2/25 Pg 247-255

Question 1

Temperament

Answer 1

infant’s tendency toward particular emotional and behavioral responses to specific situations

• Emerge early and remain stable
• Individual differences in self-regulation
• Behavior differences with older children and adults
• Biologically rooted and earlier emerging part of personality

Question 2

Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates

Answer 2

Four different personality types with different balances of body’s four humors (fluid)
*Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile

Question 3

Modern views of temperament

Answer 3

• Biological and psychological -> early temperament and high degree of heritability
• Trait approaches: behavior patterns as heritable traits
• Fewer critical components components interact with one another and with other aspects of person and experiences-> all the traits and types of personality

Question 4

Three fundamental trait-like categories

Answer 4

Emotionality, activity level, sociability which influence later personality traits

1. Significant heritabilities: genetic path
2. Several neural circuits and structures: amygdala and heart rate, cortisol levels and frontal lobes
3. Analogous temperamental variations in a variety of social species

Question 5

New York Longitudinal Study (from infancy to middle age)

Answer 5

Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess
*Nine dimensions of temperament: activity level, approach or withdrawal, adaptability, mood, threshold of responsiveness, intensity of reaction, distractability, rhythmicity, attention span or persistence

Question 6

Easy babies (40% of group)

Answer 6

happy and adaptive, generally showed positive attitude, did not overreact to situations, and had regular daily routines

Question 7

Difficult babies (10%)

Answer 7

unhappy, did not adjust well to new situations, had irregular eating and sleeping patterns, tended to show intense reactions

Question 8

“Slow to warm up” babies (15%)

Answer 8

negative in mood, less active, reacted with relativity low intensity, adapted slowly to new situations

Question 9

Average babies (35%)

Answer 9

Intermediate values on these scales

Question 10

Infant Behavior Questionnaire Revised (IBQ-R)

Answer 10

temperamental differences between infants in terms of three major dimensions:

• Surgency or extroversion
• Negative affectivity
• Orienting or regulation or effortful control

Question 11

Jerome Kagan

Answer 11

Infant’s inhibited behaviors actually have different biological bases than their uninhibited behaviors

• 2 tendencies toward wariness (inhibited) or ready engagement (uninhibited) -> affect other aspects of temperament -> certain kinds of emotions are expressed
• Significant patterns that seem to be human universals-> safety and survival

Question 12

Goodness of fit

Answer 12

different sorts of environments, cultures, and parents might “fit” much better with some sorts of infants than with others

• Children actively seeking the best-fitting environment
• Parents and others altering environment might have opposite effects on different types of children

Question 13

“The Squeaky Wheel gets the grease”

Answer 13

Some babies’ temperaments might confer an advantage in environments involving competition for scarce resources

• Greater share of attention
• Cross-culturally

Question 14

Parental influences on temperament

Answer 14

• More “difficult” baby who cried frequently for attention might receive adequate
• Adoptive parents: geneenvironment
• Depressed parents more inhibited
• Difficult behavior-> ore negative parental reactions
• “reframe” how they construe children’s behavior-> promote more positive behaviors