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Does Shy-Inhibited Temperament in Childhood Lead to Anxiety Problems in Adolescence?

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ABSTRACT

Objective

To assess the relationships between shy-inhibited temperament in childhood and anxiety problems in early adolescence using a prospective, longitudinal data set from a large community sample.

Method

Relationships between shyness ratings on age-appropriate temperament scales and anxiety problems were analyzed, looking both forward and backward in time from infancy to adolescence.

Results

Forty-two percent of children rated as shy on 6 or more occasions over 8 surveys in childhood had anxiety problems in adolescence, compared with 11% who were never shy. Persistence of shyness and its presence in middle childhood increased risk for anxiety. A highly reactive temperament added to shyness did not increase the risk for anxiety. Few children with an anxiety diagnosis in early adolescence had a history of shyness.

Conclusions

Prediction from childhood shyness to adolescent anxiety disorder is modest but clinically meaningful in a community sample. However, most shy children did not develop an anxiety disorder and most adolescents with anxiety disorders had not been especially shy.

Section snippets

Participants

The ATP cohort of 2,443 infants, from urban and rural areas of the state of Victoria, Australia (Sanson et al., 1987), was recruited in 1983 when the children were 4 to 8 months of age. All families who attended a Maternal and Child Health Centre in a stratified sample of municipalities over a specified 2-week period in 1983 were enrolled in the study. The centers were selected to be representative of the state population on parental age, ethnic background, and socioeconomic status. There have

RESULTS

Are children with shy temperament in early life more prone to anxiety disorder at 13 to 14 years? Logistic regression analyses were used to investigate the relationship between shyness at each separate time point and the presence of a clinical level of anxiety problems at 13 to 14 years of age. Table 1 indicates that from infancy onward, shy temperament was associated with a higher incidence of later anxiety problems, with significant model improvement at p < .001 and odds ratios consistently

DISCUSSION

The prospective, longitudinal ATP data allowed the investigation of postulated connections between early temperamental shyness and later anxiety disorders within a large normative sample, across the period from infancy to adolescence. Whereas this represents a different sampling strategy from that used in previous developmental and clinical studies (Biederman et al., 1995, Kagan et al., 1989), and our measures were different and more limited in scope from those in these earlier studies, we

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    This research was supported by grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. The authors thank the participating families for their loyal support of the study.

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