~Temperament

Question 1

Our ___ changes our experience of the surroundings that we’re in.

Answer 1

Temperament

Question 2

What is Temperament?

Answer 2

Reflects a child’s behavioural style and characteristic way of approaching/responding to the world

Question 3

Temperament is relatively ___ over time

Answer 3

stable

Question 4

At what age do you start to see Temperament become much more stable and much more predictive of your childhood and adulthood Temperament?

Answer 4

Beyond 3 or so years old

Question 5

What are Thomas & Chess’s 4 categories of Temperament?

Answer 5

Easy Babies, Difficult Babies, Slow-to-Warm-up Babies, & Did not Fit Category

Question 6

What % were categorized as Easy Babies?

Answer 6

40%

Question 7

What % were categorized as Difficult Babies?

Answer 7

10%

Question 8

What % were categorized as Slow-to-Warm-up Babies?

Answer 8

15%

Question 9

What % were categorized as Did not Fit Category Babies?

Answer 9

35%

Question 10

What are the characteristics of Easy Babies?

Answer 10

• Adjust readily to new situations
• Quickly establish daily routines
• Generally cheerful and easy to calm
• Go with the flow

Question 11

What are the characteristics of Difficult Babies?

Answer 11

• Slow to adjust to new experiences
• Get overwhelmed easily by changes to routine, by new stimuli or situations that are unfamiliar, and tend to react with strong negative responses
• Tend to react negatively and intensely to novel stimuli
• Have a hard time to establish routines
• Struggle to adapt to new experiences

Question 12

What are the characteristics of Slow-to-Warm-up Babies?

Answer 12

• Might look close to the difficult babies at first when encountering a new situation
• Struggle with new situations and don’t adapt quite as easily as the easy babies
• They react to new situations with a mild negative reaction
• Somewhat difficult at first, but become easier over time after repeated contact with new objects, people, and situations

Question 13

What is the benefit of Thomas & Chess’s Early Classifications of Temperament?

Answer 13

These categories are a good way of quickly and efficiently describing the basic temperamental pattern that a given child shows

Question 14

True or False: You can simultaneously experience both positive & negative emotions strongly and intensely

Answer 14

True

Question 15

What are the characteristics of Positive Emotionality (& Surgency)?

Answer 15

• Differences in children’s positive affect (frequency of smiling & laughter; willingness to approach and engage with others)
• And Surgency, which has to do with how outgoing, or activity and exploratory and engaged a person is (activity level; rhythmicity - how predictable and routine basic functions of the babies life are)
• Often goes hand-in-hand with a positive attitude toward new experiences and people

Question 16

What are the 2 types of Negative Emotionality?

Answer 16

Fearful Distress & Irritable Distress

Question 17

What are the characteristics of Fearful Distress?

Answer 17

• Wariness, distress, and withdrawal in new situations or in response to novel stimuli; high in behavioural inhibition
• Reluctant to engage with situations, like if they encounter new stimuli from chaotic new environment, to something as simple as beeping tones, they react quite strongly, often by crying and showing behavioural signs of distress, and withdrawing

Question 18

What are the characteristics of Irritable Distress?

Answer 18

Fussiness, crying, and distress when one’s desires are frustrated

Question 19

How might an infant with Irritable Distress react when seeing a tempting toy that is out of reach?

Answer 19

More dramatic reaction than expected/normal, crying, frustration, and yelling

Question 20

Why do we separate these two types of Negative Emotionality into different dimensions?

Answer 20

Kids who are high on fearful distress but not irritable distress sometimes show different outcomes than kids who show the opposite pattern. Even these finer distinctions are relevant to helping us understand differences in temperament

Question 21

Kids who are high on fearful distress when they’re around 2 or so years old, tend to develop stronger ___ Control when they’re a little bit older, around 5y/o

Answer 21

Effortful

Question 22

The more Irritable Distress tends to be associated with ___ Effortful Control than

Answer 22

Lower

Question 23

What is Self Regulation?

Answer 23

Your ability to control and regulate your reactions, and modulate them, so that when you experience something stressful or really exciting, you are able to manage it

Question 24

What is Effortful Control?

Answer 24

The capacity to voluntarily suppress a dominant response in order to plan and execute a more adaptive response

Question 25

What is Attention/Persistence?

Answer 25

Ability to orient to/focus on events of interest

Question 26

What is the goal of the dimensional approach to the Temperament Dimensions?

Answer 26

To recognize that children exist on all of these dimensions (high, low, or somewhere in between)

The combination of these traits shapes their overall temperament (and thus, now they respond to the world)

Question 27

Is it Nature or Nurture?

Answer 27

Both