The development of stranger fear in infancy and toddlerhood: normative development, individual differences, antecedents, and outcomes

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 of temperament to examine the normative course of development for stranger fear and to explore the...