A brief scale for measuring "behavioral inhibition to the unfamiliar" in children.

The behavioral inhibition scale (BIS) is a brief rating scale for measuring behavioral inhibition in children. The present study examined the test-retest stability of the BIS in a sample of 7-12-year-olds consisting of inhibited and non-inhibited children (N = 83). Results demonstrated that the BIS scores were fairly stable over a 2-year period, with a test-retest correlation of .77. Further, the BIS scores of inhibited children significantly increased over the 2-year period, whereas those of the non-inhibited comparison group significantly decreased. Finally, the BIS was in a theoretically meaningful way associated with temperamental traits as measured by the Rothbart scales. Altogether, these results provide support for the reliability and validity of the BIS

Eye blink startle responses in behaviorally inhibited and uninhibited children.

The present study examined the startle reflex as a physiological marker of behavioral inhibition. Participants were 7- to 12-year-old children who had been previously identified as inhibited or uninhibited as part of an ongoing longitudinal study on the role of behavioral inhibition in the development of anxiety disorders. Analysis of their scores on the Behavioral Inhibition Scale revealed that the children were stable in their behavioral inhibition categorization as compared to the beginning of the longitudinal study. An experiment was carried out to study startle modulation effects in response to novel and familiar pictures of threatening and non-threatening facial expressions in inhibited and uninhibited children. The main results can be summarized as follows. To begin with, no modulation effect was found. That is, children did not show the expected (adult-like) startle facilitation while viewing unpleasant pictures. Second, a habituation effect was found: that is, during the testing phase children responded more intensely to the first block of slides than to the second block of slides (irrespective of slide content). Third, unexpectedly behaviorally inhibited children displayed smaller eye blink magnitudes in response to novel slides than uninhibited children. Fourth and finally, no meaningful differences were found in the patterns of startle responses of both genders

The revised version of the screen for child anxiety related emotional disorders (scared-r): Further evidence for its reliability and validity

The revised version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED-R) is a self-report questionnaire that intends to measure symptoms of childhood anxiety disorders as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM: American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The current article presents three studies which examined in more detail the reliability and validity of the SCARED-R. Study 1 (N = 101) demonstrated that the SCARED-R possesses satisfactory test-retest stability. Study 2 (N = 71) shows that the child-parent agreement of the SCARED-R is rather low. Study 3 (N = 88) provides support for the concurrent validity of the SCARED-R. More specifically, SCARED-R scores were correlated in a meaningful way with scores on the Children's Anxiety Scale, a questionnaire that also measures DSM-defined childhood anxiety symptoms