Stability of laboratory-assessed temperamental emotionality traits from ages 3 to 7.

A key component of temperament models is the presumed temporal stability of temperament traits. Although a substantial literature using parent report measures has addressed this claim, very few investigations have examined the stability of temperament using alternative measurement strategies, particularly those that involve direct assessment of emotional expressions. This study reports on the relative stability and heterotypic continuity of temperament traits measured via laboratory tasks and maternal report in a sample of children assessed at ages 3, 5, and 7, focusing on Positive Emotionality and Negative Emotionality. Relative stability of Positive Emotionality and Negative Emotionality traits ranged from moderate to high for laboratory and maternal report measures. Measures of emotional expressions exhibited levels of stability comparable to or higher than traits defined by other behavioral patterns (e.g., sociability and engagement).

[1]  J. Belsky,et al.  Infant Positive and Negative Emotionality: One Dimension or Two?. , 1996 .

[2]  Avshalom Caspi,et al.  Personality development: stability and change. , 2005, Annual review of psychology.

[3]  R. Hinde,et al.  Roundtable: what is temperament? Four approaches. , 1987, Child development.

[4]  L. Clark,et al.  Extraversion and Its Positive Emotional Core , 1997 .

[5]  R. Davidson,et al.  Continuity and change in inhibited and uninhibited children. , 2002, Child development.

[6]  Ann L. Brown,et al.  Advances in developmental psychology , 1981 .

[7]  J. Kagan.  Biology and the child. , 1998 .

[8]  D. Klein,et al.  Development and Validation of a Q-Sort Procedure to Assess Temperament and Behavior in Preschool-Age Children , 2002, Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology : the official journal for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, American Psychological Association, Division 53.

[9]  M. Rothbart,et al.  Investigations of temperament at three to seven years: the Children's Behavior Questionnaire. , 2001, Child development.

[10]  H. Goldsmith,et al.  Fear and anger regulation in infancy: effects on the temporal dynamics of affective expression. , 1998, Child development.

[11]  T. Moffitt,et al.  The "little five": exploring the nomological network of the five-factor model of personality in adolescent boys. , 1994, Child development.

[12]  D. Klein,et al.  Positive emotionality at age 3 predicts cognitive styles in 7-year-old children , 2006, Development and Psychopathology.

[13]  G. Kochanska,et al.  Individual differences in emotionality in infancy. , 1998, Child development.

[14]  R. Davidson.  Toward a Biology of Personality and Emotion , 2001, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[15]  R. McCrae,et al.  Temperament and Personality Development Across the Life Span , 2000 .

[16]  B. Roberts,et al.  The rank-order consistency of personality traits from childhood to old age: a quantitative review of longitudinal studies. , 2000, Psychological bulletin.

[17]  A. Tellegen.  Structures of Mood and Personality and Their Relevance to Assessing Anxiety, With an Emphasis on Self-Report , 2019, Anxiety and the Anxiety Disorders.

[18]  D. L. Mumme,et al.  Helplessness in Children of Depressed and Nondepressed Mothers. , 1995 .

[19]  M. Rothbart,et al.  Temperament and personality: origins and outcomes. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[20]  J. Belsky,et al.  INFANT POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONALITY : ONE DIMENSION OR TWO? , 1997 .

[21]  R. McCrae,et al.  Temperamental Substrates of Personality Development , 2000 .

[22]  C. Izard,et al.  Dysphoria-related bias in maternal ratings of children. , 1999, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[23]  M. Lamb,et al.  Emergence and constructvalidation of the big five factors in early childhood: a longitudinal analysis of their ontogeny in Sweden. , 2002, Child development.

[24]  W. Damon,et al.  Social, emotional, and personality development , 1998 .

[25]  Kenneth H. Rubin,et al.  Stability and social-behavioral consequences of toddlers' inhibited temperament and parenting behaviors. , 2002, Child development.

[26]  D. Watson,et al.  Toward a consensual structure of mood. , 1985, Psychological bulletin.

[27]  J. Pérez-López,et al.  A longitudinal study of temperament in infancy: stability and convergence of measures , 2000 .

[28]  R. Shiner,et al.  How shall we speak of children's personalities in middle childhood? A preliminary taxonomy. , 1998, Psychological bulletin.

[29]  O. John,et al.  Handbook of personality: Theory and research, 2nd ed. , 1999 .

[30]  D. Klein,et al.  Temperamental emotionality in preschoolers and parental mood disorders. , 2005, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[31]  I. Sigel,et al.  HANDBOOK OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY , 2006 .

[32]  David Watson,et al.  On the temporal stability of personality: evidence for differential stability and the role of life experiences. , 2002, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[33]  D. Karasic,et al.  Anxiety and anxiety disorders. , 1996, Focus.

[34]  H. Goldsmith,et al.  Developmental models of infant and childhood temperament. , 1999, Developmental psychology.

[35]  Avshalom Caspi,et al.  Children's behavioral styles at age 3 are linked to their adult personality traits at age 26. , 2003, Journal of personality.

[36]  A. Caspi,et al.  The child is father of the man: personality continuities from childhood to adulthood. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[37]  John A. Johnson,et al.  Handbook of personality psychology. , 1997 .

[38]  Lee Anna Clark,et al.  Temperament: A new paradigm for trait psychology. , 1999 .

[39]  D. Derryberry,et al.  Development of individual differences in temperament , 1981 .

[40]  Avshalom Caspi,et al.  Personality development across the life course. , 1998 .

[41]  R. Thompson,et al.  Emotion and self-regulation. , 1988, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation.

[42]  H. Goldsmith,et al.  The structure of temperamental fear and pleasure in infants: a psychometric perspective. , 1990, Child development.

[43]  A. Sameroff,et al.  Infant temperament measured by multiple observations and mother report. , 1994, Child development.

[44]  Tracy A. Dennis,et al.  Emotion regulation as a scientific construct: methodological challenges and directions for child development research. , 2004, Child development.

[45]  L. A. Pervin.  Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research , 1992 .

[46]  A. B. Hollingshead,et al.  Four factor index of social status , 1975 .

[47]  S. Friedman,et al.  Developmental follow-up : concepts, domains, and methods , 1994 .

[48]  R. Shiner,et al.  Linking childhood personality with adaptation: evidence for continuity and change across time into late adolescence. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[49]  M. Prior,et al.  Stability of Maternally Reported Temperament from Infancy to 8 Years. , 1993 .

[50]  D. Klein,et al.  Parent Reports and Laboratory Assessments of Child Temperament: A Comparison of Their Associations With Risk for Depression and Externalizing Disorders , 2005 .

[51]  Scott D. Gest,et al.  Behavioral inhibition: stability and associations with adaptation from childhood to early adulthood. , 1997, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

[52]  John J. B. Allen,et al.  Anger and frontal brain activity: EEG asymmetry consistent with approach motivation despite negative affective valence. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[53]  C. Dweck,et al.  Relations among children's social goals, implicit personality theories, and responses to social failure. , 1997, Developmental psychology.

[54]  R. Depue,et al.  Neurobiology of the structure of personality: Dopamine, facilitation of incentive motivation, and extraversion , 1999, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[55]  H. Koot,et al.  Early preschool predictors of preadolescent internalizing and externalizing DSM-IV diagnoses. , 2001, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[56]  Dennis L. Molfese,et al.  Stability of Temperament in Childhood: Laboratory Infant Assessment to Parent Report at Seven Years , 2000 .

[57]  S. Mangelsdorf,et al.  The meaning of parental reports: A contextual approach to the study of temperament and behavior problems in childhood. , 2000 .

[58]  Carroll E. Izard,et al.  The Developmental Functions of Emotions: An Analysis in Terms of Differential Emotions Theory , 1999 .

[59]  M. Lewis,et al.  Infant emotional and cortisol responses to goal blockage. , 2005, Child development.

[60]  K. E. Nichols,et al.  Behavioral inhibition: linking biology and behavior within a developmental framework. , 2005, Annual review of psychology.