Behavioral inhibition is a biologically based temperamental trait marked by sensitivity to novelty and discomfort in social situations.  Associated with a unique psychophysiological and neural profile, behavioral inhibition is also one of our strongest known markers of risk for anxiety.  Yet, the majority of children with behavioral inhibition do not go on to develop a clinical disorder.  For most children, maturational and environmental forces work in tandem to ameliorate this risk.  For those children who do show elevated anxiety, attention mechanisms may act as a developmental tether that sustains early temperamental risk over time.

A growing literature suggests that attentional biases to evocative stimuli may play a causal role in emerging anxiety.  Specifically, attention biases to threat are evident in both children and adults with anxiety and children temperamentally at risk for developing anxiety.  This presentation will examine methods for generating more robust and ecologically valid data, including mobile eye-tracking, to capture attention patterns in children at risk for anxiety. These data can then be coupled with known biological markers of risk, captured with EEG, fNIRS, and fMRI, to better understand developmental processes in context.

About Koraly Pérez-Edgar:

Koraly Pérez-Edgar, PhD, is the McCourtney Professor of Child Studies and a Professor of Psychology at Pennsylvania State University. Pérez-Edgar’s research focuses on the relations between temperament and psychopathology. In particular, she examines how individual differences in attention can work to ameliorate or exacerbate early temperament traits. In conducting her work, she has taken a multi-method approach involving direct observation of behavior, cognitive functioning, psychophysiology, and neuroimaging.

Learn more about Koraly Pérez-Edgar.

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