Shy kids may not read emotions well

Shy children tend to have muted reactions to joy or anger in the facial expressions of others, inhibitions that may lead to the anxieties many experience later in life, researchers have found.

Shy children seem to miss emotional cues that are “socially relevant,” wrote study author Marco Battaglia of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy.

That missing information may lead to the higher rates of anxiety disorders and social phobias suffered by shy children later on in life, he said.

In the study of 49 shy Italian children ages 8 and 9, researchers found the children had a tendency to misread joy, anger or neutral feelings depicted in photographs of faces.

Electrodes monitoring the children’s brain waves showed less activity in regions normally associated with reactions to others’ emotions.

The report was published in the January issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.