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…

The first year of life is an essential phase for all psychological areas in child development. The key competences, vital for all development processes of the child, focus on the communication and the socio-emotional competencies, mostly because the infant is strongly dependent of the adult care environment. The quality of the primary caregiving…

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…

This research examined alternative mechanisms in the etiology of attachment disorganization. The authors hypothesized that negative intrusive parenting would significantly predict children's attachment disorganization at age 12 months within a diverse community sample. Of more substantial interest, the authors tested moderational mechanisms in the…

Research Findings: This study considered the interplay between infant temperament and maternal caregiving behaviors in relation to early language. A total of 118 mother-infant dyads participated in the study. Mothers rated infant positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), and maternal behaviors were coded during a free-play task when infants…

The current study examined the relations between individual differences in attention to emotion faces and temperamental negative affect across the first 2 years of life. Infant studies have noted a normative pattern of preferential attention to salient cues, particularly angry faces. A parallel literature suggests that elevated attention bias to…

Emotion regulation is essential to cognitive, social, and emotional development and difficulties with emotion regulation portend future socioemotional, academic, and behavioral difficulties. There is growing awareness that many developmental outcomes previously thought to begin their development in the postnatal period have their origins in the…

Introduction: This article examines regulatory behaviors and physiological stress reactivity among 6-15 month-old infants with moderate to heavy prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), a group at very high risk for fetal alcohol spectrum disorders and self-regulation impairments, compared to low risk infants with no/low exposure. Participants: Eighteen…

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,…

This research examined the child, parent, and family conditions under which attachment disorganization was related to both level and change in externalizing behavior during preschool among a community sample. Using the ordinary least squares regression, we found that attachment disorganization at 12 months significantly predicted children's…

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…

Longitudinal continuity was investigated for fine-grained and factor-level aspects of temperament measured with the Infant Behaviour Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R), Early Childhood Behaviour Questionnaire (ECBQ), and Children's Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ). Considerable homotypic continuity was found. Convergent and discriminant validity of the…

In adults, most cognitive and emotional self-regulation is carried out by a network of brain regions, including the anterior cingulate, insula, and areas of the basal ganglia, related to executive attention. We propose that during infancy, control systems depend primarily upon a brain network involved in orienting to sensory events that includes…

Through her theoretical and empirical work, Mary Rothbart has had a profound impact on the scientific understanding of infant and child temperament. This special issue honors her contributions through the presentations of original, contemporary studies relevant to three primary themes in Rothbart's conceptual approach: the expansive scope and…

In this longitudinal study, 83 parents of infants between 3 and 12 months completed questionnaires assessing demographic information, infant temperament, and maternal depression. When these children were at least 18 months of age, parents completed follow-up questionnaires assessing toddler temperament and depression-like symptoms. We were…