Abstract
Behavioural inhibition in the second year of life is a hypothesized predictor for shyness, social anxiety and depression in later childhood, adolescence and even adulthood. To search for the earliest indicators of this fundamental temperamental trait, this study examined whether behavioural characteristics in early infancy can predict behavioural inhibition, as previously postulated. The results show that infant crying to unfamiliar stimuli at 4 months of age is a significant predictor (p = .002) of behavioural inhibition in the second year of life. These data implicate the possibility of measuring a temperamental anxiety disposition at a very young age simply by assessing crying in the face of novel stimuli.
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