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Developmental psychopathologists have documented the influence of both parent and child characteristics in the development of child anxiety. Anxious mothers, in particular, may cope with their children’s distress by using overly controlling maternal parenting behaviors (e.g., intrusiveness, overprotection; Hudson & Rapee, 2001), which are in turn linked to the development of anxiety in temperamentally fearful children. However, when maternal anxiety is measured solely through clinical interviews and surveys (considered to be “explicit,” or within conscious awareness), the association between anxiety and maternal overcontrol does not always occur (Rapee, 2012), warranting the use of more “implicit” (outside awareness), biological (EEG asymmetry), social-cognitive (implicit association test), and observational measures of these constructs. The current study invited mothers and their 24-30 month-old toddlers (n = 125) to participate in a larger longitudinal study. A series of moderated mediation models were conducted to test hypotheses, namely that maternal anxiety mediates the relation between dispositional withdrawal tendencies (BIS sensitivity, EEG asymmetry) and maternal overcontrol. Support was found for explicit models utilizing self- and mother-report; maternal anxiety mediated the relation between mothers’ dispositional withdrawal and both self-reported maternal intrusiveness and maternal overprotection. Support was not found to suggest that implicit versions of these same constructs predicted observed maternal overcontrol, and fearful temperament did not act as a moderator within any mediation models. Results suggest that maternal characteristics pertaining to anxiety and withdrawal tendencies may be most crucial in predicting maternal overcontrol. Results can inform prevention of maladaptive parenting and treatment of childhood anxiety disorders. Limitations of these methodologies and future directions are discussed.

Infants prefer familiar adults (e.g. parents) to unfamiliar adults (e.g. strangers), but they also vary in which strangers they prefer. By 6-months, infants look longer at attractive than unattractive faces (e.g., Langlois et al., 1987); and by 12-months, infants show approach behaviors toward attractive strangers and withdrawal behaviors toward unattractive strangers (Langlois, Roggman, & Rieser-Danner, 1990). These preferences may be due to a mechanism referred to as cognitive averaging (e.g., Rubenstein, Kalakanis, & Langlois, 1999). Infants cognitively average face exemplars to form a face prototype. Infants likely perceive attractive faces as familiar because these faces are similar to the face prototype; and they likely perceive unattractive faces as especially novel because these face are dissimilar from the face prototype. Even young infants may be more motivated to approach attractive than unattractive faces but do not fully express this motivation due to limitations in locomotion and communication. I applied EEG asymmetry to study neural correlates of approach and withdrawal motivation in response to attractive and unattractive faces with 6- and 10-month-olds. More specifically, I measured EEG alpha power at mid-frontal regions while 39 infants viewed a series of attractive and unattractive faces. Left EEG asymmetry relates to approach motivation whereas right EEG asymmetry relates to withdrawal motivation. I predicted infants would show greater left EEG asymmetry (i.e., approach motivation) when viewing attractive faces than when viewing unattractive faces, and that 6-montholds would show even greater left asymmetry than 10-month-olds due to developmental differences in stranger wariness. Results supported the main hypothesis but not hypotheses regarding age. Infant EEG asymmetry was greater in response to attractive faces than unattractive faces suggesting that infants are more motivated to approach attractive people than unattractive people as early as 6-months. These results link visual preferences evident at 6-months to overt behaviors evident by 12-months providing additional information regarding rudiments of attractiveness stereotypes. Furthermore, this investigation supports the use of EEG asymmetry methodology to measure infant approach/withdrawal motivation, providing infant researchers one more tool to better understand how infants evaluate novel individuals in their social environment as they decide whom to approach and whom to avoid.