Positive peer relationships are important to children’s wellbeing. Yet, little is known about the young children’s relationship development with agemates. We examined whether and how positive and negative peer behaviors change across phases of relationship formation, whether trajectories differ by age, and whether behaviors reflect individual children or specific dyads. Participants were 28 20- (M = 21.24 mos., range = 18.75—24.80 mos.) and 30- (M = 30.77 mos., range = 28.35—33.95 mos.) month-old toddlers as they became acquainted with one another over four months. Twelve toddlers were girls while 16 were boys. Each toddler was paired with two unfamiliar, same-age, same-gender toddlers for 18 play sessions for a total of 36 sessions per child (average time between sessions = 5.15 days; SD = 5.42). Play sessions were grouped into early, middle, and late relationship phases of six sessions each. Employing three-level cross-classified multilevel models, results indicated that older toddlers had a higher frequency of positive (but not negative) actions than younger toddlers in all three phases. The frequency of both their total positive and negative actions increased as relationships developed. For younger toddlers, the frequency of total positive and negative actions did not change over time. Children’s peer-directed positive and negative behaviors correlated to those of their partners in the late phase, suggesting emerging reciprocal relationships. Individual children’s negative, but not their positive, behaviors were consistent across their two partners: negative behavior operated as a stable characteristic of individual children, whereas positive behavior was specific to particular dyads. Together, these results indicate that toddler peer relationships form gradually and in age-differentiated ways: 30-month-olds’ positive and negative behaviors increased in frequency and became reciprocally correlated within dyads as relationships were established, 20-month-olds’ behaviors remained stable across phases, and negative behavior was a consistent attribute of individual children.

ABSTRACT Aggression is commonly associated with increased experiences of peer rejection and maladaptive social information processing biases throughout development. Little is known about the neural correlates of peer rejection that might underlie social information processing biases, and whether these neural correlates are common or different across early‐ and mid‐adolescents on a continuum of aggression. Using the Cyberball task, we examined mediofrontal theta (4–7 Hz) event‐related EEG spectral power during conditions of explicit and ambiguous social exclusion in 117 participants (57 early adolescents, ages 10–12 years, and 60 mid‐adolescents, ages 14–16 years). Participants with at least 10 artifact‐free trials per condition were included in further EEG analysis. In total, 95 participants (42 early adolescents, 53 mid‐adolescents) were included for further analyses of EEG spectral theta power. Results examining moderation effects between aggression level and age groups showed that mid‐adolescents, but not early adolescents, with higher levels of aggression displayed enhanced theta power during the early processing (200–400 ms) of ambiguous (“not my turn”) exclusion events. The pattern of heightened neural sensitivity to ambiguous exclusion events reflects early detection and inclusion monitoring which might facilitate processing biases that are more prominent among mid‐adolescents with higher levels of aggression.

The Need-Threat Scale measures the threat to four distinct psychological needs after an act of ostracism, including a threat to belonging, control, meaningful existence and self-esteem. Here we examined whether this theoretically derived measure holds empirically true during adolescence. Two independent adolescent samples (nSite 1= 108, nSite2= 151, age range 10–18, 57.9

Abstract: We examined the evolution of social pretend play in toddlers and tested whether children’s age, gender, and language abilities were associated with changes in social pretend play over time. We employed a unique observational data set that followed 28 children ( M age = 27 months old; 57% boys) with each of two unfamiliar peers over 18 playdates per dyad. Cross-classified multilevel models revealed a quadratic change in the number of successful initiations in toddlers’ social pretend play over time with a more pronounced curve for older toddlers. Boys’ failed initiations increased linearly over time, whereas girls’ failed initiations remained stable. The length of social pretend play did not change significantly over time. Children’s age and language abilities were positively associated with successful initiations, failed initiations, and length of social pretend play. Very young children engage in social pretend play and the nature of this play evolves as they get to know one another and form relationships.

Very little is known about the role of early interactions in the development of peer relationships among toddlers. The present study examined whether behaviors early in the formation of toddler relationships predict interactions later in their relationships. Twenty-eight unfamiliar 20- and 30-month-old toddlers from a predominately European background met separately with each of two other toddlers for 18 playdates. Both positive and negative behaviors at the beginning of the relationship predicted a higher frequency of games later in the relationship. Positive behaviors at the beginning of the relationship predicted fewer conflicts later in the relationship. Negative behaviors at the beginning predicted more conflicts later in the relationship. These findings suggest that toddlers’ behaviors, when they initially meet, underlie the pathway in which their relationship develops.

The frequency and length of games, conflicts, and contingency sequences that took place between toddlers as they got to know one another were studied using archival data. The sample consisted of 28 unfamiliar 20- and 30-month-old toddlers (predominantly White, 16 males) who met separately with each of two other toddlers for 18 play dates. The frequency of games increased over time, while the frequency of conflict and contingency sequences decreased. The length of games increased over time while the length of conflicts and contingency sequences were stable. Age and language ability predicted changes in frequency and length of the different types of sequences. Thus, toddlers engage in less structured interactions when they first meet; their interactions become increasingly more organized and positive as the relationship evolves.

Adverse peer experiences, such as social exclusion, are known risks for socioemotional problems among shy youth. Yet, little is known about how shy children and adolescents process social exclusion in the brain and whether these responses are amplified in adolescence. Using the Cyberball task, we examined mediofrontal theta (4-7 Hz) event-related EEG spectral power during conditions of fair play and social exclusion in 122 participants (58 children, ages 10-12 years, and 64 adolescents, ages 14-17 years). Age effects of the task showed that adolescents displayed heightened theta power to both outright rejection and baseline “not my turn” events, whereas children showed higher theta power to rejection compared with “not my turn” events. Further results on individual differences showed that children with relatively higher levels of shyness displayed enhanced theta power to both rejection and “not my turn” events—a pattern that also was observed in adolescents. These findings suggest that a pattern of heightened neural sensitivity to both outright social exclusion and threats of exclusion, which is the norm by adolescence, also is observed in children with higher levels of shyness. The similar neural response pattern might be driven by salient social motivations that similarly modify the social cognition and behaviors of these groups and might reflect neural antecedents of rejection sensitivity.

The present study examined the moderating role of extraversion in explaining the relation between shyness and anxiety in a non-clinical early adolescent sample (N = 119, nfemale = 75; Mage = 12.93 years, SDage = 2.23 years) and a clinical adult sample from an outpatient anxiety disorders clinic (N = 100, nfemale = 77; Mage = 34.97 years, SDage = 12.66 years). We found evidence for the protective role of relatively high levels of extraversion in both samples, such that shyness was positively associated with anxiety in the context of relatively low levels of extraversion. Our results provide support for the protective role of extraversion in the presence of high levels of shyness.

One long-standing theoretical model of shyness proposes that the origins and maintenance of shyness are associated with an approach-avoidance motivational conflict (Asendorpf, 1990), such that shy individuals are motivated to socially engage (high approach motivation) but are too anxious to do so (high avoidance motivation). However, this model has not been empirically tested in predicting the development of shyness. In two separate longitudinal studies, we used the Carver and White (1994) Behavioral Inhibition and Activation System (BIS/BAS) scales as a proxy of approach-avoidance motivations and growth curve analyses to examine whether individual differences in these hypothesized motivational tendencies were associated with the development of shyness across 3 years from late childhood to adolescence (Study 1, N = 1284; 49.8% female, Mage = 10.72, SDage = 1.73, M level of parental education fell between associate's degree/diploma and undergraduate degree) and across nearly a decade from emerging adulthood to young adulthood (Study 2, N = 83; 57.8% females, Mage = 23.56 years, SDage = 1.09 years, 92.8% had at least a high school education). Contrary to the approach-avoidance conflict model of shyness, we found that a combination of high BIS/low BAS, not high BIS/high BAS, was associated with relatively higher shyness contemporaneously and across development in both studies. We discuss the processes that might link individual differences in approach-avoidance motivations to the development of shyness in adolescence and young adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Abstract. There has been an unprecedented increase in the number of research studies employing event-related potential (ERP) techniques to examine dynamic and rapidly occurring neural processes with children during the preschool and early childhood years. Despite this, there has been relatively little discussion of the methodological and procedural differences that exist for studies of young children versus older children and adults. That is, reviewers, editors, and consumers of this work often expect developmental studies to simply apply adult techniques and procedures to younger samples. Procedurally, this creates unrealistic expectations for research paradigms, data collection, and data reduction and analyses. Scientifically, this leads to inappropriate measures and methods that hinder drawing conclusions and advancing theory. Based on ERP work with preschoolers and young children from 10 laboratories across North America, we present a summary of the most common ERP components under study in the area of emotion and cognition in young children along with 13 realistic expectations for data collection and loss, laboratory procedures and paradigms, data processing, ERP averaging, and typical challenges for conducting this type of work. This work is intended to supplement previous guidelines for work with adults and offer insights to aid researchers, reviewers, and editors in the design and evaluation of developmental research using ERPs. Here we make recommendations for researchers who plan to conduct or who are conducting ERP studies in children between ages 2 and 12 years, focusing on studies of toddlers and preschoolers. Recommendations are based on both data and our cumulative experience and include guidelines for laboratory setup, equipment and recording settings, task design, and data processing.

There has been an unprecedented increase in the number of research studies employing event-related potential (ERP) techniques to examine dynamic and rapidly-occurring neural processes with children during the preschool and early childhood years. Despite this, there has been little discussion of the methodological and procedural differences that exist for studies of young children versus older children and adults. That is, reviewers, editors, and consumers of this work often expect developmental studies to simply apply adult techniques and procedures to younger samples. Procedurally, this creates unrealistic expectations for research paradigms, data collection, and data reduction and analyses. Scientifically, this leads to inappropriate measures and methods that hinder drawing conclusions and advancing theory. Based on ERP work with preschoolers and young children from 10 laboratories across North America, we present a summary of the most common ERP components under study in the area of emotion and cognition in young children along with 13 realistic expectations for data collection and loss, laboratory procedures and paradigms, data processing, ERP averaging, and typical challenges for conducting this type of work. This work is intended to supplement previous guidelines for work with adults and offer insights to aid researchers, reviewers, and editors in the design and evaluation of developmental research using ERPs. Here we make recommendations for researchers who plan to conduct or who are conducting ERP studies in children between ages 2 and 12, focusing on studies of toddlers and preschoolers. Recommendations are based on both data and our cumulative experience and include guidelines for laboratory setup, equipment and recording settings, task design, and data processing.

Although the neural correlates of social exclusion have been well-documented, most studies have examined single age groups. No studies have directly compared specific age-related differences in social exclusion across children, adolescents, and adults using event-related oscillatory electroencephalogram (EEG) dynamics. The authors examined event-related theta EEG power and phase coherence in fair play and social exclusion conditions during the Cyberball task in 166 participants: 42 children (ages 10-12), 56 adolescents (ages 14-17), and 68 adults (ages 18-28). Children and adolescents displayed the greatest theta power to rejection events, whereas adults displayed the greatest theta power to "not my turn" events. Moreover, the functional link between theta power to rejection and self-reported distress was strongest among the adolescents. These findings suggest that an enhanced neural response to social exclusion is present by preadolescence, but the association between neural and subjective responses is most prominent during adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Child maltreatment is linked to distinct neurophysiological patterns and social-emotional vulnerability. Relations among maltreatment, relative resting frontal alpha asymmetry, shyness, and psychopathology were examined prospectively. Adolescent girls (age 14-16) who experienced child maltreatment (N = 55) were compared to nonmaltreated controls (N = 25), and returned for 6- and 12-month follow-ups. Among participants exhibiting relative right frontal asymmetry, maltreated adolescents reported higher shyness than controls at Time 1. Low-stable and high-stable shyness trajectories were observed for maltreated participants. Compared to low shy, participants in high-shy trajectory reported at Time 3: higher neuroticism and generalized anxiety; and lower extraversion if they also exhibited relative right frontal asymmetry. Thus, right frontal brain activity and shyness are involved in social-emotional vulnerability of adolescents who experienced child maltreatment.

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is an early temperamental profile characterized by negative reactivity to novelty, withdrawal from social situations, and increased risk for social anxiety. Previous research associated BI assessed in early childhood to striatal hypersensitivity in mid-to-late adolescence. The present study examined this association among 10 year-olds, characterized with BI at ages 24 and 36 months on measures of temperamental reactivity. Participants (n = 40) were studied at age 10 using a reward processing task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Child- and maternal-report of social anxiety symptoms was collected at ages 10 and 13. Findings indicate greater caudate activation and stronger striatal connectivity in high, compared to low, behaviorally inhibited children. Caudate activation related to social anxiety symptoms at both ages. These findings suggest that enhanced striatal responsivity reliably manifests among high behaviorally inhibited children as early as age 10. This may reflect hyper-sensitivity to reward or excessive motivation to avoid errors.

The current study investigated the impact of birth weight on the ability to recognize facial expressions in adulthood among the longest known prospectively followed cohort of extremely low birth weight survivors (ELBW; <1,000 g). We measured perceptual threshold to detect subtle facial expressions and confusion among different emotion categories in order to disentangle visual perceptual ability from emotional processing. ELBW adults (N = 64, Mage  = 31.9 years) were more likely than normal birth weight (NBW) controls (N = 82, Mage  = 32.5 years) to see fear in angry faces. This finding was not a result of increased perceptual efficiency in processing fearful expressions in the ELBW adults, since the two groups did not differ on their threshold to detect emotion in low intensity facial expressions. These findings suggest that a processing bias toward fear may reflect long-term developmental effects from being born at ELBW that may portend socioemotional problems that characterize ELBW survivors.

Studies have shown that shy children born in the 1920s and 1950s had delayed marriage and parenthood, less stable careers, and lower occupational attainment as adults than other children. Do these effects still hold true? We examined demographic and social outcomes of children born between 1977 and 1982 in a prospective longitudinal study. We assessed shyness in childhood (age 8), adolescence (age 12–16), young adulthood (age 22–26), and adulthood (age 30–35), and derived three shyness trajectories (i.e., decreasing, increasing, and low-stable). Social and demographic outcomes for shy children who outgrew their shyness (i.e., decreasing trajectory) were indistinguishable from those who were consistently low on shyness measures. However, a shyness trajectory beginning in adolescence and increasing to adulthood was associated with poorer outcomes, similar to previous studies. These findings highlight the importance of multiple assessments in long-term longitudinal studies and the need to consider personality development within a generational context.

Although childhood shyness is presumed to predict mental health problems in adulthood, no prospective studies have examined these outcomes beyond emerging adulthood. As well, existing studies have been limited by retrospective and cross-sectional designs and/or have examined shyness as a dichotomous construct. The present prospective longitudinal study (N = 160; 55 males, 105 females) examined shyness trajectories from childhood to the fourth decade of life and mental health outcomes. Shyness was assessed using parent- and self-rated measures from childhood to adulthood, once every decade at ages 8, 12–16, 22–26, and 30–35. At age 30–35, participants completed a structured psychiatric interview and an experimental task examining attentional biases to facial emotions. We found 3 trajectories of shyness, including a low-stable trajectory (59.4%), an increasing shy trajectory from adolescence to adulthood (23.1%), and a decreasing shy trajectory from childhood to adulthood (17.5%). Relative to the low-stable trajectory, the increasing, but not the decreasing, trajectory was at higher risk for clinical social anxiety, mood, and substance-use disorders and was hypervigilant to angry faces. We found that the development of emotional problems in adulthood among the increasing shy trajectory might be explained in part by adverse peer and social influences during adolescence. Our findings suggest different pathways for early and later developing shyness and that not all shy children grow up to have psychiatric and emotional problems, nor do they all continue to be shy.

AbstractExtremely low birth weight (ELBW; <1000 g) infants have been exposed to stressful intrauterine and early postnatal environments. Even greater early adversity has been experienced by ELBW survivors who were also born small for gestational age (SGA; <10th percentile for GA) compared to those born appropriate for GA (AGA). ELBW survivors, particularly those born SGA, face increased risk for internalizing problems compared to normal BW (NBW; ≥2500 g) controls. Internalizing problems are related to allelic variations in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region gene (5-HTTLPR). We followed the oldest longitudinal cohort of ELBW survivors to adulthood. Participants provided buccal cells and reported on internalizing problems, using the Young Adult Self-Report when they were in their mid-20s (ELBW/SGA, N = 28; ELBW/AGA, N = 60; NBW, N = 81) and mid-30s (ELBW/SGA, N = 27; ELBW/AGA, N = 58; NBW, N = 76). The findings indicate that ELBW/SGAs carrying the 5-HTTLPR short allele reported increased internalizing problems, particularly depression, during the third and fourth decades of life. This is the first known report on gene–environment interactions predicting psychopathology among ELBW survivors. Our findings elucidate putative neurobiological pathways that underlie risk for psychopathology.

Although childhood shyness has been linked to social anxiety problems, the factors playing a role in this association have gone largely unexplored. Here we examined the potential moderating roles of sex and age on this relation in a sample of 119 (75 girls) children (10–12 years) and adolescents (14–16 years). As predicted, shyness was positively associated with social anxiety symptoms. Sex, but not age, served as a moderating factor in linking shyness and social anxiety. Specifically, shyness was more strongly associated with social anxiety symptoms among girls than boys. These results suggest the importance of considering sex differences when examining the relation between shyness and social anxiety in childhood and adolescence.

Being born at an extremely low birth weight (ELBW; <1,000 grams) is presumed to reflect a suboptimal intrauterine environment and thus presents an opportunity for examining developmental programming hypotheses. Interfacing prenatal programming and differential susceptibility hypotheses, we tested whether individuals with ELBW in different childhood rearing environments showed different attention biases to positive and negative facial emotions in adulthood. Using the oldest known, prospectively followed cohort of ELBW survivors, we found that relative to normal birth weight controls (NBW; >2,500 grams), ELBW survivors displayed the highest and lowest attention bias to happy faces at age 30-35, depending on whether their total family income at age 8 was relatively low (environmental match) or high (environmental mismatch), respectively. This bias to happy faces was associated with a reduced likelihood of emotional problems. Findings suggest that differential susceptibility to positive emotions may be prenatally programmed, with effects lasting into adulthood. We discuss implications for integrating prenatal programming and differential susceptibility hypotheses, and the developmental origins of postnatal plasticity and resilience.