Temperament in Context: Capturing Socio-emotional Trajectories IN the Social World

Presenter: Koraly Pérez-Edgar, PhD

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.

This event has limited seating on-site in Spangler 216; contact Erica Nouri (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) to reserve your seat.

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