Temperament and Anxiety

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Temperament and Anxiety
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Temperament
Children born with a low threshold for novelty
and stimuli are at greater risk for anxiety
disorders Development of anxiety disorders in a
child temperamentally predisposed is dependent on
parental response- those whose parents set firm
limits and teach children to cope have better
outcomes
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Risk Factors

• Temperament/Traits
• Negative Affect
• Positive Affect
• Difficult infancy
• Internalizing / externalizing

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Risks

• The following traits have been identified as
  relating to eventual anxiety
• High Negative Affect (Neuroticism)
• Low Positive Affect (Extraversion)
• Low Effortful Control (Conscientiousness)

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Risks

• Difficult temperament includes
• Negative affect
• social withdrawal
• high rigidity
• high activity level
• low task orientation

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Risks

• Neurobiological Factors
• Overactive behavioral inhibition system (made up
  of the brain stem, limbic system, and frontal
  cortex) implicated
• Norepinephrine, GABA, neuropeptides, and
  seratonin implicated
• Amygdalar activation

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Risks

• Family Influences
• Excessive parental control
• Lower parental expectations for childrens coping
  abilities
• Family influences especially influential in lower
  SES
• Insecure early attachments (particularly
  ambivalent attachment)

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Risks

• Some anxiety is necessary for adjustment
• Maladaptive anxiety is excessive and debilitating
• Three interrelated anxiety response systems
• physical system- fight/flight response, mediated
  by the sympathetic nervous system
• cognitive system- attentional shift and
  hypervigilance, nervousness, difficulty
  concentrating
• behavioral system- aggression and/or avoidance

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Risks

• The mere presence of such factors does not imply
  problems.
• However these factors do interact with the
  environment, over time, and may eventually carry
  the individual over some kind of threshold where
  they have greatly heightened liability for
  development of problems and/or harmful behaviors.

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Risks

• Many fears are developmentally appropriate and
  most decline with age
• Anxieties common, but anxious symptoms do not
  show the same age-related decline as fears
• Children of all ages worry, but children with
  anxiety disorders worry more intensely
• Ritualistic and repetitive activity common in
  young children and helps them to gain control and
  mastery of their environment

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Inhibition
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• Reactivity Self-Regulation
• Emotionality Activity Sociability
• Extraversion
• Negative Affect
• Self-Regulation
• O-Sensitivity

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EAS Temperament Model

• Emotionality refers to a child's emotional
  reactions to environmental stimuli.  In other
  words, a child who is highly emotional may cry
  easily, be more fearful, get excited quickly, or
  exhibit other strong emotional responses.  A
  child low on this temperament may seem more easy
  going, relaxed, and less interested in his or her
  surroundings.

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EAS Temperament Model

• Activity refers to a persons level of energy. 
  Children high in this temperament are seen as
  active, prefer physical activity and games, may
  be more fidgety or difficult to settle down.

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EAS Temperament Model

• Sociability relates to a person's comfort and
  level of interaction with others.  Obviously
  those high in this temperament will prefer group
  activities, team sports, and be more comfortable
  interacting in social settings.  Those low on
  sociability may prefer solitary activities and
  experience anxiety around strangers or new
  situations.

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Inhibition

• Research focused on a child's tendency toward
  being inhibited or uninhibited began when two
  theorists (Kagan and Moss) set out to observe
  personality traits of preschoolers and then
  compare these same traits once their subjects
  became adults.  This longitudinal case study
  model revealed that inhibition seemed to remain
  relatively stable over time.

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Inhibition

• An inhibited child, one who is wary of strangers,
  more passive in his interactions with others, and
  more hesitant to explore new situations, tends to
  become an adult who is less likely to engage
  others, be more passive in relationships, and
  prefer solitary to group activities.  Those rated
  as uninhibited similarly show similar
  characteristics as adults as they did when they
  were younger.