Developmental theories suggest affect-biased attention, preferential attention to emotionally salient stimuli, emerges during infancy through coordinating individual differences. Here we examined bidirectional relations between infant affect-biased attention, temperamental negative affect, and maternal anxiety symptoms using a Random Intercepts…

The current study examined the relations between individual differences in attention to emotion faces and temperamental negative affect across the first 2 years of life. Infant studies have noted a normative pattern of preferential attention to salient cues, particularly angry faces. A parallel literature suggests that elevated attention bias to…

Despite implications that stranger fear is an important aspect of developing behavioral inhibition, a known risk factor for anxiety, normative and atypical developmental trajectories of stranger fear across infancy and toddlerhood remain understudied. We used a large, longitudinal data set (N = 1285) including multi-trait, multi-method assessments…

Infants' emerging ability to move independently by crawling is associated with changes in multiple domains, including an increase in expressions of anger in situations that block infants' goals, but it is unknown whether increased anger is specifically because of experience with being able to move autonomously or simply related to age. To examine…

Using both traditional composites and novel profiles of anger, we examined associations between infant anger and preschool behavior problems in a large, longitudinal data set (N = 966). We also tested the role of life stress as a moderator of the link between early anger and the development of behavior problems. Although traditional measures of…

Examined whether putative regulatory behaviors widely assumed to be conceptually associated with certain behavioral strategies were associated with the changes in fearful and angry distress in 6-, 12-, and 18-month-olds. The key finding was that the use of some putative regulatory behaviors (distraction and approach) reduced the observable…

Explored genetic and environmental underpinnings of temperamental differences in 3- to 16-month-old twins and their parents. Found that additive genetic and shared environmental effects best represented smiling, laughter, and duration of orienting. Shared environmental effects fully accounted for co-twin similarity for soothability. Additive…