third- and fourth-grade schoolchildren.
Forty-nine of the inception cohort children, randomly selected.
Latencies and amplitudes of the N400 waveform in response to happy, neutral, and angry expressions.
Shyness predicted significantly smaller N400 amplitudes in response to anger (at Pz: P < or = .04) and to a neutral expression (at Pz: P < or = .047). Shyness was significantly different across the 3 genotypes, the SS genotype being associated with higher shyness levels (analysis of variance: F(2,42) = 4.47, P < or = .02; Tukey honestly significant difference, SS vs LL, P < or = .01). An analysis of covariance showed that neither the type of expression nor the genotype per se influenced the N400 amplitudes, but a significant expression X genotype interaction was found (F(4,72) = 3.57, P < or = .01), sustained by the difference in amplitude of the SS and S carrier subjects compared with the LL subjects when exposed to the anger expression (Tukey honestly significant difference, P < or = .02).
Children who manifest higher levels of shyness or have 1 or 2 copies of the short allele of the serotonin transporter promoter gene appear to have a different pattern of processing affective stimuli of interpersonal hostility.
儿童期害羞可能早于社交焦虑障碍，并且可能与对面部表情情绪的偏差性辨别有关。
确定儿童期害羞或5-羟色胺转运体启动子多态性基因型是否能预测参与者对相似年龄儿童表情的视觉事件相关电位。
从149名受试者的起始队列中选取研究组，这些受试者在本研究前1年已根据害羞程度进行了特征描述。
三、四年级学童。
从起始队列儿童中随机选取49名。
对高兴、中性和愤怒表情做出反应时N400波形的潜伏期和波幅。
害羞可显著预测对愤怒表情（在头顶中央电极点：P≤0.04）和中性表情（在头顶中央电极点：P≤0.047）做出反应时N400波幅较小。在3种基因型中，害羞程度存在显著差异，SS基因型与较高的害羞水平相关（方差分析：F(2,42)=4.47，P≤0.02；Tukey真实显著差异检验，SS与LL比较，P≤0.01）。协方差分析显示，表情类型和基因型本身均未影响N400波幅，但发现了显著的表情×基因型交互作用（F(4,72)=3.57，P≤0.01），这是由SS和S等位基因携带者受试者与LL受试者在暴露于愤怒表情时波幅的差异所维持的（Tukey真实显著差异检验，P≤0.02）。
表现出较高害羞水平或拥有5-羟色胺转运体启动子基因短等位基因1或2个拷贝的儿童，在处理人际敌意情感刺激时似乎具有不同的模式。
