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Background: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious and complex psychiatric disorder yet treatment results are suboptimal. Insight into the etiology of this illness is much needed. Research highlights the implication of anxiety-related traits in the development and maintenance of AN. This study investigates firstly, behavioural inhibition and intolerance for uncertainty (IU) in adolescents with and without AN, and secondly relations between these traits. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 165 adolescent girls (AN = 94, HC = 71) completed questionnaires measuring behavioural inhibition, IU and trait anxiety. ANOVAs tested differences between AN and HC groups, and mediation models with IU as a mediator between behavioural inhibition and trait anxiety were run. Results: AN adolescents reported significantly higher levels of behavioural inhibition, IU and trait anxiety compared to their peers. In both AN and HC, a direct and a total effect of behavioural inhibition on trait anxiety was found. However, only in the AN group IU partially mediated the relation between behavioural inhibition and trait anxiety. Limitations: Data is cross-sectional and longitudinal studies are required. A mean illness duration of nearly 2 years may mean early effects of malnourishment and habituation and future studies should include patients with shorter illness duration. Conclusions: Results highlight that behavioural inhibition and IU may contribute to anxiety in AN whilst their peers may have developed better executive and social-emotional skills to manage uncertainty. Adolescents with AN may benefit from interventions targeting behavioural inhibition and IU.

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is a condition characterised by intense fear of negative evaluation by others. Research suggests the disorder is relatively common, particularly during adolescence, which is the primary developmental period for onset for SAD (Merikangas & Avenevoli, 2002). When untreated, the disorder is unlikely to remit, often following a decades-long course in the majority of individuals who do not receive treatment (Keller, 2003). The disorder is highly comorbid with other psychiatric disorders (Beidel et al., 2007; Chartier et al., 2003), with evidence suggesting SAD predisposes the development of other conditions such as major depressive disorder (Cummings et al., 2014) and substance use disorder (Wittchen et al., 1999). Further, the disorder is associated with severe negative consequences across many life domains (Crawley et al., 2008; Mendlowicz & Stein, 2000; Olfson et al., 2000). However, the disorder is also difficult to treat. Individuals with SAD demonstrate poorer treatment response to generic anxiety treatment programs (Crawley et al., 2008; Scaini et al., 2016), highlighting the importance of addressing disorderspecific mechanisms in treatment, such as negative self-beliefs, attentional biases, post-event processing, safety behaviour use, and social skills deficits (Clark & Wells, 1995; Spence & Rapee, 2016). When treatments address these factors, individuals with SAD often achieve superior rates of remission compared to those in generic programs (Baer & Garland, 2005; Beidel et al., 2006; Herbert et al., 2008). However, a further compounding issue is that treatment access rates are very low in individuals with SAD, indicating the need for alternative modes of treatment that may address barriers to access (Burstein et al., 2011; Grant et al., 2005). Research aimed at identifying the central mechanisms of SAD is ongoing, and some potentially promising avenues, such as personality-informed perspectives, have received little attention by re, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Applied Psychology, Griffith Health, Full Text

Internalising problems are common within Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); early intervention to support those with emerging signs may be warranted. One promising signal lies in how individual differences in temperament are shaped by parenting. Our longitudinal study of infants with and without an older sibling with ASD investigated how parenting associates with infant behavioural inhibition (8–14 months) and later effortful control (24 months) in relation to 3-year internalising symptoms. Mediation analyses suggest nondirective parenting (8 months) was related to fewer internalising problems through an increase in effortful control. Parenting did not moderate the stable predictive relation of behavioural inhibition on later internalising. We discuss the potential for parenting to strengthen protective factors against internalising in infants from an ASD-enriched cohort.

Internalising problems are common within Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); early intervention to support those with emerging signs may be warranted. One promising signal lies in how individual differences in temperament are shaped by parenting. Our longitudinal study of infants with and without an older sibling with ASD investigated how parenting associates with infant behavioural inhibition (8–14 months) and later effortful control (24 months) in relation to 3-year internalising symptoms. Mediation analyses suggest nondirective parenting (8 months) was related to fewer internalising problems through an increase in effortful control. Parenting did not moderate the stable predictive relation of behavioural inhibition on later internalising. We discuss the potential for parenting to strengthen protective factors against internalising in infants from an ASD-enriched cohort.

Many studies have implicated the basal ganglia in the suppression of action impulses ('stopping'). Here, we discuss recent neurophysiological evidence that distinct hypothesized processes involved in action preparation and cancellation can be mapped onto distinct basal ganglia cell types and pathways. We examine how movement-related activity in the striatum is related to a 'Go' process and how going may be modulated by brief epochs of beta oscillations. We then describe how, rather than a unitary 'Stop' process, there appear to be separate, complementary 'Pause' and 'Cancel' mechanisms. We discuss the implications of these stopping subprocesses for the interpretation of the stop-signal reaction time-in particular, some activity that seems too slow to causally contribute to stopping when assuming a single Stop processes may actually be fast enough under a Pause-then-Cancel model. Finally, we suggest that combining complementary neural mechanisms that emphasize speed or accuracy respectively may serve more generally to optimize speed-accuracy trade-offs.This article is part of the themed issue 'Movement suppression: brain mechanisms for stopping and stillness'.

This study examined the psychometric properties of an age-downward version of the Carver and White (1994) BIS/BAS scales. Normal school children (N = 284) aged 8-12 years completed the BIS/BAS scales as well as scales of Neuroticism, Extraversion, and psychopathological symptoms. Results showed that the BIS/BAS scales for children had a theoretically meaningful factor structure and satisfactory reliability. Relationships with Eysenck's personality traits of Neuroticism and Extraversion, and psychopathological symptoms were generally as expected. That is, Neuroticism was positively associated with both BIS and BAS, whereas Extraversion was negatively related to BIS but positively to BAS. Further, BIS was convincingly connected to higher levels of internalizing symptoms, whereas BAS was to a certain level related to externalizing symptoms.