In this longitudinal study, we investigated the factor structure and stability of early-life temperament in a German sample, using three measures developed within Rothbart's psychobiological approach. Temperament was measured using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Revised (IBQ-R) at the ages of 6 and 12 months, the Early Childhood Behavior…

Background: Although plausible links between language development and personality have been suggested, longitudinal studies of these associations into adulthood have not been conducted. Aim: To investigate whether children's age at attaining language milestones is associated with later adult personality. Methods: Mothers' of 8,400 children from…

Electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry has been widely studied across the lifespan, with multiple studies conducted in infancy. However, few have investigated frontal EEG asymmetry in the context of emotional-eliciting tasks, controlling for baseline to focus on an experimental episode response. The present study was designed to address this gap in…

The present study examines the relationship between sex, infant temperament, and childhood psychophysiological reactivity via electrodermal activity (EDA). Both temperament and EDA are known to be relatively stable traits across the lifespan reflecting individual reactivity and regulation linked to suboptimal behavioral development and risk for…

Questions concerning longitudinal stability and multi-method consistency are critical to temperament research. Latent State-Trait (LST) analyses address these directly, and were utilized in this study. Thus, our primary objective was to apply LST analyses in a temperament context, using longitudinal and multi-method data to determine the amount of…

The paper reports on a study which tested whether infants high in negative affectivity are differentially susceptible to observed coparenting behavior in relation to their subsequent social-emotional development. Data came from a longitudinal study of 182 US dual-earner, primiparous couples and their infant children. At nine-months postpartum,…

The current study examined the stability of temperament over time. Observers and mothers rated child behavior at eight timepoints across three assessment waves (8, 15, and 30 months of age). Internal consistency reliability of aggregates of the eight observer reports and eight mother reports were high. When considering single timepoint…

Moderate, yet relatively consistent, associations between cognitive performance and shyness have been reported throughout the child and adult literatures. The current study assessed longitudinal associations between cognition (i.e., executive functioning) and parent-report temperamental shyness from infancy to early childhood and used temporal…

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether temperament and cognitive abilities are related to recognition performance of Caucasian and African faces and of a nonfacial stimulus class, Greebles. Seventy Caucasian infants were tested at 3 months with a habituation/dishabituation paradigm and their temperament and cognitive abilities…

People's response to stress depends to a large extent on their sense of perceived control over the situations they encounter. This longitudinal study of 136 children (70 girls) examined associations between attachment patterns and maternal sensitivity at 12 months of age, and perceived primary and secondary control at 11 years of age. Compared…

Much research on the quality of child care reveals it--in the case of low-quality child care--to be related to poorer child functioning, net of confounding factors, perhaps especially in the case of cognitive-linguistic performance. Recent work using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early…

Investigates whether temperamental differences mediated infants' responses to the early environment and explores the nature of the relationship between temperament and cognitive-intellectual development. Subjects, 100 six-month-old infants, were observed in their homes three times over a three-week period. Data suggest a greater reactivity to the…

This study of five month olds compared global maternal opinion with reports on direct observation by mothers and observers. A common set of behaviors thought to index temperament was evaluated. Observers recorded infant behaviors on two home visits. Mother-observer agreement for assessments based on home visits was significant. (SH)

Analyzes relationships between directly observed infant and mother behavior and infant temperament characteristics, as described in maternal ratings; separates the effects of different variance components in prediction of the observed behaviors; and explores possible interactions between infant sex and infant temperament in determining both infant…

Descriptions of temperament were more predictive of maternal adaptation than were mothers' expectations of infant behavior. Infant temperament was more important for multiparous mothers than for first-time mothers. Predicted interactive effects were not found. (RH)