Social Reticence Research Articles

Individual differences in developmental trajectories of affective attention and relations with competence and social reticence with peers.

This study examined individual differences in affective attention trajectories in infancy and relations with competence and social reticence at 24 months. Data collection spanned 2017 to 2021. Infants (N = 297, 53% White, 49% reported as assigned male at birth) recruited in South Central and Central Pennsylvania and Northern New Jersey provided eye-tracking data at five assessments. Caregivers self-reported anxiety symptoms, infant temperamental negative affect, and infant competence at the final assessment. A subgroup of infants participated in a peer social dyad at the final assessment. Using group-based trajectory modeling, we found three groups of infants with different affective attention trajectories: affective attention increasers (n = 73), affective attention shifters (n = 156), and affective attention decreasers (n = 50). Affective attention increasers exhibited low intercepts with steep attention increases, particularly to angry facial configurations. Affective attention shifters exhibited middle intercepts with attention decreases to facial configurations but an attention increase to angry facial configurations. Affective attention decreasers exhibited high intercepts with steep attention decreases. Infants in the affective attention increasers group exhibited more competence when accounting for caregiver anxiety symptoms and infant temperamental negative affect. Group membership was not related to social reticence during the peer social dyad. Infants higher in temperamental negative affect exhibited more social reticence, particularly as the social dyad continued. Our results provide evidence for individual differences in developmental trajectories of affective attention and relations with toddler social behavior. Our results are primarily generalizable to rural and urban populations in the Midatlantic United States. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Individual Differences in Developmental Trajectories of Affective Attention and Relations With Competence and Social Reticence With Peers

Supplemental Material for Individual Differences in Developmental Trajectories of Affective Attention and Relations With Competence and Social Reticence With Peers

Commentary on Kempe, the Next 50 Years

This paper provides a reflection on the evolution of child maltreatment systems and research across the globe during the time since the establishment of the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect (Kempe Center) over 50 years ago. While research has demonstrated that children who are victims of maltreatment have poorer outcomes than their peers, it is also clear that the child welfare workforce faces workforce challenges, and the system established 50 years ago is not the same as it is today. Efforts to move this field of study forward in a changing world rely upon the understanding of child abuse and neglect in the broader culture of our world, including disentangling poverty and social structures from neglect, supporting underrepresented people and communities, and identifying how best to balance the role of child welfare with community services. The Kempe Center’s continued commitment to a multidisciplinary approach to understanding, preventing, and treating child maltreatment, while challenging professional and social reticence to address complex contributing issues and the impact of historical actions, is at the core of its work looking forward to the next 50 years. The continued focus of centering research as a critical component in moving the field forward in just and equitable ways is demonstrated in this sampling of current efforts to support better outcomes for children and families.

Development of Neural Mechanisms Underlying Threat Processing: Associations With Childhood Social Reticence and Adolescent Anxiety

BackgroundSocial reticence in early childhood is characterized by shy and anxiously avoidant behavior, and it confers risk for pediatric anxiety disorders later in development. Aberrant threat processing may play a critical role in this association between early reticent behavior and later psychopathology. The goal of this longitudinal study is to characterize developmental trajectories of neural mechanisms underlying threat processing and relate these trajectories to associations between early-childhood social reticence and adolescent anxiety. MethodsIn this 16-year longitudinal study, social reticence was assessed from 2 to 7 years of age; anxiety symptoms and neural mechanisms during the dot-probe task were assessed at 10, 13, and 16 years of age. The sample included 144 participants: 71 children provided data at age 10 (43 girls, meanage = 10.62), 85 at age 13 (46 girls, meanage = 13.25), and 74 at age 16 (36 girls, meanage = 16.27). ResultsA significant interaction manifested among social reticence, anxiety symptoms, and time, on functional connectivity between the left amygdala and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, voxelwise p < .001, clusterwise familywise error p < .05. Children with high social reticence showed a negative association between amygdala–dorsolateral prefrontal cortex connectivity and anxiety symptoms with age, compared to children with low social reticence, suggesting distinct neurodevelopmental pathways to anxiety. ConclusionsThese findings were present across all conditions, suggesting task-general effects in potential threat processing. Additionally, the timing of these neurodevelopmental pathways differed for children with high versus low social reticence, which could affect the timing of effective preventive interventions.

Emotion regulation and Social reticence among Emerging Adults

Emotion regulation is the ability to exert control over one’s own emotional state. It may involve behaviors such as rethinking a challenging situation to reduce anger or anxiety, hiding visible signs of sadness or fear, or focusing on reasons to feel happy or calm. Social reticence is expressed as shy, anxiously avoidant behavior in early childhood. With development, overt signs of social reticence may diminish but could still manifest themselves in neural responses to peers. The purpose of the study was to analyse the relationship between Emotion regulation and Social reticence among emerging adults . The sample consisted of 60 college students of age range 18-25, out of which 30 were Males and 30 were Females. The tools used were Emotion regulations questionnaire (ERQ) and Social reticence scale (SRS). The statistical analysis was done using SPSS software. The major findings from the study is emotion regulation and social reticence are negatively correlated.

Are fearful boys at higher risk for anxiety? Person-centered profiles of toddler fearful behavior predict anxious behaviors at age 6.

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.

Development of Brain Mechanisms Underlying Threat Bias: Relations With Childhood Social Reticence and Adolescent Anxiety

Social reticence during early childhood predicts the development of anxiety disorders, typically emerging during adolescence. Not all socially reticent children develop anxiety; thus, it is essential to determine which factors moderate this relation. Here, we focused on the neurodevelopmental processes underlying threat bias as a potential moderator.

A glimpse of factors involved in the occurrence of paternal postpartum depression disorder

Depression is a mood disorder that occurs more frequently in women. It causes incessantly feelings of discouragement, sadness, social reticence and withdrawal, along with loss of interest. The pregnancy and postpartum period is associated with many couple adjustments and poses risks for depression for both mother and father. Paternal postpartum depression (PPD) is defined when paternal depression disorder occurs within the first twelve months in the postpartum period. Herein we present a glimpse of risk factors for the occurrence of PPD and their potential explanation. New demands and responsibilities in the postpartum period often cause significant changes in a father’s life. Because paternal emotional development contributes to the child development and because mental health and wellness are essential for protecting the family, it remains important to carefully determine if the fathers’ emotional expression is beyond a normal response to this new period of life.

Similarities and differences between young children with selective mutism and social anxiety disorder

A growing body of evidence points to a strong overlap between selective mutism (SM) and social anxiety disorder in children, specifically with regard to characteristics such as social reticence and anxiety. Yet few studies have directly compared these populations, especially with young children. This study compared 25 children (aged 3–7 years) with a primary diagnosis of SM, 17 children with a primary diagnosis of social anxiety disorder and 15 non-clinical controls using interviews and questionnaires on expressions of social anxiety and behavioural inhibition. Results showed that children with SM or social anxiety disorder were more anxious than non-clinical controls and did not significantly differ from each other on either non-verbal social anxiety or non-social forms of anxiety. Both children with SM and social anxiety disorder had fewer friends and experienced greater difficulties forming friendships than non-clinical controls. However, children with SM scored higher than children with social anxiety disorder and non-clinical controls on a few measures of inhibition (both verbal and nonverbal). The results support assertions of strong similarities between SM and social anxiety disorder, but suggest that children with SM may show even greater severity in certain symptoms at a young age. These findings point to the need for treatment to include both cognitive behavioural skills to manage social anxiety and structured practice of social skills in order to improve treatment efficacy for children with SM.

Combining fMRI during resting state and an attention bias task in children

Neuroimaging studies typically focus on either resting state or task-based fMRI data. Prior research has shown that similarity in functional connectivity between rest and cognitive tasks, interpreted as reconfiguration efficiency, is related to task performance and IQ. Here, we extend this approach from adults to children, and from cognitive tasks to a threat-based attention task. The goal of the current study was to examine whether similarity in functional connectivity during rest and an attention bias task relates to threat bias, IQ, anxiety symptoms, and social reticence. fMRI was measured during resting state and during the dot-probe task in 41 children (M = 13.44, SD = 0.70). Functional connectivity during rest and dot-probe was positively correlated, suggesting that functional hierarchies in the brain are stable. Similarity in functional connectivity between rest and the dot-probe task only related to threat bias (puncorr < .03). This effect did not survive correction for multiple testing. Overall, children who allocate more attention towards threat also may possess greater reconfiguration efficiency in switching from intrinsic to threat-related attention states. Finally, functional connectivity correlated negatively across the two conditions of the dot-probe task. Opposing patterns of modulation of functional connectivity by threat-congruent and threat-incongruent trials may reflect task-specific network changes during two different attentional processes.

Effect of Infant Iron Deficiency on Children's Verbal Abilities: The Roles of Child Affect and Parent Unresponsiveness.

Infants who are iron-deficient anemic seek and receive less stimulation from their caregivers, predisposing such children to be functionally isolated. To test the sequence whereby iron deficiency in infancy contributes to children's disengagement from the environment, which reduces parent stimulation which, in turn, contributes to children's poor verbal skills. Chilean children (N = 875, 54% male) were studied, 45% of whom were iron deficient or iron-deficient anemic in infancy. We used structural equation modeling to test the sequence outlined above and to examine the effect of infant iron status on children's verbal performance at ages 5 and 10years including the roles of child and parent intermediate variables. Severity of iron deficiency in infancy was associated with higher levels of children's dull affect and social reticence at 5years (β = .10, B = .26, SE = .12, p < .05), and these behaviors were associated with parent unresponsiveness (β = .29, B = .13, SE = .03, p < .001), which related to children's lower verbal abilities at age 5 (β = -.29, B = -2.33, SE = .47, p < .001) and age 10 (β = -.22, B = -3.04, SE = .75, p < .001). An alternate model where poor iron status related directly to children's verbal ability was tested but not supported. Findings support functional isolation processes resulting from a nutritional deficiency, with iron-deficient anemic infants showing affective and behavioral tendencies that limit developmentally stimulating caregiving which, in turn, hinder children's verbal abilities.

Early childhood social reticence and neural response to peers in preadolescence predict social anxiety symptoms in midadolescence.

Early childhood social reticence (SR) and preadolescent social anxiety (SA) symptoms increase the risk for more severe SA in later adolescence. Yet, not all at-risk youth develop more severe SA. The emergence of distinct patterns of neural response to socially evocative contexts during pivotal points in development may help explain this discontinuity. We tested the extent to which brain function during social interactions in preadolescence influenced the effects of SA and early childhood SR on predicting SA symptoms in midadolescence. Participants (N = 53) were assessed for SR from ages 2 to 7. At age 11, SA symptoms were assessed and brain function was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as participants anticipated social evaluation from purported peers with a reputation for being unpredictable, nice, and mean. At age 13, SA symptoms were re-assessed. Moderated-mediation models tested the extent to which early childhood SR, preadolescent SA, and preadolescent brain function predicted midadolescent SA. In individuals with preadolescent SA, the presence of early childhood SR and SR-linked differences in brain activation predicted more severe SA in midadolescence. Specifically, in those who exhibited preadolescent SA, greater early childhood SR was associated with enhanced bilateral insula engagement while anticipating unpredictable-versus-nice social evaluation in preadolescence, and more severe SA in midadolescence. SR-linked neural responses to socially evocative peer interactions may predict more severe SA symptoms in midadolescence among individuals with greater preadolescent SA symptoms and childhood SR. This same pattern of neural response may not be associated with more severe SA symptoms in youth with only one risk factor.

Multidimensional Emotion Regulation Moderates the Relation Between Behavioral Inhibition at Age 2 and Social Reticence with Unfamiliar Peers at Age 4.

Behavioral inhibition (BI), a temperament trait characterized by fear and wariness in novel situations, has been identified as a risk factor for later social reticence and avoidance of peer interactions. However, the ability to regulate fearful responses to novelty may disrupt the link between BI and socially reticent behavior. The present study examined how and whether both behaviorally-manifested and physiological indices of emotion regulation moderate the relation between BI and later social reticence. Participants in this study included 88 children followed longitudinally from ages 2 to 4. At age 2, children completed the BI Paradigm in which children's responses to novel objects and adults were observed. At age 4, children's baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was assessed and mothers reported on children's negative emotionality and soothability. Social reticence at age 4 was observed during a free play session with 3 unfamiliar peers. Results from saturated path models revealed a significant two-way interaction between BI and baseline RSA and a three-way interaction between BI, negative emotionality, and baseline RSA when predicting socially reticent behavior at age 4. At high levels of baseline RSA and high levels of negative emotionality, the association between BI and social reticence was negative. The relation between BI and later social reticence was only positive and significant at low levels of baseline RSA combined with high levels of negative emotionality. The results suggest that either strong physiological regulation or low negative emotionality seems sufficient to buffer inhibited young children against later social reticence.

Styles of Radical Illness: Anne Boyer diagnoses the lies we still tell about cancer

271 arly in the undying—the poet and essayist Anne Boyer’s mosaic of memoir, commonplace book, and manifesto —she quotes from the diary of the nineteenth-century novelist Fanny Burney, who, nine months after she had endured a mastectomy without anesthesia, was still trying to cordon the event from her consciousness. “I could not think of it with impunity!” she writes—that is, she saw no option of recollection that would come free of punishment. She meant, most likely, the punishment of reliving the event, but it’s hard not to hear a deeper knowledge that Styles of Radical Illness Anne Boyer diagnoses the lies we still tell about cancer Laura Kolbe books E 272 | LAURA KOLBE the surgery’s traumatic pain cannot be long dwelled on without, in some sense, putting her in the wrong: that articulating the socially unspeakable, even to herself, was a kind of crime—estranging her from the particular niche, with all its rules and regulations, marked out for a person of her sex, class, and homeland. Of course, she did think of it—did face the horrific memories, write them down. To name the particular violence done to her own body, Burney was willing to risk amputation from the social body. That kind of penalty still exists. Anne Boyer, who lives in remission from what is called triple-negative breast cancer—the kind that is only potentially treatable with a regimen of midcentury cytotoxic chemotherapies paired with surgery, radiation, or both—spends much of The Undying, her viciously agile song-cycle about, in part, speech and its price, identifying a deafeningly loud pseudo-discourse that amounts to little more than the old social reticence around illness, especially cancer. As she notes, the new rhetoric is in its way as stifling as the old silence: upbeat a∞rmation shapes the narrow but babbling vocabulary of runs, walks, ribbons , and associated merchandise. “Only one class of people who have had breast cancer are regularly admitted to the pinkwashed landscape of awareness: those who have survived it,” Boyer writes. “To those victors go the narrative spoils.” In this aggro-sentimental soundscape, the tale on loop is one of “‘surviving’ via neoliberal self-management,” of being “cured with compliance, 5K runs, organic green smoothies, and positive thought.” To strike a downbeat note is deviant: should the sick patient complain or speak of loss, she will quickly be punished. She might be gaslit to the creeping verge of madness, given the silent treatment (in the form of others’ relentless “focusing on the positive ,” for example, while they ignore her own darker situation), or simply overpowered by the chorus of strenuous optimism. of course, this news—that we ignore the deeper realities of illness —is not new. But of late a robust counternarrative has sprung up: these days it can seem as if every writer with an illness has ushered STYLES OF RADICAL ILLNESS | 273 us to the sickbed to show us how things really are—the trespasses, the anxieties, the blips of humor inherent in illness’s surrealism. Colm Tóibín and Tim Parks detail the nadirs of their urologic and rectal exams. Sarah Manguso describes eating French fries before undergoing plasma filtration, then watching an opaque film of fat slide out of her bloodstream into the machinery. The poems of the late Max Ritvo chart his body’s swift regression to the rickety dependence of one who is “house-trained, but not entirely.” And Jenny Diski wrote at length about the banal, unglamorous realities of dying of lung cancer in the London Review of Books, pieties be damned. Boyer knowingly works in the shadow of other radically honest or anti-reductive accounts, most notably those of Audre Lorde and Susan Sontag. Both had breast cancer and eventually died of still other cancers—liver in Lorde’s case, myelodysplastic syndrome in Sontag’s. Lorde’s Cancer Journals anticipates Boyer’s queasy attention to the financial and physical particulars of the medical industry : how much does X cost, and who gets it (or doesn’t)? Where does the skin get cut? Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor to fight the inane and pernicious imagery barnacled onto the Western vocabulary...

Early-childhood social reticence predicts SCR-BOLD coupling during fear extinction recall in preadolescent youth

Social Reticence (SR) is a temperament construct identified in early childhood that is expressed as shy, anxiously avoidant behavior and, particularly when stable, robustly associated with risk for anxiety disorders. Threat circuit function may develop differently for children high on SR than low on SR. We compared brain function and behavior during extinction recall in a sample of 11-to-15-year-old children characterized in early childhood on a continuum of SR. Three weeks after undergoing fear conditioning and extinction, participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging extinction recall task assessing memory and threat differentiation for conditioned stimuli. Whereas self-report and psychophysiological measures of differential conditioning, extinction, and extinction recall were largely similar across participants, SR-related differences in brain function emerged during extinction recall. Specifically, childhood SR was associated with a distinct pattern of hemodynamic-autonomic covariation in the brain when recalling extinguished threat and safety cues. SR and attention focus impacted associations between trial-by-trial variation in autonomic responding and in brain activation. These interactions occurred in three main brain areas: the anterior insular cortex (AIC), the anterior subdivision of the medial cingulate cortex (aMCC), and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This pattern of SCR-BOLD coupling may reflect selective difficulty tracking safety in a temperamentally at-risk population.

Reflection, Realization, and Reaffirmation: Voices of Black and White Faculty Members Engaged in Cross-Racial Mentoring

This article focuses on the experiences of four faculty members engaged in cross-racial mentoring at predominantly White institutions in the United States. Using scholarly personal narratives, the study addresses psychosocial and cultural struggles that both White and Black faculty members experience as they mentor individuals of differing ethnicities. The participants were a Black woman, a White woman, a Black man, and a White man, all of whom were faculty members. Their narratives shed light on difficulties precipitated through cross-racial interactions regardless of social station, racial identity, or racial awareness. The study provides a unique, emic perspective that addresses ideas of ambivalence, White privilege, Black social reticence, and White obliviousness as well as summarily advancing the discussion on faculty-student engagement in cross-racial mentoring. Ultimately the authors challenge themselves and faculty colleagues to be uncomfortable as they learn more about social stigmas, racialized stereotypes, cultural misconceptions, personal gaps in social knowledge, internal frustration, and social inequality.

Infant iron deficiency, child affect, and maternal unresponsiveness: Testing the long-term effects of functional isolation.

Children who are iron deficient (ID) or iron-deficient anemic (IDA) have been shown to seek and receive less stimulation from their caregivers, contributing to functional isolation. Over time, the reduced interactions between child and caregiver are thought to interfere with the acquisition of normative social competencies and adversely affect the child's development. The current study examined functional isolation in children who were ID or IDA in infancy in relation to social difficulties in middle childhood and problem behaviors in adolescence. Using a sample of 873 Chilean children, 45% of whom were ID or IDA in infancy, structural equation modeling results indicated that infant IDA was associated with children's dull affect and social reticence at age 5, which were related to mothers' unresponsiveness and understimulation. Mothers' limited responsiveness and stimulation were, in turn, related to children's peer rejection at age 10, which further linked to problem behaviors and associating with deviant peers at adolescence. Findings support the functional isolation hypothesis and suggest that early limited caregiver responsiveness and stimulation contribute to long-term social difficulties in adolescents who were iron-deficient anemic in infancy. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Reliability and Validity of a Modified Revised Class Play Examined in Dutch Elementary-School Children

Abstract. Social withdrawal in children is a risk factor for maladjustment. The Revised Class Play (RCP; Masten, Morison, &amp; Pelligrini, 1985 ) has often been used to identify children’s behavioral difficulties with peers. However, in previous studies the sensitive-isolated scale of the RCP appeared to measure a mixture of different types of withdrawal, including withdrawal from peers and exclusion by peers. In the present study the original RCP was modified to more clearly distinguish withdrawal from the peer group from behavior associated with exclusion by peers. Two studies in Dutch samples of 8–13-year-old children were conducted to examine the reliability and validity of this modified Revised Class Play. Both studies revealed three scales: Sociability-Leadership, Aggressive-Disruptive, and a third factor labeled Anxious-Withdrawn. Anxious-Withdrawn primarily reflected social reticence. Stability of the scales after two years was high. High scores on the Anxious-Withdrawn scale were best predicted by teacher ratings of timid and anxious behavior and by negative self-perceptions of social competence. The results support the reliability and validity of the modified RCP in a Dutch sample.

Relationship between Alcohol Consumption and Violent Offending: Personality as a Contributing Factor

IntroductionNumerous studies have identified alcohol consumption as a risk factor for violent offending. McMurran and Cusens [1] found that nearly three-quarters of 126 British prisoners convicted for violent offences reported they were drunk at the time. Studies in Australia suggest that 23-73% of all assaults are committed when the attacker is drunk [2,3]. A large-scale national study in that country found that in 2007, half of all offenders detained by police for disorder and violent offences had consumed alcohol in the 48 hours prior to arrest [4]. In the US, 35% of victims of violent attacks who were able to assess whether their attacker had been using alcohol, believed the offender had been drinking at the time of the attack. Half of victims of interpersonal violence in England and Wales reported the perpetrator to be under the influence of alcohol at the time of assault [5].Several models have been offered to explain the well-documented relationship between alcohol and violence, with most models proposing a link. Some of these direct models include the psychopharmacological effects of alcohol as potential mediators of violent offences, such as impairment of cognitive processes that affect judgment, behavior inhibition and interpersonal communication [6]. In contrast to these widely accepted link models, models propose that alcohol consumption and violent offending are related indirectly via risk factors that they have in common [7, 8]. These shared risk factors include some dimensions of personality, with psychoticism (P), extraversion (E), and neuroticism (N) invoked most often. These three dimensions are included in Eysencks' theory of personality [9], which provides a useful scheme for exploring personality antecedents of divergent antisocial behavior. In Eysencks' theory, P is anchored at one end by aggressiveness and divergent thinking and at the other end by empathy and caution. This trait is so named because individuals with a high P level are significantly more vulnerable to psychotic disorders than those with a low P level. E is represented on a bipolar scale anchored at one end by sociability and stimulation-seeking, and at the other end by social reticence and stimulation avoidance. N is anchored at one end by emotional instability and spontaneity, and at the other end by reflection and deliberateness. This trait is so named because individuals with a high N level are more vulnerable to anxiety-based problems.Individuals with a high P level are predisposed to developing antisocial behavior [9], and those with high levels of both P and E are predisposed to developing antisocial behavior involving aggression. If such an individual also has a high N level, their behavior may exhibit emotional, irrational characteristics under some circumstances [10]. Higher P levels are strongly related to alcohol consumption [11], and several studies have shown a link between higher E levels and alcohol consumption in non-alcoholics and alcoholics alike [12-14]. N appears to correlate positively with alcohol consumption specifically among those with clinically significant alcohol problems [15-17]. Individuals who consume alcohol heavily may develop high levels of N and anxiety to buffer the negative affect associated with alcohol dependence [18].Numerous studies in Anglo-Saxon countries showed that personality dimensions contribute to the explanation of alcohol consumption and violent offending. However, most of these studies explored these relationships separately, that is, only few of them explored relationship between all three variables at the same time. In addition, there is a knowledge gap in the literature regarding some postulates of common cause model that explains relationship between alcohol consumption and violent offending. Common cause model clearly states that personality is a risk factor for both alcohol consumption and violent offending. In this line, it seems reasonable to assume that alcohol consumption mediates the association between personality and violent offending. …

Early-Childhood Social Reticence Predicts Brain Function in Preadolescent Youths During Distinct Forms of Peer Evaluation

Social reticence is expressed as shy, anxiously avoidant behavior in early childhood. With development, overt signs of social reticence may diminish but could still manifest themselves in neural responses to peers. We obtained measures of social reticence across 2 to 7 years of age. At age 11, preadolescents previously characterized as high (n = 30) or low (n = 23) in social reticence completed a novel functional-MRI-based peer-interaction task that quantifies neural responses to the anticipation and receipt of distinct forms of social evaluation. High (but not low) social reticence in early childhood predicted greater activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and left and right insula, brain regions implicated in processing salience and distress, when participants anticipated unpredictable compared with predictable feedback. High social reticence was also associated with negative functional connectivity between insula and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region commonly implicated in affect regulation. Finally, among participants with high social reticence, negative evaluation was associated with increased amygdala activity, but only during feedback from unpredictable peers.