Children of Few Words: Relations Among Selective Mutism, Behavioral Inhibition, and (Social) Anxiety Symptoms in 3- to 6-Year-Olds.

Peter Muris,Suili Bot,Eline Hendriks

doi:10.1007/s10578-015-0547-x

Peter Muris, Suili Bot + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-015-0547-x

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Abstract

Children with selective mutism (SM) fail to speak in specific public situations (e.g., school), despite speaking normally in other situations (e.g., at home). The current study explored the phenomenon of SM in a sample of 57 non-clinical children aged 3–6 years. Children performed two speech tasks to assess their absolute amount of spoken words, while their parents completed questionnaires for measuring children’s levels of SM, social anxiety and non-social anxiety symptoms as well as the temperament characteristic of behavioral inhibition. The results indicated that high levels of parent-reported SM were primarily associated with high levels of social anxiety symptoms. The number of spoken words was negatively related to behavioral inhibition: children with a more inhibited temperament used fewer words during the speech tasks. Future research is necessary to test whether the temperament characteristic of behavioral inhibition prompts children to speak less in novel social situations, and whether it is mainly social anxiety that turns this taciturnity into the psychopathology of SM.

Highlights

Selective mutism (SM) is a psychiatric disorder typically occurring during childhood that is characterized by an absence of speech in specific public situations in which the child is expected to speak, while in other situations the child’s production of speech is apparently quite normal
The results of the correlational analyses indicated that behavioral inhibition was associated with higher symptom levels of social anxiety, other anxiety disorders, and selective mutism (SM), which is in agreement with a vast amount of literature showing that this temperament characteristic is a vulnerability factor for the development of anxiety pathology in children [16, 25]
Future studies should systematically explore the influence of situational characteristics on children’s amount of speech behavior, anxiety levels, and SM symptomatology. In spite of these shortcomings, the present study clearly demonstrates that there are clear relationships between behavioral inhibition/social anxiety and SM symptoms, which is in agreement with notions that have been formulated in the extant literature [2, 9]

Summary

Introduction

Selective mutism (SM) is a psychiatric disorder typically occurring during childhood that is characterized by an absence of speech in specific public situations in which the child is expected to speak (e.g., school), while in other situations the child’s production of speech is apparently quite normal (e.g., at home). The mean age of onset of SM is usually before age 5 years, but the disturbance may not come to clinical attention until children enter school for the first time. Research in which children with SM are followed for a longer time period has shown that the disorder has a mean duration of 8 years, after which the key symptom (i.e., the absence of speech in specific situations) normally disappears [3]. This does not mean, that children no longer have problems. Studies have demonstrated that children who have previously suffered from SM, continue to have communication problems, perform less well at

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