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2023

Putnam, S.P., Sehic, E., French, B.F., Gartstein, M.A., Luttges, B.L.,...Buss, K.A., et.al (accepted for publication). The Global Temperament Project: Parent-Reported Temperament in Infants, Toddlers and Children from 59 Nations. Developmental Psychology.

Anaya, B., Bierstedt, L., Tucker, N., Buss, K. A., LoBue, V. & Pérez-Edgar, K. P. (in press). Categorical and latent profile approaches to temperamental infant reactivity and early trajectories of socioemotional adjustment. Developmental Psychology.

Myruski, S., Perez-Edgar, K. & Buss, K. A. (2023) Adolescent coping and social media use moderated anxiety change during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Adolescence, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/jad.12267.

Wakschlag, L., Sherlock, P., Blackwell, C., Burns, J., Krogh-Jespersen, S., Gershon, R., Cella, D., Buss, K.A., Luby, J. (2023). Modeling the normal: abnormal spectrum of early childhood internalizing behaviors: A clinical-developmental approach for the Multidimensional Assessment Profiles Internalizing Dimensions (MAPS-INT). International Journal of Methods of Psychiatric Research.

Buss, K. A., Myruski, S., Perez-Edgar, K., Wadsworth, M., Dorn, L, & the TEENS Team. (2023). Study Protocol: Temperament, Evolving Emotions, and Neuroscience Study. PsyArXiv Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/sv7e4

Social anxiety disorder is among the most common forms of pediatric psychopathology. Social anxiety symptoms peak in adolescence and are associated with significant impairment encompassing familial, social, and academic domains. Considerable heterogeneity in symptomatology, risk factors, and biological underpinnings exists across anxious adolescents, which has implications for (1) understanding the developmental etiology of who is at highest risk, (2) identifying individual patterns of symptom course. In particular, fearful temperament is the best early-emerging predictor of the development of anxiety symptoms, and attention bias to threat and other neurobiological processes have been implicated as mechanisms but it is unknown for whom and to what degree these factors impair functioning and what the developmental course looks like across adolescence. The current study employs a longitudinal design capturing a wide range of anxiety symptom presentation (i.e., low risk, temperamental risk, and clinical anxiety). We follow adolescents (N = 195) annually across the transitions to middle- and high-school – ages 13, 14, 15, & 16 years. We implement a rich assessment of anxiety symptoms, temperament, attention bias, endocrine (cortisol), physiological (RSA) and neurobiological (EEG, ERP) processes. We aim to (1) characterize a biobehavioral (i.e., biased attention, neuroendocrine, physiological, and neural processes) pattern associated with fearful temperament and social anxiety in adolescence, (2) characterize trajectories of social anxiety in adolescence, with an emphasis on linking fearful temperament and anxiety across development, and (3) examine how social contextual factors, sex, and pubertal development shape social anxiety trajectories and moderated links between temperament and SA.

Grogans, S. E., Bliss-Moreau, E., Buss, K. A., Clark, L. A., Fox, A. S., Keltner, D., & Shackman, A. J. (2023, February 25). The nature and neurobiology of fear and anxiety: State of the science and opportunities for accelerating discovery. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vn3mf

Fear and anxiety play a central role in the lives of humans and other animals, and there is considerable interest in clarifying their nature, identifying their biological underpinnings, and determining their consequences for health and disease. Although important strides have been made over the past half-century, it has become clear that our understanding remains far from complete. Here we provide a roundtable discussion on the nature and biological bases of fear- and anxiety-related states, traits, and psychiatric disorders. The discussants include scientists familiar with a wide variety of human and animal populations and a broad spectrum of basic, translational, and clinical science methods. The goal of the roundtable was to take stock of the state of the science—both basic and clinical—and provide a general roadmap to the next generation of fear and anxiety research. Much of the discussion centered on the major gaps and challenges facing the field, the most important avenues for future theoretical and empirical work, and emerging opportunities for accelerating discovery, with implications for scientists, trainees, funders, and other stakeholders. Understanding fear and anxiety is a matter of practical as well as theoretical importance. Anxiety disorders are a leading burden on global public health and existing treatments are far from consistently curative, underscoring the urgency of developing a deeper understanding of the factors governing threat-related emotions, and the myriad ways in which they influence the way we think, feel, and behave.

2022

Vallorani, A., Gunther, K.E., Anaya, B., Burris, J.L., Field, A.P., LoBue, V., Buss, K.A. & Pérez-Edgar, K. (2022). Assessing bidirectional relations between infant temperamental negative affect, maternal anxiety symptoms and infant affect-biased attention across the first 24-months of life. Developmental Psychology.

Bierstedt, L., Reider, L.B., Burris, J.L., Vallorani, A., Gunther, K.E., Buss, K.A. et al. (2022). Bi-directional relations between attention and social fear across the first two years of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 69, 101750 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101750

This study examined longitudinal relations between attention and social fear across the first two years of life. Our sample consisted of 357 infants and their caregivers across three sites. Data was collected at 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months of age. At all 5 assessments, the infants participated in 2 eye-tracking tasks (Vigilance and Overlap) which measured different components of attention bias (orientation, engagement, and disengagement), and parents completed questionnaires assessing infant temperament. For the first three assessments, social fear was measured using the Infant Behavioral Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R; Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003) focused on interactions with strangers, and for the final two time points, we used the social fearfulness subscale on the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire (TBAQ; Goldsmith, 1996). The results of a random intercept cross-lagged panel model showed intermittent evidence of uni-directional and reciprocal relations between attention to both threatening and positive emotion facial configurations and social fear. Our findings suggest that characteristics of behaviorally inhibited temperament–in this case, social fear–begin to interact with attention biases to emotion in the very first year of life, which carries implications for the timing of future interventions designed to mitigate the early development of maladaptive patterns of attention.

Zhou, A.M., Morales, S., Youatt, E.A., & Buss, K.A. (2022). Autonomic Nervous System Activity Moderates Associations between Temperament and Externalizing Behaviors in Early Childhood. Developmental Psychobiology.

Temperamental risk, such as surgency, negative affect, and poor effortful control, has been posited as a predictor of externalizing symptom development. However, autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity underlying processes of reactivity and regulation may moderate associations between early temperament and later externalizing behaviors during early childhood. The aim of the present study was to examine how interactions between resting sympathetic (SNS) and parasympathetic (PNS) activity at age 5 may moderate associations between temperamental risk at age 3 and externalizing behavior at age 6 (n = 87). Results demonstrate different interactions between resting ANS activity and temperamental risk to predict externalizing behaviors. For children with lower SNS activation at rest, surgency was positively associated with externalizing behaviors. Negative affect was positively associated with externalizing behaviors except when there were either high levels of SNS and PNS activity or low levels of SNS and PNS activity. Effortful control was not associated with externalizing behaviors, though SNS and PNS activity interacted to predict externalizing behaviors after accounting for effortful control. Taken together, the results highlight the importance to examine multisystem resting physiological activity as a moderator of associations between temperamental risk and the development of externalizing  behaviors.

Zhou, A.M., Trainer, A., Vallorani, A., Fu, X., & Buss, K.A. (2022). Are Fearful Boys at Higher Risk for Anxiety? Person-Centered Profiles of Toddler Fearful Behavior Predict Anxious Behaviors at Age 6. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.911913

Dysregulated fear (DF), the presence of fearful behaviors in both low-threat and high-threat contexts, is associated with child anxiety symptoms during early childhood (e.g., Buss et al., 2013). However, not all children with DF go on to develop an anxiety disorder (Buss and McDoniel, 2016). This study leveraged the data from two longitudinal cohorts (N = 261) to (1) use person-centered methods to identify profiles of fearful temperament, (2) replicate the findings linking DF to anxiety behaviors in kindergarten, (3) test if child sex moderates associations between DF and anxiety behaviors, and (4) examine the consistency of findings across multiple informants of child anxiety behaviors. We identified a normative fear profile (low fear in low-threat contexts; high fear in high-threat contexts), a low fear profile (low fear across both low- and high-threat contexts) and a DF profile (high fear across both low- and high-threat contexts). Results showed that probability of DF profile membership was significantly associated with child self-reported overanxiousness, but not with parent-reported overanxiousness. Associations between DF profile membership and overanxiousness was moderated by child sex such that these associations were significant for boys only. Additionally, results showed that probability of DF profile membership was associated with both parent-reported social withdrawal and observations of social reticence, but there were no significant associations with child self-report of social withdrawal. Results highlight the importance of considering person-centered profiles of fearful temperament across different emotion-eliciting contexts, and the importance of using multiple informants to understand associations with temperamental risk for child anxiety.

Reider, L.B., Bierstedt, L., Burris, J. L., Vallorani, A., Gunther, K.E., Buss, K.A., Pérez-Edgar, K., Field, A.P. & LoBue, V. (2022). Developmental Patterns of Affective Attention Across the First Two Years of Life. Child Development.

This study examined patterns of attention toward affective stimuli in a longitudinal sample of typically developing infants (N = 357, 147 females, 50% White, 22% Latinx, 16% African American/Black, 3% Asian, 8% mixed race, 1% not reported) using two eye-tracking tasks that measure vigilance to (rapid detection), engagement with (total looking toward), and disengagement from (latency to looking away) emotional facial configurations. Infants completed each task at 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months of age from 2016 to 2020. Multilevel growth models demonstrate that, over the first 2 years of life, infants became faster at detecting and spent more time engaging with angry over neutral faces. These results have implications for our understanding of the development of affect-biased attention.

Gunther, K. E., Anaya, B., Myruski, S., Burris, J., LoBue, V., Buss, K. A., & Pérez-Edgar, K. (2022). Variability in Caregiver Attention Bias to Threat: A Goldilocks Effect in Infant Emotional Development? Development and Psychopathology.

Attention biases to threat are considered part of the etiology of anxiety disorders. Attention bias variability (ABV) quantifies intraindividual fluctuations in attention biases and may better capture the relation between attention biases and psychopathology risk versus mean levels of attention bias. ABV to threat has been associated with attentional control and emotion regulation, which may impact how caregivers interact with their child. In a relatively diverse sample of infants (50% White, 50.7% female), we asked how caregiver ABV to threat related to trajectories of infant negative affect across the first 2 years of life. Families were part of a multi-site longitudinal study, and data were collected from 4 to 24 months of age. Multilevel modeling examined the effect of average caregiver attention biases on changes in negative affect. We found a significant interaction between infant age and caregiver ABV to threat. Probing this interaction revealed that infants of caregivers with high ABV showed decreases in negative affect over time, while infants of caregivers with low-to-average ABV showed potentiated increases in negative affect. We discuss how both high and extreme patterns of ABV may relate to deviations in developmental trajectories.

Bas-Hoogendam JM, Bernstein RA, Benson BE, Buss K.A., Gunther KE, Pérez-Edgar K, Salum GA, Jackowski A, Bressan RA, Zugman A, Degnan KA, Filippi CA, Fox NA, Henderson HA, Tang A, Zeytinoglu S, Harrewijn A, Hillegers MHJ, White T, van IJzendoorn MH, Schwartz CE, Felicione JM, DeYoung KA, Shackman AJ, Smith JF, Tillman R, van den Berg YHM, Cillessen AHN, Roelofs K, Tyborowska A, Hill SY, Battaglia M, Tettamanti M, Dougherty LR, Jin J, Klein DN, Leung H-C, Avery SN, Blackford JU, Clauss JA, Hayden EP, Liu P, Vandermeer MRJ, Goldsmith HH, Planalp EM, Nichols TE, Thompson PM, Westenberg PM, van der Wee NJA, Groenewold NA, Stein DJ, Winkler AM, Pine DS, on behalf of the ENIGMA-Anxiety Working Group. (2022). Structural Brain Correlates of Childhood Inhibited Temperament: An ENIGMA-Anxiety Mega-analysis, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Temperament involves stable behavioral and emotional tendencies that differ between individuals, which can be first observed in infancy or early childhood and relate to behavior in many contexts and over many years. One of the most rigorously characterized temperament classifications relates to the tendency of individuals to avoid the unfamiliar and to withdraw from unfamiliar people, objects, and unexpected events. This temperament is referred to as behavioral inhibition or inhibited temperament (IT). IT is a moderately heritable trait that can be measured in multiple species. In humans, levels of IT can be quantified from the first year of life through direct behavioral observations or reports by caregivers or teachers. Similar approaches as well as self-report questionnaires on current and/or retrospective levels of IT can be used later in life.

Sherlock, P., Blackwell, C.K., Kallen, M.A., Lai, J.S., Cella, D., Krogh-Jespersen, S., Luby, J.L., Buss, K.A., Burns, J. , Wakschlag, L.S. (2022) Measuring PROMIS® Emotional Distress in Early Childhood. Journal of Pediatric Psychology https://doi.org/10.1093/jpepsy/jsac029

Objective

Create and validate developmentally sensitive parent-report measures of emotional distress for children ages 1–5 years that conceptually align with the Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) pediatric measures.

Methods

Initial items were generated based on expert and parent input regarding core components of emotional distress in early childhood and review of theoretical and empirical work in this domain. Items were psychometrically tested using data from two waves of panel surveys. Item response theory (IRT) was applied to develop item calibration parameters (Wave 1), and scores were centered on a general U.S. population sample (Wave 2). Final PROMIS early childhood (EC) instruments were compared with existing measures of related constructs to establish construct validity.

Results

Experts and parents confirmed the content validity of the existing PROMIS Pediatric emotional distress domains (i.e., anger, anxiety, and depressive symptoms) as developmentally salient for young children. Existing items were adapted and expanded for early childhood by employing best practices from developmental measurement science. Item banks as well as 4- and 8-item short forms, free from differential item functioning across sex and age, were constructed for the three domains based on rigorous IRT analyses. Correlations with subscales from previously validated measures provided further evidence of construct validity.

Conclusions

The PROMIS EC Anger/Irritability, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms measures demonstrated good reliability and initial evidence of validity for use in early childhood. This is an important contribution to advancing brief, efficient measurement of emotional distress in young children, closing a developmental gap in PROMIS pediatric emotional distress assessment.

Gartstein MA, Seamon DE, Mattera JA, Bosquet Enlow M, Wright RJ, Buss, K.A. et al. (2022) Using machine learning to understand age and gender classification based on infant temperament. PLOS ONE 17(4): e0266026. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266026

Age and gender differences are prominent in the temperament literature, with the former particularly salient in infancy and the latter noted as early as the first year of life. This study represents a meta-analysis utilizing Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R) data collected across multiple laboratories (N = 4438) to overcome limitations of smaller samples in elucidating links among temperament, age, and gender in early childhood. Algorithmic modeling techniques were leveraged to discern the extent to which the 14 IBQ-R subscale scores accurately classified participating children as boys (n = 2,298) and girls (n = 2,093), and into three age groups: youngest (< 24 weeks; n = 1,102), mid-range (24 to 48 weeks; n = 2,557), and oldest (> 48 weeks; n = 779). Additionally, simultaneous classification into age and gender categories was performed, providing an opportunity to consider the extent to which gender differences in temperament are informed by infant age. Results indicated that overall age group classification was more accurate than child gender models, suggesting that age-related changes are more salient than gender differences in early childhood with respect to temperament attributes. However, gender-based classification was superior in the oldest age group, suggesting temperament differences between boys and girls are accentuated with development. Fear emerged as the subscale contributing to accurate classifications most notably overall. This study leads infancy research and meta-analytic investigations more broadly in a new direction as a methodological demonstration, and also provides most optimal comparative data for the IBQ-R based on the largest and most representative dataset to date.

Reigh, N.A., Rolls, B.J., Francis, L.A., Buss, K.A., Hayes, J.E., Hetherington, M., Moding, K., Kling, S.M. and Keller, K.L. (2022). Examining the role of food form on children's self-regulation of energy intake. Frontiers. DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2022.791718

Increasing childhood obesity rates in both the United States and worldwide demonstrate a need for better prevention and intervention strategies. However, little is understood about what factors influence children’s ability to sense and respond to hunger and fullness cues, a critical component of self-regulation of energy intake and maintenance of a healthy body weight. Research in adults suggests that food form may influence self-regulation of energy intake. More specifically, beverages are not as satiating as solid foods when matched for factors such as energy content, energy density, and volume and therefore elicit poorer energy intake self-regulation. However, much less is known about the impact of food form on children’s ability to regulate their energy intake. This report describes a study that will examine the relationship between biological, cognitive, and psychological factors and children’s appetite self-regulation (ASR). In this pre-registered report, we will examine the influence of food form on children’s short-term energy compensation, a proxy indicator of energy intake self-regulation. The study will employ a within-subjects, crossover design in which children (n=78) ages 4.5-6 years will attend five laboratory visits, each approximately 1 week apart. During each visit, children will be presented with one of five possible preload conditions, matched for weight, energy content and energy density: apple slices, apple sauce, apple juice, apple juice sweetened with non-nutritive sweetener (NNS), or no preload. The order of preload conditions will be pseudorandomized and counterbalanced across participants. Following consumption of the preload (or no preload), children will consume a standardized ad libitum test meal of common foods for this age group. We hypothesize that children will demonstrate poorer short-term energy compensation (greater meal intake) in response to the liquid and semi-solid preloads compared to the solid preload. Understanding how energy in various forms affects children’s ability to self-regulate intake has implications for dietary recommendations and will help identify those who are most at-risk for poor intake regulation and the development of obesity.

2021

Burris, J.L., Reider, L.B., Oleas, D. S., Gunther, K.E., Buss, K.A., Pérez-Edgar, K., Field, A.P., LoBue, V. (2021). Effects of Environmental Stressors on Infant Attention to Threat: Moderating Effects of Environmental Stressors on the Development of Attention to Threat in Infancy. Developmental Psychobiology

An attention bias to threat has been linked to psychosocial outcomes across development, including anxiety (Pérez-Edgar, K., Bar-Haim, Y., McDermott, J. M., Chronis-Tuscano, A., Pine, D. S., & Fox, N. A. (2010). Attention biases to threat and behavioral inhibition in early childhood shape adolescent social withdrawal. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 10(3), 349). Although some attention biases to threat are normative, it remains unclear how these biases diverge into maladaptive patterns of emotion processing for some infants. Here, we examined the relation between household stress, maternal anxiety, and attention bias to threat in a longitudinal sample of infants tested at 4, 8, and 12 months. Infants were presented with a passive viewing eye-tracking task in which angry, happy, or neutral facial configurations appeared in one of the four corners of a screen. We measured infants’ latency to fixate each target image and collected measures of parental anxiety and daily hassles at each timepoint. Intensity of daily parenting hassles moderated patterns of attention bias to threat in infants over time. Infants exposed to heightened levels of parental hassles became slower to detect angry (but not happy) facial configurations compared with neutral faces between 4 and 12 months of age, regardless of parental anxiety. Our findings highlight the potential impact of the environment on the development of infants’ early threat processing and the need to further investigate how early environmental factors shape the development of infant emotion processing.

Buss, K.A., Zhou, A.M., & Trainer, A. (2021). Bidirectional effects of toddler temperament and maternal overprotection on maternal and child anxiety symptoms across preschool. Depression and Anxiety https://doi.org/10.1002/da.23199

Existing research highlights interactions among child temperament, parents’ own anxiety symptoms, and parenting in predicting increased risk for anxiety symptom development. Theoretical models of child-elicited effects on parents have proposed that parents’ behaviors are likely not independent of children’s temperament; fearful children likely elicit more protective responses from parents and these parenting behaviors reinforces child anxiety and parents’ own anxiety.

Pérez-Edgar, K, LoBue, V., Buss, K. A., Field, A. P., Reider, L., Burris, J., Oleas, D. Zhou, A., Thomas, C., Leigh, S., Ostlund, B., Anaya, B., Gunther, K., Vallorani, A., Youatt, E., Smith, C., Promagan, N., Brown, K. Bierstedt, L., Pinzon, C., Revilla, K., Sarquez, M., Fu, X., Morales, S., MacNeill, L. Auday, E., Ermanni, B., Tucker, D., & Metcalf, K. (in press). Study Protocol: Longitudinal Attention and Temperament study (LAnTs). Frontiers in Psychiatry.

Attention processes may play a central role in shaping trajectories of socioemotional development. Individuals who are clinically anxious or have high levels of trait anxiety sometimes show attention biases to threat. There is emerging evidence that young children also demonstrate a link between attention bias to salient stimuli and broad socioemotional profiles. However, we do not have a systematic and comprehensive assessment of how attention biases, and associated neural and behavioral correlates, emerge and change from infancy through toddlerhood. This paper describes the Longitudinal Attention and Temperament study (LAnTs), which is designed to target these open questions.

Vallorani, A., Fu, X., Morales, S., LoBue V., Buss, K. A., & Pérez-Edgar, K. (2021). Variable- and person-centered approaches to affect-biased attention in infancy reveal unique relations with infant negative affect and maternal anxiety. Scientific Reports.

Affect-biased attention is an automatic process that prioritizes emotionally or motivationally salient stimuli. Several models of affect-biased attention and its development suggest that it comprises an individual’s ability to both engage with and disengage from emotional stimuli. Researchers typically rely on singular tasks to measure affect-biased attention, which may lead to inconsistent results across studies. Here we examined affect-biased attention across three tasks in a unique sample of 193 infants, using both variable-centered (factor analysis; FA) and person-centered (latent profile analysis; LPA) approaches. Using exploratory FA, we found evidence for two factors of affect-biased attention: an Engagement factor and a Disengagement factor, where greater maternal anxiety was related to less engagement with faces. Using LPA, we found two groups of infants with different patterns of affect-biased attention: a Vigilant group and an Avoidant group. A significant interaction noted that infants higher in negative affect who also had more anxious mothers were most likely to be in the Vigilant group. Overall, these results suggest that both FA and LPA are viable approaches for studying distinct questions related to the development of affect-biased attention, and set the stage for future longitudinal work examining the role of infant negative affect and maternal anxiety in the emergence of affect-biased attention.

Burris, Jessica & Reider, Lori & Oleas, Denise & Gunther, Kelley & Buss, Kristin & Perez-Edgar, Koraly & Field, Andy & LoBue, Vanessa. (2021). Moderating Effects of Environmental Stressors on the Development of Attention to Threat in Infancy. Developmental Psychobiology.

An attention bias to threat has been linked to psychosocial outcomes across development,
including anxiety (Pérez-Edgar et al., 2010). Although some attention biases to threat are
normative, it remains unclear how these biases diverge into maladaptive patterns of emotion
processing for some infants. Here, we examined the relation between household stress, maternal
anxiety, and attention bias to threat in a longitudinal sample of infants tested at 4, 8, and 12
months. Infants were presented with a passive viewing eye-tracking task in which angry, happy,
or neutral facial configurations appeared in one of the four corners of a screen. We measured
infants’ latency to fixate each target image and collected measures of parental anxiety and daily
hassles at each timepoint. Intensity of daily parenting hassles moderated patterns of attention bias
to threat in infants over time. Infants exposed to heightened levels of parental hassles became
slower to detect angry (but not happy) facial configurations compared to neutral faces between 4
and 12 months of age, regardless of parental anxiety. Our findings highlight the potential impact
of the environment on the development of infants’ early threat processing, and the need to further
investigate how early environmental factors shape the development of infant emotion processing.

Pérez-Edgar, K., LoBue, V. & Buss, K.A. (2021). From parents to children and back again: Bidirectional processes in the transmission and development of depression and anxiety. Depression and Anxiety. DOI: 10.1002/da.23227

Anxiety and depression both emerge over the course of childhood and adolescence, impacting individuals’ long-term functioning. Research points to three main pathways for intergenerational transmission including genetic inheritance, fetal programming through maternal experiences during pregnancy, and the active and passive socialization of emotion through parental behaviors. The last 15 years has seen an emergence of studies examining the transmission of risk for mood disorders from parent to child. For example, prolonged exposure to parental anxiety has been associated with increased depression and anxiety in offspring. Anxious parents also have distinct parenting profiles that impact socioemotional development and these parenting effects may result in broad alterations to the biological and cognitive profiles of their children. In addition, there is emerging data suggesting that child traits have down-stream impacts on parental levels of anxiety and depression, creating a bidirectional loop. However, there has yet to be a systematic gathering of studies examining these pathways in one place.

Anaya, B., Ostlund, B. D., LoBue, V., Buss, K. A., & Pérez-Edgar, K. (2021). Psychometric properties of infant electroencephalography: Developmental stability, reliability, and construct validity of frontal alpha asymmetry and delta–beta coupling. Developmental Psychobiology, 63, e22178. PMID: 34423429

Resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) provides developmental neuroscientists a noninvasive view into the neural underpinnings of cognition and emotion. Recently, the psychometric properties of two widely used neural measures in early childhood—frontal alpha asymmetry and delta–beta coupling—have come under scrutiny. Despite their growing use, additional work examining how the psychometric properties of these neural signatures may change across infancy is needed. The current study examined the developmental stability, split-half reliability, and construct validity of infant frontal alpha asymmetry and delta–beta coupling. Infants provided resting-state EEG data at 8, 12, and 18 months of age (N = 213). Frontal alpha asymmetry and delta–beta coupling showed significant developmental change from 8 to 18 months. Reliability for alpha asymmetry, and alpha, delta, and beta power, individually, was generally good. In contrast, the reliability of delta–beta coupling scores was poor. Associations between frontal alpha asymmetry and approach tendencies generally emerged, whereas stronger (over-coupled) delta–beta coupling scores were associated with profiles of dysregulation and low inhibition. However, the individual associations varied across time and specific measures of interest. We discuss these findings with a developmental lens, highlighting the importance of repeated measures to better understand links between neural signatures and typical and atypical development.

Kiel, E. J., Kalomiris, A. E., & Buss, K.A. (2021). Maternal Accuracy for Children’s Fearful Distress in Toddlerhood and Kindergarten: Moderation of a Serial Indirect Effect by Toddler Fearful Temperament, Parenting, 21:4, 277-303, DOI:10.1080/15295192.2020.1754106

Ostlund, B., Myruski, S., Buss, K., & Pérez-Edgar, K. E. (2021). The centrality of temperament to the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC): The earliest building blocks of psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology. 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579421000511

The research domain criteria (RDoC) is an innovative approach designed to explore dimensions of human behavior. The aim of this approach is to move beyond the limits of psychiatric categories in the hope of aligning the identification of psychological health and dysfunction with clinical neuroscience. Despite its contributions to adult psychopathology research, RDoC undervalues ontogenetic development, which circumscribes our understanding of the etiologies, trajectories, and maintaining mechanisms of psychopathology risk. In this paper, we argue that integrating temperament research into the RDoC framework will advance our understanding of the mechanistic origins of psychopathology beginning in infancy. In illustrating this approach, we propose the incorporation of core principles of temperament theories into a new “life span considerations” subsection as one option for infusing development into the RDoC matrix. In doing so, researchers and clinicians may ultimately have the tools necessary to support emotional development and reduce a young child’s likelihood of psychological dysfunction beginning in the first years of life.

Zhou, A.M., & Buss, K.A. (2021, accepted). Trajectories of Internalizing Symptoms in Early Childhood: Associations with Maternal Internalizing Symptoms and Child Physiology. Developmental Psychobiology. DOI: 10.1002/dev.22104

Research has shown that children’s internalizing symptom development during early childhood are shaped by biopsychosocial processes including physiology and parental symptoms. However, associations between maternal internalizing symptoms, child physiology and trajectories of child internalizing symptoms are not well understood. We used growth curve models to examine how maternal internalizing symptoms, child physiology and the interaction between maternal internalizing symptoms and child physiology may be associated with trajectories of internalizing symptoms during early childhood. Mothers reported their children’s internalizing symptoms when children were 3, 4, 5 and 6 years of age, and mothers self‐reported their own internalizing symptoms when children were 3. Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) was collected when children were 3.5‐years‐old. Results showed that there is a non‐linear, quadratic trajectory across all participants from age 3 to 6. Maternal internalizing symptoms were not associated with children’s internalizing symptoms at age 6, but were associated with both linear and quadratic change. Lower resting RSA was associated with greater increases in children’s internalizing symptoms over time. Interactions between maternal internalizing symptoms and RSA were not associated with children’s internalizing symptom development. The findings demonstrate that maternal internalizing symptoms and child physiology are independently associated with internalizing symptom development during early childhood.

MacNeill, L.A., Fu, X., Buss, K.A., & Pérez-Edgar, K. (2021). Do you see what I mean?: Using mobile eye tracking to capture parent-child dynamics in the context of anxiety risk. Development and Psychopathology. doi:10.1017/S0954579420001601

Temperamental behavioral inhibition (BI) is a robust endophenotype for anxiety characterized by increased sensitivity to novelty. Controlling parenting can reinforce children’s wariness by rewarding signs of distress. Fine-grained, dynamic measures are needed to better understand both how children perceive their parent’s behaviors and the mechanisms supporting evident relations between parenting and socioemotional functioning. The current study examined dyadic attractor patterns (average mean durations) with state space grids, using children’s attention patterns (captured via mobile eye tracking) and parental behavior (positive reinforcement, teaching, directives, intrusion), as functions of child BI and parent anxiety. Forty 5- to 7-year-old children and their primary caregivers completed a set of challenging puzzles, during which the child wore a head-mounted eye tracker. Child BI was positively correlated with proportion of parent’s time spent teaching. Child age was negatively related, and parent anxiety level was positively related, to parent-focused/controlling parenting attractor strength. There was a significant interaction between parent anxiety level and child age predicting parent-focused/controlling parenting attractor strength. This study is a first step to examining the co-occurrence of parenting behavior and child attention in the context of child BI and parental anxiety levels.

2020

Kiel, E., Price, N., & Buss, K.A. (2020). Maternal anxiety and toddler inhibited temperament predict maternal socialization of worry. Social Development. 30, 258-273. DOI: 10.1111/sode.12476

Parent emotion socialization refers to the process by which parents impart their values and beliefs about emotional expressivity to their children. Parent emotion socialization requires attention as a construct that develops in its own right. The socialization of child worry, in particular, has implications for children’s typical socioemotional development, as well as their maladaptive development toward anxiety outcomes. Existing theories on emotion socialization, anxiety, and parent–child relationships guided our investigation of both maternal anxiety and toddler inhibited temperament as predictors of change in mothers’ unsupportive (i.e., distress, punitive, and minimizing) responses to toddler worry across 1 year of toddlerhood. Participants included 139 mother–toddler dyads. Mothers reported on their own anxiety and their emotion socialization responses to toddler worry. We assessed toddler inhibited temperament through a mother‐report survey of shyness and observational coding of dysregulated fear. Maternal anxiety but not child inhibited temperament predicted distress reactions and punitive responses, whereas maternal anxiety and toddler dysregulated fear both uniquely predicted minimizing responses. These results support the continued investigation of worry socialization as a developmental outcome of both parent and child characteristics.

LoBue, V., Reider, L.B., Kim, E., Burris, J.L., Oleas, D.S., Buss, K.A., Pérez-Edgar, K., Field, A.P. (2020). The importance of using multiple outcome measures in infant research. Infancy.25(4), 420-437. doi: 10.1111/infa.12339

Collecting data with infants is notoriously difficult. As a result, many of our studies consist of small samples, with only a single measure, in a single age group, at a single time point. With renewed calls for greater academic rigor in data collection practices, using multiple outcome measures in infant research is one way to increase rigor, and, at the same time, enable us to more accurately interpret our data. Here, we illustrate the importance of using multiple measures in psychological research with examples from our own work on rapid threat detection and from the broader infancy literature. First, we describe our initial studies using a single outcome measure, and how this strategy caused us to nearly miss a rich and complex story about attention biases for threat and their development. We demonstrate how using converging measures can help researchers make inferences about infant behavior, and how using additional measures allows us to more deeply examine the mechanisms that drive developmental change. Finally, we provide practical and statistical recommendations for how researchers can use multiple measures in future work.

Shewark, E., Brick, T.R., Buss, K.A. (2020). Capturing Temporal Dynamics of Fear Behaviors on a Moment to Moment Basis. Infancy. doi: 10.1111/infa.12328

Identifying patterns of fearful behaviors early and accurately is essential to identify children who may be at increased risk for psychopathology. Previous work focused on the total amount of fear by using composites across time. However, considering the temporal dynamics of fear expression might offer novel insights into the identification of children at risk. One hundred and twenty‐five toddlers participated in high‐ and low‐fear tasks. Data were modeled using a novel two‐step approach. First, a hidden Markov model estimated latent fear states and transitions across states over time. Results revealed children’s behavior was best represented by six behavioral states. Next, these states were analyzed using sequence clustering to identify groups of children with similar dynamic trajectories through the states. A four‐cluster solution found groups of children varied in fear response and regulation process: “external regulators” (using the caregiver as a regulation tool), “low reactive” (low reaction to stimulus), “fearful explorers” (managing their own internal state with minimal assistance from the caregiver), and “high fear” (fearful/at‐caregiver state regardless of task). The combination of analytic tools enabled fine‐grained examination of the processes of fearful temperament. These insights may help prevention programs target behaviors that perpetuate anxious behavior in the moment.

Buss, K. A., Cho, S., Morales, S., McDoniel, M., Frank Webb, A., Schwartz, A., Cole, P. M., Dorn, L., Gest, S., Teti, D. (2020). Toddler dysregulated fear predicts continued risk for social anxiety symptoms in early adolescence. Development and Psychopathology 44, 1298-1313. doi: 10.1017/S0954579419001743

Identifying early risk factors for the development of social anxiety symptoms has important translational implications. Accurately identifying which children are at the highest risk is of critical importance, especially if we can identify risk early in development. We examined continued risk for social anxiety symptoms at the transition to adolescence in a community sample of children (n = 112) that had been observed for high fearfulness at age 2 and tracked for social anxiety symptoms from preschool through age 6. In our previous studies, we found that a pattern of dysregulated fear (DF), characterized by high fear in low threat contexts, predicted social anxiety symptoms at ages 3, 4, 5, and 6 years across two samples. In the current study, we re-evaluated these children at 11-13 years of age by using parent and child reports of social anxiety symptoms, parental monitoring, and peer relationship quality. The scores for DF uniquely predicted adolescents’ social anxiety symptoms beyond the prediction that was made by more proximal measures of behavioral (e.g., kindergarten social withdrawal) and concurrent environmental risk factors (e.g., parental monitoring, peer relationships). Implications for early detection, prevention, and intervention are discussed.

Blackwell, C., Wakschlag, L., Krogh-Jespersen, S., Buss, K. A., Luby, J., Bevans, K., Lai, Jin-Shei, F., Christopher B., Cella, D. (2020) Pragmatic health assessments in early childhood: The PROMIS of developmentally-based measurement for pediatric psychology. Journal of Pediatric Psychology. 45(3), 311-318. doi: 10.1093/jpepsy/jsz094

To illustrate the integration of developmental considerations into person-reported outcome (PRO) measurement development for application in early childhood pediatric psychology.

Brooker, R. J., Bates, J. E., Buss, K. A., Canen, M. J., Dennis-Tiwary, T. A., Gatzke-Kopp, L. M., Hoyniak, C., Klein, D. N., Kujawa, A., Lahat, A., Lamm, C., Moser, J. S., Peterson, I. T., Tang, A., Woltering, S., & Schmidt, L. A. (2020). Conducting event-related potential (ERP) research with young children: A review of components, special considerations and recommendations for research on cognition and emotion. Journal of Psychophysiology. doi.org/10.1027/0269-8803/a000243

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.

2019

Pérez-Edgar, K., Vallorani, A., Buss, K.A., LoBue, V. (2019) Individual differences in infancy research: Letting the baby stand out from the crowd. Infancy.25(4), 438-457. doi: 10.1111/infa.12338

Within the developmental literature, there is an often unspoken tension between studies that aim to capture broad scale, fairly universal nomothetic traits, and studies that focus on mechanisms and trajectories that are idiographic and bounded to some extent by systematic individual differences. The suitability of these approaches varies as a function of the specific research interests at hand. Although the approaches are interdependent, they have often proceeded as parallel research traditions. The current review notes some of the historical and empirical bases for this divide and suggests that each tradition would benefit from incorporating both methodological approaches to iteratively examine universal (nomothetic) phenomena and the individual differences (idiographic) factors that lead to variation in development. This work may help isolate underlying causal mechanisms, better understand current functioning, and predict long‐term developmental consequences. In doing so, we also highlight empirical and structural issues that need to be addressed to support this integration.

 

Fu, X., Morales, S., LoBue, V., Buss, K. A., Pérez-Edgar, K. (2019). Temperament Moderates Developmental Changes in Vigilance to Emotional Faces in Infants: Evidence from an Eye-tracking Study. Developmental Psychobiology. doi: 10.1002/dev.21920

Affect-biased attention reflects the prioritization of attention to stimuli that individuals deem to be motivationally and/or affectively salient. Normative affect-biased attention is early-emerging, providing an experience-expectant function for socioemotional development. Evidence is limited regarding how reactive and regulatory aspects of temperament may shape maturational changes in affect-biased attention that operate at the earliest stages of information processing. This study implemented a novel eye-tracking paradigm designed to capture attention vigilance in infants. We assessed temperamental negative affect (NA) and attention control (AC) using laboratory observations and parent-reports, respectively. Among infants (N = 161 in the final analysis) aged 4 to 24 months (Mean = 12.05, SD = 5.46; 86 males), there was a significant age effect on fixation latency to emotional versus neutral faces only in infants characterized with high NA and high AC. Specifically, in infants with these temperament traits, older infants showed shorter latency (i.e., greater vigilance) toward neutral faces, which are potentially novel and unfamiliar to infants. The age effect on vigilance toward emotional faces was not significant. The findings support the argument that the development of affect-biased attention is associated with multiple temperament processes that potentially interact over time.

Burris, J. L., Oleas, D., Reider, L., Buss, K. A., Pérez-Edgar, K, & LoBue, V. (2019). Biased attention to threat: Answering old questions with young infants. Current Directions in Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0963721419861415

For decades, researchers have been interested in humans’ ability to quickly detect threat-relevant stimuli. Here, we review recent findings from infant research on biased attention to threat and discuss how these data speak to classic assumptions about whether attention biases for threat are normative, whether they change with development, and what factors might contribute to this developmental change. We conclude that although there is some stability in attention biases in infancy, various factors—including temperamental negative affect and maternal anxiety—also contribute to shaping the development of biased attention.

Burris, J. L., Buss, K. A., LoBue, V., Pérez-Edgar, K., Field, A. P. (2019). Biased attention to threat and anxiety: On taking a developmental approach. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043808719860717

Several researchers have proposed a causal relation between biased attention to threat and the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders in both children and adults. However, despite the widely documented correlation between attention bias to threat and anxiety, developmental research in this domain is limited. In this review, we highlight the importance of taking a developmental approach to studying attention biases to threat and anxiety. First, we discuss how recent developmental work on attention to threat fits into existing theoretical frameworks for the development of anxiety and how attention biases might interact with other risk factors across development. Then we review the developmental literature on attention bias to threat and anxiety and describe how classic methodologies can be modified to study attention biases in even the youngest infants. Finally, we discuss limitations and future directions in this domain, emphasizing the need for future longitudinal research beginning in early infancy that tracks concurrent developments in both biased attention and anxiety. Altogether, we hope that by highlighting the importance of development in the study of attention bias to threat and anxiety, we can provide a road map for how researchers might implement developmental approaches to studying a potential core mechanism in anxiety.

Fu, X., Nelson, E. E., Borge, M., Buss, K. A., Pérez-Edgar, K. (2019). Stationary and ambulatory attention patterns are differentially associated with early temperamental risk for socioemotional problems: Preliminary evidence from a multimodal eye-tracking investigation. Development & Psychopathology. doi:10.1017/S0954579419000427

Behavioral Inhibition (BI) is a temperament type that predicts social withdrawal in childhood and anxiety disorders later in life. However, not all BI children develop anxiety. Attention bias (AB) may enhance the vulnerability for anxiety in BI children, and interfere with their development of effective emotion regulation. In order to fully probe attention patterns, we used traditional measures of reaction time (RT), stationary eye-tracking, and recently emerging mobile eye-tracking measures of attention in a sample of 5- to 7-year-olds characterized as BI (N = 23) or non-BI (N = 58) using parent reports. There were no BI-related differences in RT or stationary eye-tracking indices of AB in a dot-probe task. However, findings in a subsample from whom eye-tracking data were collected during a live social interaction indicated that BI children (N = 12) directed fewer gaze shifts to the stranger than non-BI children (N = 25). Moreover, the frequency of gazes toward the stranger was positively associated with stationary AB only in BI, but not in non-BI, children. Hence, BI was characterized by a consistent pattern of attention across stationary and ambulatory measures. We demonstrate the utility of mobile eye-tracking as an effective tool to extend the assessment of attention and regulation to social interactive contexts.

2018

Buss, K. A. Davis E. L., Ram, N, Coccia, M. (2018) Dysregulated fear, social inhibition, and RSA: A replication an extension. Child Development, 89 (3, e214-e228). doi. 10.1111/cdev.12774

Behavioral inhibition indicates increased risk for development of social anxiety. Recent work has identified a pattern of dysregulated fear (DF), characterized by high fear in low threat situations, that provides a more precise marker of developmental risk through early childhood. This study tested a new longitudinal sample of children (n = 124) from age 24 to 48 months. Replicating prior findings, at 24 months we identified a pattern of fearful behavior across contexts marked by higher fear to putatively low-threat situations. DF was associated with higher parental report of social inhibition at 24, 36, and 48 months. Extending prior findings, we observed differences in cardiac physiology during fear-eliciting situations suggesting that the neurobiological underpinnings of DF relate to difficulty with regulation.

McDoniel, M., & Buss, K. A. (2018). Maternal responsiveness protects exuberant toddlers from developing behavior problems in kindergarten. Early Education and Development, 29, 716-729.

Exuberant temperament, characterized by high approach and positive affect, is linked to socioemotional outcomes including risk for externalizing symptoms across development. Externalizing problems interfere with children’s school readiness and lead to disruptive behavior in the classroom. While some moderating factors help identify which exuberant children are at risk and in which contexts they are at risk, few studies have identified early moderators that protect against maladjustment when children enter school. In the current study, we examined exuberant temperament in 124 toddlers and classroom behavior problems reported by kindergarten teachers. We also assessed the impact of maternal responsiveness at 24 months on the relation between exuberance and classroom behavior problems. As hypothesized, we found that higher exuberance predicted more behavior problems. Additionally, maternal responsiveness moderated this association such that high responsiveness protected exuberant children from classroom behavior problems.

Lunkenheimer, E., Tiberio, S., Skoranski, A., Buss, K. A., & Cole, P. M. (2018). Parent-child co-regulation of parasympathetic processes varies by social context and risk for psychopathology. Psychophysiology. doi. 10.1111/psyp.12985.

Abstract: The parasympathetic nervous system supports social interaction and varies in relation to psychopathology. However, we know little about parasympathetic processes from a dyadic framework, nor in early childhood when parent-child social interactions become more complex and child psychopathology first emerges. We hypothesized that higher risk for psychopathology (maternal psychopathology symptoms and child problem behavior) would be related to weaker concordance of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) between mothers and children (M = 3½ years old; N = 47) and that these relations could vary by social contextual demands, comparing unstructured free play, semistructured cleanup, and structured teaching tasks. Multilevel coupled autoregressive models of RSA during parent-child interactions showed overall dynamic, positive concordance in mother-child RSA over time, but this concordance was weaker during the more structured teaching task. In contrast, higher maternal psychological aggression and child externalizing and internalizing problems were associated with weaker dyadic RSA concordance, which was weakest during unstructured free play. Higher maternal depressive symptoms were related to disrupted individual mother and child RSA but not to RSA concordance. Thus, risk for psychopathology was generally related to weaker dyadic mother-child RSA concordance in contexts with less complex structure or demands (free play, cleanup), as compared to the structured teaching task that showed weaker RSA concordance for all dyads. Implications for the meaning and utility of the construct of parent-child physiological coregulation are discussed.

Myruski, S., Gulyayeva, O., Birk2, S., Perez-Edgar, K., Buss, K. A., & Dennis-Tiwary, T. A. (2018). Digital Disruption? Maternal mobile device use is related to infant social-emotional functioning. Developmental Science.

Abstract: Mobile device use has become increasingly prevalent, yet its impact on infant development remains largely unknown. When parents use mobile devices in front of infants, the parent is physically present but most likely distracted and unresponsive. Research using the classic Still Face Paradigm (SFP) suggests that parental withdrawal and unresponsiveness may have negative consequences for children’s social-emotional development. In the present study, 50 infants aged 7.20 to 23.60 months (M = 15.40, SD = 4.74) and their mothers completed a modified SFP. The SFP consisted of three phases: free play (FP; parent and infant play and interact), still face (SF; parent withdraws attention and becomes unresponsive), and reunion (RU; parent resumes normal interaction). The modified SFP incorporated mobile device use in the SF phase. Parents reported on their typical mobile device use and infant temperament. Consistent with the standard SFP, infants showed more negative affect and less positive affect during SF versus FP. Infants also showed more toy engagement and more engagement with mother during FP versus SF and RU. Infants showed the most social bids during SF and more room exploration in SF than RU. More frequent reported mobile device use was associated with less room exploration and positive affect during SF, and less recovery (i.e. engagement with mother, room exploration positive affect) during RU, even when controlling for individual differences in temperament. Findings suggest that the SFP represents a promising theoretical framework for understanding the impact of parent’s mobile device use on infant social-emotional functioning and parent-infant interactions.

Buss, K. A. Davis EL, Ram, N, Coccia, M. (2018) Dysregulated fear, social inhibition, and RSA: A replication an extension. Child Development. doi. 10.1111/cdev.12774

Abstract: Behavioral inhibition indicates increased risk for development of social anxiety. Recent work has identified a pattern of dysregulated fear (DF), characterized by high fear in low-threat situations, that provides a more precise marker of developmental risk through early childhood. This study tested a new longitudinal sample of children (n = 124) from ages 24 to 48 months. Replicating prior findings, at 24 months, we identified a pattern of fearful behavior across contexts marked by higher fear to putatively low-threat situations. DF was associated with higher parental report of social inhibition at 24, 36, and 48 months. Extending prior findings, we observed differences in cardiac physiology during fear-eliciting situations, suggesting that the neurobiological underpinnings of DF relate to difficulty with regulation.

2017

Perez-Edgar, K., Morales, S., LoBue, V., Taber-Thomas, B. C., Allen, E. K., Brown K. M., & Buss, K.A. (2017). The impact of negative affect on attention patterns to threat across the first two years of life. Developmental Psychology.

Abstract: The current study examined the relations between individual differences in attention to emotion faces and temperamental negative affect across the first two years of life. Infant studies have noted a normative pattern of preferential attention to salient cues, particularly angry faces. A parallel literature suggests that elevated attention bias to threat is associated with anxiety, particularly if coupled with temperamental risk. Examining the emerging relations between attention to threat and temperamental negative affect may help distinguish normative from at-risk patterns of attention. Infants (N=145) ages 4 to 24 months (Mean=12.93 months, SD=5.57) completed an eye-tracking task modeled on the attention bias “dot-probe” task used with older children and adults. With age, infants spent greater time attending to emotion faces, particularly threat faces. All infants displayed slower latencies to fixate to incongruent versus congruent probes. Neither relation was moderated by temperament. Trial-by-trial analyses found that dwell time to the face was associated with latency to orient to subsequent probes, moderated by the infant’s age and temperament. In young infants low in negative affect longer processing of angry faces was associated with faster subsequent fixation to probes; young infants high in negative affect displayed the opposite pattern at trend. Findings suggest that although age was directly associated with an emerging bias to threat, the impact of processing threat on subsequent orienting was associated with age and temperament. Early patterns of attention may shape how children respond to their environments, potentially via attention’s gate-keeping role in framing a child’s social world for processing.

 

Dollar, J., Stifter. C., Buss, K. A. (2017) Exuberant and Inhibited Children: Person-centered Profiles and Links to Social Adjustment. Developmental Psychology.

Abstract: The current study aimed to substantiate and extend our understanding regarding the existence and developmental pathways of 3 distinct temperament profiles-exuberant, inhibited, and average approach-in a sample of 3.5-year-old children (n = 121). The interactions between temperamental styles and specific types of effortful control, inhibitory control and attentional control, were also examined in predicting kindergarten peer acceptance. Latent profile analysis identified 3 temperamental styles: exuberant, inhibited, and average approach. Support was found for the adaptive role of inhibitory control for exuberant children and attentional control for inhibited children in promoting peer acceptance in kindergarten. These findings add to our current understanding of temperamental profiles by using sophisticated methodology in a slightly older, community sample, as well as the importance of examining specific types of self-regulation to identify which skills lower risk for children of different temperamental styles.

Cho, S. & Buss, K. A. (2017). Toddler Parasympathetic Regulation and Fear: Links to Maternal Appraisal and Behavior. Developmental Psychobiology.

Abstract: There is a growing recognition that parental socialization influences interact with young children’s emerging capacity for physiological regulation and shape children’s developmental trajectories. Nevertheless, the transactional processes linking parental socialization and physiological regulatory processes remain not well understood, particularly for fear-prone toddlers. To address this gap in the literature, the present study investigated the biopsychosocial processes that underlie toddlers’ fear regulation by examining the relations among toddler parasympathetic regulation, maternal appraisal, and parenting behaviors. Participants included 124 mothers and their toddlers (Mage = 24.43 months), who participated in a longitudinal study of temperament and socio-emotional development. Toddlers’ parasympathetic reactivity was found to moderate the links between maternal anticipatory appraisal of child fearfulness and (a) maternal provision of physical comfort and (b) preschool-age child inhibition. Additionally, maternal comforting behaviors during the low-threat task predicted preschool-age separation distress, specifically for toddlers demonstrating a low baseline RSA.

LoBue, V., Buss, K. A., Tabor-Thomas, B., & Perez-Edgar, K., (2017). Developmental differences in infants’ attention to social and nonsocial threats. Infancy.

Abstract: Research has demonstrated that humans detect threatening stimuli more rapidly than nonthreatening stimuli. Although the literature presumes that biases for threat should be normative, present early in development, evident across multiple forms of threat, and stable across individuals, developmental work in this area is limited. Here, we examine the developmental differences in infants’ (4- to 24-month-olds) attention to social (angry faces) and nonsocial (snakes) threats using a new age-appropriate dot-probe task. In Experiment 1, infants’ first fixations were more often to snakes than to frogs, and they were faster to fixate probes that appeared in place of snakes vs. frogs. There were no significant age differences, suggesting that a perceptual bias for snakes is present early in life and stable across infancy. In Experiment 2, infants fixated probes more quickly after viewing any trials that contained an angry face compared to trials that contained a happy face. Further, there were age-related changes in infants’ responses to face stimuli, with a general increase in looking time to faces before the probe and an increase in latency to fixate the probe after seeing angry faces. Together, this work suggests that different developmental mechanisms may be responsible for attentional biases for social vs. nonsocial threats.

Cho, S. Philbrook, L.E., Davis, E. L., & Buss, K. A. (2017). Sleep duration and RSA suppression as predictors of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Developmental Psychobiology, 59, 60-69. doi. 10.1002/dev.21467

Abstract: Although the conceptual interplay among the biological and clinical features of sleep, arousal, and emotion regulation has been noted, little is understood about how indices of sleep duration and parasympathetic reactivity operate jointly to predict adjustment in early childhood. Using a sample of 123 toddlers, the present study examined sleep duration and RSA reactivity as predictors of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Parents reported on children’s sleep duration and adjustment. RSA reactivity was assessed via children’s responses to fear-eliciting stimuli and an inhibitory control challenge. Findings demonstrated that greater RSA suppression to both types of tasks in combination with longer sleep duration was concurrently associated with less internalizing. In contrast, greater RSA augmentation to an inhibitory control task in the context of shorter sleep duration predicted more externalizing 1 year later. The significance of duration of toddlers’ sleep as well as the context in which physiological regulatory difficulties occurs is discussed.

 

2016

Lunkenheimer, E., Tiberio, S. S., Buss, K. A., Lucas-Thompson, R. G., Boker, S. M., & Timpe, Z. C. (2016). Coregulation of respiratory sinus arrhythmia between parents and preschoolers: Differences by children's externalizing problems. Developmental Psychobiology, 57, 994-1003. doi. 10.1002/dev.21323

Abstract: The coordination of physiological processes between parents and infants is thought to support behaviors critical for infant adaptation, but we know little about parent-child physiological coregulation during the preschool years. The present study examined whether time-varying changes in parent and child respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) exhibited coregulation (across-person dynamics) accounting for individual differences in parent and child RSA, and whether there were differences in these parasympathetic processes by children’s externalizing problems. Mother-child dyads (N = 47; Child age M = 3½ years) engaged in three laboratory tasks (free play, clean up, puzzle task) for 18 min, during which RSA data were collected. Multilevel coupled autoregressive models revealed that mothers and preschoolers showed positive coregulation of RSA such that changes in mother RSA predicted changes in the same direction in child RSA and vice versa, controlling for the stability of within-person RSA over time and individual differences in overall mean RSA. However, when children’s externalizing behaviors were higher, coregulation was negative such that changes in real-time mother and child RSA showed divergence rather than positive concordance. Results suggest that mothers and preschoolers do coregulate RSA during real-time interactions, but that children’s higher externalizing behavior problems are related to disruptions in these processes.

Kiel, E. J., Premo, J. E., & Buss, K. A. (2016). Gender moderates the progression from fearful temperament to social withdrawal through protective parenting. Social Development, 25, 235-255. doi. 10.1111/sode.12145

Abstract: Child gender may exert its influence on development, not as a main effect, but as a moderator among predictors and outcomes. We examined this notion in relations among toddler fearful temperament, maternal protective parenting, maternal accuracy in predicting toddler distress to novelty, and child social withdrawal. In two multi-method, longitudinal studies of toddlers (24 months at Time 1; ns = 93 and 117, respectively) and their mothers, few main effect gender differences occurred. Moderation existed in both studies: only for highly accurate mothers of boys, fearful temperament related to protective parenting, which then predicted later social withdrawal. Thus, studying only main-effect gender differences may obscure important differences in how boys and girls develop from fearful temperament to later social withdrawal.