Temperament Flashcards
What are the three main approaches to understanding temperament?
- Paediatric approach (Thomas & Chess)
- Personality Tradition (Diamond, Buss & Plomin)
- Individual Differences (Rothbart & Bates)
What is involved in the paediatric approach?
Thomas and Chess thought infants do not arrive as blank slates. Suggested infants have their own characteristics and temperamental qualities. Ran ‘New York Longitudinal Study’ involving 140 families in NY. Interviewed parents about children’s behavioural tendencies. From this derived 9 aspects of individual differences:
Activity level, Regularity, Approach-Withdrawal, Adaptability, Threshold of Responsiveness, Intensity of Reaction, Quality of Mood, Distractibility, Attention Span.
Looking across 9 categories, able to categorise children into one of three types: easy (40%), difficult (15%), slow-to-warm-up (10%).
Acronym for remembering Thomas & Chess’ 9 aspects of individual differences
Lawyers Railed While Annoyed Tweety Inhales Questionable Drumsticks Shrilly.
Lawyers (Activity level) Railed (Regularity) While (Approach-Withdrawal) Annoyed (Adaptability) Tweety (Threshold of responsiveness) Inhales (Intensity of reaction) Questionable (Quality of mood) Drumsticks (Distractibility) Shrilly (Attention span).
What are criticisms of Thomas and Chess?
Labels are full of judgement, and as such would be categorised differently today. Practical approach would be to ask parents what the baby is like on a day-to-day basis rather than approaching it from a theoretical thought process.
What is involved in the personality tradition?
Proposed by Buss and Plomin (1987). Says temperament appears early and is genetically influenced, which is what differs personality traits from temperament. Is characterised by emotionality (how easily the baby cries), activity and sociability. Suggested emotionality maps onto neuroticism, sociability maps onto extraversion.
Edgy Attractive Sharks
What is involved in the individual differences approach?
Proposed by Rothbart and Bates (1998). Defined temperament as individual differences in emotional, motor and attentional reactivity and self-regulation. Seen to be consistent across situations as well as stable over time. Characterised by: Fearful distress/inhibition, irritable distress, attention span & persistence, activity level, positive affect, rhythmicity, agreeableness/adaptability (overlaps with Thomas and Chess).
Acronym for remembering Rothbart and Bates’ characteristics
Fanged Infants Pushed Leon Past Rich Albert
Fanged (fearful distress/inhibition) Infants (irritable distress) Pushed (attention span & persistence) Leon (activity level) Past (positive affect) Rich (rhythmicity) Albert (agreeableness/adaptability).
What are commonalities between the three theories?
All three are measuring similar constructs. All are about individual differences rather than something general in the way that children behave, all show stability over time, all show that there is a biological understanding, all research suggests temperament is genetically influenced.
What are disagreements between theories?
Differing boundaries for temperament. Differing constituents (e.g. activity level and emotionality). Relationship between temperament and personality construed differently.
What is the clinical application of temperament?
Recognises children born with specific temperament and temperament needs: change though process from what is wrong with the child to how to adapt the environment to fit the temperament of the child.
Why is the clinical approach problematic?
Clinical approach problematic: clash between treating each child as an individual and dating the environment to their temperament and wanting to introduce public policies that can be generated and applied to the population.
What is goodness of fit?
Goodness of fit results when the child’s capacities, motivations and temperament are adequate to master the demands, expectations and opportunities of the environment.
What is poorness of fit?
Poorness of fit results when the child’s characteristics are inadequate to master the challenges of the environment, and this leads to maladaptive functioning and distorted development.
What are behavioural problems shown in temperament?
Two types of behavioural problems are shown?
- Internalising problems = anxiety, phobia, OCD, depressive symptoms.
- Externalising problems = aggression, delinquency, hyperactivity
How can temperament be seen in context?
“Difficult” temperament is associated with poor outcomes in Western societies. “Difficult” babies held an evolutionary advantage in the Masai environment under harsh drought conditions. 6/7 ‘easy’ infants died. Interpretation that in these extreme environmental circumstances, having a difficult temperament was adaptive.
