The Relation Between Children's Temperament And Social Adaptation:the Moderating Effects Of Attentional Bias To Reward And Punishment Cues

According to the Approach and Inhibition Motivation Theory proposed by Gray(1982),there are two types of children temperaments:one is exuberance with higher reactivity,more approach behaviors and more positive emotions;the other is behavioral inhibition with more withdrawal behaviors,more negative emotions and higher vigilance to novel surroundings.These two types of children are different in social adaptation.Social adaptation is an important part in children's development and it will be affected by several factors.Numerous studies have suggested that children with different types of temperament have different sensitivity to incentive cues.However,what is the relationship between children temperament and social adaptation and whether is attentional bias to incentive cues(reward,punishment)influence the relationship between temperament and social adaptation?These issues have not been explored yet.Based on a longitudinal design,the current study investigated the relation among temperament,attentional bias to incentive cues and social adaptation in 154 children aged 3-5 years old.When children were at 3-year-old,questionnaires and behavioral observation were used to assess children's approach and inhibition;When they were at 5-year-old,visual space paradigm under incentive cues was employed to investigate children's attentional bias to reward and punishment cues and questionnaires was used to measure their social adaptation,such as externalizing behavior problems(e.g.conduct problem),internalizing behavior problems(e.g.anxiety)and social competence.Correlation analysis found that,children's approach was significantly positively related to externalizing behavior problems;their inhibition was significantly positively related to internalizing behavior problems and significantly negatively correlated to social competence.Through hierarchical method of multiple linear regressions,results showed that children's attentional bias to punishment had a marginally significant moderation effect between approach and externalizing behavior problems and had a marginally significant moderation effect between inhibition and internalizing behavior problems.In addition,children attentional bias to reward had significant moderation effect between inhibition level and social competence.Further analyses of simple regression slope showed that in the group of lower attentional bias to punishment cues,the higher the approach level was,the more externalizing behavior problems were;the higher the inhibition level was,the more internalizing behavior problems were.In the group of lower attentional bias to reward cues,the higher the inhibition level was,the lower the social competence were.In conclusion,Attention to reward and punishment cues have moderating effects to the relationship between children's temperament and social adaptation.