Abstract
Preterm birth (<37 weeks’ gestation) has been associated with problems in social functioning. Whether social inhibition is specifically related to preterm birth and whether early parenting may protect against social inhibition difficulties is unknown. To explore effects of gestational age and early parent–infant relationships on social inhibition, 1314 children born at 26–41 weeks gestational age were studied as part of the prospective Bavarian Longitudinal Study. Early parent–infant relationship quality was assessed postnatally with the parent–infant relationship index. Social inhibition was assessed at age 6 years using an experimental procedure, in which nonverbal and verbal responses were coded into social inhibition categories (disinhibited, normally responsive, inhibited). Multinomial logistic regressions indicated that children with lower gestational age showed more socially disinhibited (nonverbal: OR = 1.27 [95% CI = 1.17–1.40], verbal: OR = 1.23 [95% CI 1.13–1.35]) and inhibited (nonverbal: OR = 1.21 [95% CI = 1.11–1.32], verbal: OR = 1.11 [95% CI = 1.01–1.21]) responses. Good early parent–infant relationships were associated with less verbal disinhibition (OR = 0.70 [95% CI = 0.52–0.93]). Findings suggest that children with lower gestational age are at greater risk to be both socially inhibited and disinhibited. Early parenting affected risk of abnormal social responses. Supporting early parent–infant relationships may reduce preterm children’s risk for social difficulties.
Highlights
Temperamental characteristics predict later socioemotional and behavioral problems [1]
Preliminary analyses showed no statistically significant differences in sex across groups, but lower gestational age was associated with lower socioeconomic status (SES) and poorer parent–child relationship index (PIRI) scores
Good early parent–infant relationship quality was not associated with differences in verbal nor nonverbal inhibition, but with lower verbal disinhibition (OR = 0.70 [95% CI = 0.52–0.93]), after controlling for child sex, family SES, and gestational age group
Summary
Temperamental characteristics predict later socioemotional and behavioral problems [1]. Toddlers’ behavioral inhibition—the temperamental tendency to react to novel stimuli with wariness and avoidance [2]—for example, is a precursor to social reticence [3] and predictive of anxiety in middle childhood and adolescence [4,5,6]. Social inhibition, which refers to responses to unfamiliar social stimuli, is more closely associated with later socially anxious behaviors than inhibition towards nonsocial stimuli [7,8]. Efforts to identify an early-life at-risk phenotype for social anxiety have focused on neurobiological correlates of inhibited temperament and suggest that specific brain circuits underlie its behavioral manifestation [12].
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