Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, USA.
Dev Sci. 2014 Mar;17(2):239-47. doi: 10.1111/desc.12110. Epub 2013 Nov 28.
In the current brief report, we examined threat perception in a group of young children who may be at-risk for anxiety due to extreme temperamental shyness. Results demonstrate specific differences in the processing of social threats: 4- to 7-year-olds in the high-shy group demonstrated a greater bias for social threats (angry faces) than did a comparison group of low-shy children. This pattern did not hold for non-social threats like snakes: Both groups showed an equal bias for the detection of snakes over frogs. The results suggest that children who are tempermentally shy have a heightened sensitivity to social signs of threat early in development. These findings have implications for understanding mechanisms of early threat sensitivity that may predict later socioemotional maladjustment.
在本简要报告中，我们研究了一组可能因极端气质害羞而处于焦虑风险中的幼儿的威胁感知。研究结果表明，他们在处理社会威胁时存在特定差异：高害羞组的 4 至 7 岁儿童比低害羞组的对照组对社会威胁（愤怒的面孔）表现出更大的偏见。这种模式不适用于像蛇这样的非社会威胁：两组在检测蛇和青蛙时都表现出相同的偏见。研究结果表明，气质害羞的儿童在早期发展中对社会威胁迹象具有更高的敏感性。这些发现对于理解可能预测后期社交情感适应不良的早期威胁敏感性机制具有重要意义。
