Temperament

Question 1

Temperament

Answer 1

-a person’s specific emotional and behavioral responses to events
-attributes present at birth
-stable
-in born tendencies

Question 2

Temperament traits

Answer 2

activity, rhythmicity, approach/withdrawal, adaptability , mood, persistence/attention span, distractibility , sensory threshold, intensity

Question 3

Temperament styles

Answer 3

Easy or flexible(40%)
Difficult, active, or fiesty (10%)
Slow to warm up or cautios (15%)

Question 4

Three underlying components of temperament

Answer 4

Negative Affectivity
(fear, frustration, sadness, discomfort)

Effortful Control
(attention span/persistence, inhibtory control, sensitivy to env., low intesnity pleasure)

Extraversion-Surgency
(activity level, anticipation, impulsivity, sensation seeking like strangers)

Question 5

How much of temperament is genetic?

Answer 5

-used twin designs often
-even within temperament, you have different causes for different characterstics
Ex experiment:
-parents filled out temperament questionaires and infants observed in labraotry
-shared environment accounted for majority of variablity in sootahbility
-genetic influences accounted for majority of variability in distress and activity

Question 6

how stable is temperament over time?

Answer 6

kids followed up from 4-7 years old
-lots of movement for intermediate kids but continuous/stable for extremely uninhibited or extremely inhibited

Question 7

Goodness of fit

Answer 7

-the consequences of temperamental predisposition depend on how parents are able to adapt to the childs particular charactersistics
-parents need to recognize their children’s needs and facilitate the best environment to help them thrive and bring out the best in them
-finding a balance between parents needs and childs needs
-undersaniding “who” theri kids are