Temperamental influences on reactions to unfamiliarity and challenge.

Recent interest in the temperamental characteristics of young children, which has enjoyed a renaissance during the last decade, is correcting the theoretical imbalance created by a half-century of extreme environmental interpretations of behavioral variations among children. Some of this variation is to be viewed as the product of an interaction of tonic physiological states, genetic or prenatal in origin, and rearing conditions that facilitate or constrain the psychological biases created by these endogenous states (Goldsmith & Campos, 1986, Thomas & Chess, 1977). Many of these dispositions are transient during the first year of life; the few that show some stability are called temperamental.