Paths from socioemotional behavior in middle childhood to personality in middle adulthood

Continuity in individual differences from socioemotional behavior in middle childhood to personality characteristics in middle adulthood was examined on the assumption that they share certain temperament-related elements. Socioemotional characteristics were measured using teacher ratings at ages 8 (N = 369; 53% males) and 14 (95% of the initial sample). Personality was assessed at age 42 (63% of the initial sample; 50% males) using a shortened version of the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI); the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP); and the Adult Temperament Questionnaire (ATQ). Three models were tested using structural equation modeling. The results confirmed paths (a) from behavioral activity to adult Extraversion and Openness (NEO-PI), sociability (KSP), and surgency (ATQ); (b) from well-controlled behavior to adult conformity (KSP) and Conscientiousness (NEO-PI); and (c) from negative emotionality to adult aggression (KSP). The paths were significant only for one gender, and more frequently for males than for females. The significant male paths from behavioral activity to all indicators of adult activity and from well-controlled behavior to adult conformity started at age 8, whereas significant female paths from behavioral activity to adult sociability and from well-controlled behavior to adult Conscientiousness started at age 14. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

A twin study of personality and temperament during middle childhood

In a study of 105 same-sex twin pairs, ages 7 to 10 years, maternal ratings on 23 bipolar scales yielded six factors designated as compliant morality, applied cognitive, sociability, emotionality, tough-mindedness, and activity-distractibility. Analyses by twin pairs (68 identical, 37 fraternal) indicated that correlations for identical pairs were significantly higher than fraternal pairs on all but one factor: tough-mindedness. Profile analyses for the six factors indicated that the profiles of scores across the factors were more concordant for the identical twin pairs. Correlations obtained from the individual scales produced differences between the identical and fraternal twin pairs as well. Overall, the data suggested that several components and the total organization of those components of personality and temperament are genetically influenced.     

Emotional reactivity,self-control and children's hostile attributions over middle childhood

Hostile attribution bias, a child's tendency to interpret ambiguous social information as threatening or hostile, has been discussed as an important point in which social, emotional and cognitive information intersect. This study explores the natural changes that occur in children's hostile attributions across three grades during middle childhood and examines how emotional reactivity and self-control at third, fourth and fifth grade independently and interactively relate to these trajectories. Participants included 919 children whose mothers reported on their emotional reactivity, whose teachers reported on their self-control and who completed an attribution bias interview, all at grades 3, 4 and 5. Results revealed that among children with a greater tendency to make hostile attributions at third grade, lower self-control at third grade was associated with greater initial hostile attribution bias and less decline in biases over time. Additionally, greater emotional reactivity at fourth grade was associated with declines in these children's hostile attributions, but only when self-control was also higher at fourth grade.     

Type A personality, self-control, and vulnerability to stress

Type A behavior (hard-driving, competitive, time-urgent, hostile-irritable) has been linked to high stress levels and the risk of eventual cardiovascular problems (i.e., coronary heart disease, CHD). However, this pattern of behavior closely resembles the traditional masculine instrumental (goal-oriented) orientation, and, if kept within limits, may be viewed as adaptive in success-oriented, middle-class college students. Hypothetically then, Type A behavior may be displayed by a broad group of individuals, and only in those cases when it is allowed to reach extreme proportions is stress sufficient enough to confer risk. This article considers two lines of reasoning. Is greater self-control required for college women to be Type As, because it involves crossing into traditional male role behavior? Type A women displayed significantly better self-control then Type B women; the opposite result was disclosed for college men with Type As displaying poorer self-control than Type Bs. The question of whether risk-conferring Type A behavior would result from poorer self-control was answered in the affirmative. Self-control assumed moderator status; poorer self-control in both male and female Type As was associated with high levels of day-to-day stress relative to Type As with better self-control. Self-control did not influence stress level in Type Bs. This moderator effect suggests that only Type As who cannot contain their behavior within adaptive limits will be vulnerable to excessive stress and at risk for CHD.     

Establishing construct validity for Openness-to-Experience in middle childhood: Contributions from personality and temperament

Controversy exists over the validity of child Openness-to-Experience (OE). To establish construct validity for child OE, data were collected for 346 children (51% girls) aged 9-to-10-years (M = 9.92, SD = 0.83). Parents completed questionnaires about their children’s personality, temperament, and behavioral problems and competencies. Factor analyses of relevant personality and temperament facets revealed a robust OE factor made up of three facets: Intellect, Imagination, and Sensitivity. Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity was established via associations with other personality traits, and behavioral problems and competencies. Results underscore the importance of drawing from both temperament and personality literatures in attempts to establish construct validity for child trait domains as well as examining facet-level associations between OE and child behavior.     

Personality in middle childhood: A hierarchical structure and longitudinal connections with personality in late adolescence

Research on the structure of personality in middle childhood, while advancing, is still in the early stages of development. In this study, we employed a group of 1563 twins to elucidate the hierarchical structure of personality in middle childhood and provide connections to established personality traits in adult populations. Our results provide evidence for a higher-order structure of personality in middle childhood that maps on to recent findings in adult populations supporting hierarchical relationships among 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-factor models of personality. In addition, primary higher-order personality traits rated by parents at age 11 showed substantial predictive validity for analogous traits rated by self at age 17. We discuss our results within the context of developing a convergent hierarchical taxonomy of personality in middle childhood and the importance of multi-informant investigations.     

Divorce and personality development across middle adulthood

This study tested whether divorce helps explain individual differences in personality development in the years that follow a divorce. The sample consisted of 526 middle‐aged adults aged 42–46 years at the beginning. Personality traits were measured using the NEO‐Five‐Factor Inventory at three measurement occasions over 12 years. First, personality development was characterized by individual differences in change. Second, those individuals who experienced a divorce showed a decrease in extraversion and positive affect over time although nondivorced individuals did not change on these traits. Third, divorce was associated with a decrease in dependability. Fourth, divorce was associated with a decrease in orderliness for individuals who were remarried. The results of this study indicated that divorce had little influence on personality development.     

A developmental perspective on personality disorders: lessons from research on normal personality development in childhood and adolescence

Recent work on normal personality development in children and adolescents points to several conclusions that are relevant for understanding personality pathology. First, child temperament and adult personality traits share many features in common. Second, youths' individual differences can be described in terms of the Big Five personality traits observed in adults; an integrative taxonomy of individual differences in childhood and adolescence is articulated in this article. Third, personality is already moderately stable by the preschool years, but considerable personality change occurs well into the adult years. Taken together, these findings suggest that childhood personality functioning can and should be integrated into developmental research and applied work on personality disorders.     

A circumplex model of interpersonal attributes in middle childhood

This article presents evidence for the validity of the circumplex model to represent how parents and teachers organize interpersonal attributes in children. Study 1 showed that the ratings of adults using interpersonal adjectives to describe 4- to 10-year-old children conformed to a circumplex structure. Eight scales-labeled Interpersonal Adjective Scales for Children (IAS-C)-were developed to represent the circular sequence of children's interpersonal attributes, as ordered around the reference axes of Extraversion and Social Appropriateness. The continuum of interpersonal variables substantially corresponded to Schaefer's model for social and emotional behavior, as follows: Warm-Agreeable, Sociable-Cheerful, Exuberant-Dominant, Impulsive-Aggressive, Egocentric-Irritable, Fearful-Insecure, Shy-Silent, and Mild-Placid. Study 2 demonstrated cross-validity for the IAS-C and how they are related to Big Five measures. Study 3 used data from Studies 1 and 2 in a confirmatory approach to test the circumplex IAS-C structure. Findings are discussed in relation to the adult circumplex model and suggest that the child circumplex has distinctive features that must be kept in due consideration when attempting to assess interpersonal qualities in children validly.     

Dual temperamental risk factors for psychopathic personality: evidence from self-report and skin conductance

Psychopathy is a personality disorder consisting of dysfunctional affective interpersonal features (Factor 1) and impulsive-antisocial behavior (Factor 2) that exhibit differential associations with palmar skin conductance (SC) reactivity. The goal of this study was to determine whether the distinct SC reactivity observed in incarcerated psychopaths generalizes to university students who score high on personality dimensions hypothesized to be the risk factors for these psychopathy factors. Lilienfeld's Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) was used to compute scores on 2 factor-analytically derived dimensions that have been the focus of recent research in psychopathy. PPI-1 is hypothesized to relate to the low-fear temperamental risk factor, whereas PPI-2 is hypothesized to relate to regulatory dysfunction. SC reactivity was measured during tasks previously used in studies of diagnosed psychopaths. Results indicated that PPI-1 was associated with reduced SC during anticipation of an aversive noise and PPI-2 was associated with enhanced SC reactivity during presentation of a speech about one's faults. Additional analyses explored an 8-factor solution of the PPI and 3 temperament dimensions derived from factor analysis of several personality measures. Together, the SC results suggest that the Factor 1 pathway, best captured with refined assessments of behavioral fearlessness, related to reduced SC reactivity to an aversive noise-consistent with a weak defense system. The Factor 2 pathway, best captured by higher order dimensions reflecting externalizing, disinhibited forms of negative temperament, related to enhanced SC reactivity to a speech stressor-consistent with high stress reactivity.     

A large-scale comparison of prospective and retrospective memory development from childhood to middle age

We present the first large-scale comparison of prospective memory (PM) and retrospective memory (RM) from 8 to 50 years of age (N?=?318,614). Participants in an Internet study were asked to remember to click on a smiley face (single-trial event-based PM test) and to indicate whether/where a picture had changed from study to test (single-trial RM test), in both cases after retention intervals filled with working-memory tests and questionnaires. Both PM and RM improved during childhood; however, whereas maximal PM was reached by teenagers, with approximately linear decline through the 20s–40s, RM continued to improve through the 20s and 30s. On both tests, females outperformed males and achieved maximal success at earlier ages. Strikingly, 10–11-year-old girls performed significantly better than females in their late 20s on the PM test. The presence of the smiley face at encoding and temporal uncertainty (expecting it “later” rather than at the “end” of the test) both benefited PM; these effects decreased and increased, respectively, from childhood to middle age. The findings demonstrate that in a cross-sectional study (a) developmental trajectories are qualitatively different between PM and RM, and (b) the relative influence of PM cues differs between younger and older ages.     

Early individual differences in temperamental reactivity and regulation: implications for effortful control in early childhood

This longitudinal study tested the hypothesis that early temperament is associated with later effortful control. Fear reactivity and object orientation was assessed in a sample of 53 children at 8, 12, and 16 months during a stranger-approach paradigm and at 4.5 or 5.5 years on a battery of effortful control tasks. A latent growth curve analysis was used to model change in reactivity and object orientation across infancy and the prediction of each on later effortful control. Infants who increased in fear reactivity were significantly more likely to show poor performance on effortful control tasks in early childhood. Findings are discussed with respect to the importance of examining early temperamental precursors that contribute to the development of regulation.     

Temperament profiles from infancy to middle childhood: development and associations with behavior problems

The authors applied I-States as Objects Analysis (ISOA), a recently proposed person-oriented analytic approach, to the study of temperament development in 921 Norwegian children from a population-based sample. A 5-profile classification based on cluster analysis of standardized mother reports of activity, sociability, emotionality, and shyness at ages 18 months, 30 months, 4-5 years, and 8-9 years was interpretable and highly replicable. The prevalence of temperament profiles changed markedly with age, and individual stability in temperament profiles was significant. Specific typical and atypical developmental sequences of profiles were identified. Selective patterns of concurrent group differences in externalizing and internalizing problems by temperament profiles were remarkably similar across ages. The findings to some degree support the notion that individual temperament-variable values take on meaning in relation to the whole individual configuration and indicate some lawfulness in temperament changes over time. Future person-oriented studies of temperament development should replicate the current results using multiple data sources, rigorous tests of gender differences, and latent group modeling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

A service-delivery paradigm for personality assessment

This paper describes a human science approach to the delivery of the feedback component of assessment services. The feedback process is now central to a collaborative assessment that is integrated with intervention. Research has suggested that subject, situational, and assessor variables are relevant for feedback, but such research has been unsystematic. A service-delivery paradigm for feedback of assessment findings is described that includes four levels of increasing client participation: information, emotional contingencies, transfer of power, and functioning of an assessment system. Communication of assessment findings has been incomplete historically because motivation for feedback, resource accessibility for feedback utilization, and criteria for adequate feedback have been considered as unrelated ingredients. The components of Antonovsky's Sense of Coherence construct--meaningfulness, manageability and comprehensibility--provide one conceptualization for interaction of these ingredients. It is now feasible to do systematic research on assessment that includes feedback of assessment findings and the service-delivery process.     

The relationship between temperamental dimensions and inhibitory control in early childhood: Implications for language acquisition

The present study investigates the latent organization of inhibitory control in children aged between 2;3 and 3;0 years. In addition, it explores the relationships between temperament dimensions - social orientation, motor activity, and attention -, inhibitory control and language. One-hundred-twelve typically developing children were evaluated with tasks for inhibitory control and lexical skills, while ratings of temperament and language were collected from their caregivers. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis reveals that inhibitory control seems to be best described by a unitary dimension. A Structural Equation Model suggests that 78 % of the variance in vocabulary is explained by a model considering the language observed measures, the three temperamental dimensions, and inhibitory control and in which both temperamental attention and the latent dimension of inhibitory control are significantly related to vocabulary. In addition, inhibitory control does not mediate the relationship between temperament and language.     

Longitudinal stability of temperamental exuberance and social-emotional outcomes in early childhood

The goals of the current study were to investigate the stability of temperamental exuberance across infancy and toddlerhood and to examine the associations between exuberance and social-emotional outcomes in early childhood. The sample consisted of 291 4-month-olds followed at 9, 24, and 36 months and again at 5 years of age. Behavioral measures of exuberance were collected at 9, 24, and 36 months. At 36 months, frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry was assessed. At 5 years, maternal reports of temperament and behavior problems were collected, as were observational measures of social behavior during an interaction with an unfamiliar peer in the laboratory. Latent profile analysis revealed a high, stable exuberance profile that was associated with greater ratings of 5-year externalizing behavior and surgency, as well as observed disruptive behavior and social competence with unfamiliar peers. These associations were particularly true for children who displayed left frontal EEG asymmetry. Multiple factors supported an approach bias for exuberant temperament but did not differentiate between adaptive and maladaptive social-emotional outcomes at 5 years of age.