Do shy and inhibited babies grow up to be shy adults, while the sociable child continues to be the life of the party? Like most developmental research the answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no.
Chess and Thomas , who identified children as easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up or blended, found that children identified as easy grew up to became well-adjusted adults, while those who exhibited a difficult temperament were not as well-adjusted as adults. Jerome Kagan has studied the temperamental category of inhibition to the unfamiliar in children. Infants exposed to unfamiliarity reacted strongly to the stimuli and cried loudly, pumped their limbs, and had an increased heart rate.
Research has indicated that these highly reactive children show temperamental stability into early childhood, and Bohlin and Hagekull found that shyness in infancy was linked to social anxiety in adulthood. An important aspect of this research on inhibition was looking at the response of the amygdala, which is important for fear and anxiety, especially when confronted with possible threatening events in the environment.
Recall from our discussion on epigenesis or how environmental factors are thought to change gene expression by switching genes on and off. Additionally, individuals often choose environments that support their temperament, which in turn further strengthens them Cain, In summary, because temperament is genetically driven, genes appear to be the major reason why temperament remains stable into adulthood. Personality traits refer to these characteristic, routine ways of thinking, feeling, and relating to others.
Training in attentional control has been successfully used with four-year-old children, and can be adapted to preschool settings. Different parenting strategies appear to work better for children with certain temperaments. Shy children appear to benefit from being encouraged by parents to explore novel situations and are more likely to remain shy and inhibited if parents are overprotective.
Children who are aggressive and difficult to manage seem to benefit from a parenting style involving more restrictive control and lower parental negativity.
Firm, consistent parental discipline appears to be particularly important for children who have difficulties with self-regulation. Since children who have high levels of negative emotionality or self-regulatory problems present greater challenges to parents than other children, it may be especially difficult to provide optimal care for them. Their parents appear likely to use less firm control over time,but they are also the very children who especially need calmly-persistent caregiver efforts.
Fearful children tend to develop greater early conscience and do best under parental warmth and gentle discipline that promotes internalized conscience. More fearless children appear to benefit more from maternal responsiveness and their own security of attachment in conscience development. Individual differences in effortful control, although partly due to heredity, are also associated with the quality of parent-child interactions. Warm, supportive parenting, rather than cold, directive parenting, appears to predict higher levels of effortful control.
It is therefore important that parents and other caregivers be encouraged to interact with children in ways that foster the development of effortful control. Finally, some children pose greater challenges in certain contexts to caregivers because of their temperaments. In such cases, caregivers are likely to benefit from additional support and education.
They can be helped to avoid negative responses that might naturally be evoked by children with more difficult temperaments. For example, parents have been successfully taught how to manage irritable, hard-to-soothe infants so that such children can develop positive coping strategies and secure attachments with their caregivers.
All children are born with a unique personality and temperament. Their temperament affects how they behave and react to situations. For children who are anxious, fearful or withdrawn in new situations, parents can avoid being over-protective and gently encourage them to explore new situations. For children who are fearless and take too many risks, parents can be warm and loving, set firm boundaries and consistent schedules.
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This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. The nine traits of temperament. Temperament Temperament refers to personality traits that determine how someone reacts to the world. Many other studies have been conducted, of course, including an increasing body of European research led by Gedolph Kohnstamm, Ivan Mervielde and Berit Hagekull.
In the United States, temperament researchers Charles Halverson and Roy Martin have published both theoretical and empirical papers on the temperament-personality connection.
Temperament and personality are clearly related, but not the same thing, based on both conceptual and empirical grounds. The links are there, but have yet to be completely understood. Identifying the temperament qualities that affect the development of personality in infancy and early childhood is also a significant question. Fewer studies have looked at this topic, which seeks to understand how temperament in a preverbal child unfolds into personality characteristics in toddlerhood, childhood and eventually adulthood.
To determine your own adult temperament qualities, go here. To learn how temperament is assessed in infancy and childhood, go here. Factor analysis has identified "The Big Five" dimensions of personality. Temperament researchers are looking at relationships between temperament and personality factors. The Temperament Consortium.
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