Temperament is a set of behavioral tendencies that can be observed from early infancy, largely genetically determined, that affect how an individual interacts with, approaches, and reacts to others. Behavioral inhibition(BI) is accepted as a basic temperamental trait and is defined as a tendency to show hyperarousal, cowardice, and shyness in the face of unfamiliar or new people,objects, environments, and situations. Behavioral inhibition as a highly inhibited category can be observed in approximately 10%-15% of childhood. It has been shown that BI is one of the strongest risk factors for the development of anxiety disorders, especially social anxiety disorder, and it has been found that the risk of developing any anxiety disorder is 4 times higher in individuals with BI than in those without. To date, many studies in the international literature have investigated the structure of BI, especially its neurobiological underpinnings, how it progresses, its relationship with psychopathology, internal and external factors affecting this relationship, and intervention programs to prevent the progression to psychopathology. Nevertheless, perhaps the most important and first step in deepening our knowledge of this basic temperamental structure is to determine the BI by evaluating it appropriately and validly.  Few scales have been developed to assess BI, and the 2 most commonly used scales are the Behavioral Inhibition Scale (BIS) and the Behavioral Inhibition Questionnaire (BIQ).The BIS does not evaluate inhibited behaviors in non-social situations, so it cannot measure BI in all its aspects. On the other hand, BIQ provides a more comprehensive coverage of children’s inhibited behavior assessment in a greater range of contexts than the BIS because BIQ can evaluate the child’s BI level not only in the social domains but also in domains outside the social domains.  As far as we know, there is no study examining specifically BI in children in our country.  One of the most important reasons for this is the absence of a measurement tool that has been translated into Turkish and whose validity and reliability have been tested. Behavioral inhibition needs to be studied in different cultures and countries, as cultural factors can affect both the way BI is expressed and parents' approaches to inhibited children. In our study, the BIQ parent form, which is one of the few unique tools used to evaluate BI in the international literature, has been translated into Turkish, and it has been shown to have good validity and reliability in a population sample of 3-to 7-year-old children.

TBA