Can children provide coherent, stable, and valid self-reports on the big five dimensions? A longitudinal study from ages 5 to 7

Research on early childhood personality has been scarce. Self-reports of Big Five personality traits were measured longitudinally with the Berkeley Puppet Interview when children were 5, 6, and 7 years of age. For comparative purposes, Big Five self-reports were collected in a sample of college students. The children's self-reports showed levels of consistency and differentiation that approached those of the college age sample. Children's personality self-reports demonstrated significant correlations across the 1- and 2-year longitudinal intervals. Substantial and increasing convergence was found between children's self-reports of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness and conceptually relevant behavior ratings provided by mothers, fathers, and teachers. Children's self-reports of Neuroticism were unrelated to adults' reports but did predict sadness and anxious behavior observed in the laboratory. The results provide the beginnings of an account of how the Big Five dimensions begin to be salient and emerge as coherent, stable, and valid self-perceptions in childhood.     

THE EYE OF THE BEGETTER: PREDICTING INFANT ATTACHMENT DISORGANIZATION FROM WOMEN'S PRENATAL INTERPRETATIONS OF INFANT FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Infant–caregiver attachment disorganization has been linked to many long‐term negative psychosocial outcomes. While various prevention programs appear to be effective in preventing disorganized attachment, methods currently used to identify those at risk are unfortunately either overly general or impractical. The current investigation tested whether women's prenatal biases in identifying infant expressions of emotion—tendencies previously shown to relate to some of the maternal variables associated with infant attachment, including maternal traumatization, trauma symptoms, and maternal sensitivity—could predict infant attachment classification at 18 months postpartum. Logistic regression analyses revealed that together with women's adult history of high betrayal traumatization, response concordance with a normative reference sample in labeling infant expressions as negatively valenced, and the number of infant facial expressions that participants classified as “sad” and “angry” predicted subsequent infant attachment security versus disorganization. Implications for screening and prevention are discussed.     

Emotion Regulation via the Autonomic Nervous System in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Despite growing interest in conceptualizing ADHD as involving disrupted emotion regulation, few studies have examined the physiological mechanisms related to emotion regulation in children with this disorder. This study examined parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system reactivity via measures of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) in children with ADHD (n = 32) and typically developing controls (n = 34), using a novel emotion task with four conditions: negative induction, negative suppression, positive induction, and positive suppression of affect. Both groups showed strong task-response effects in RSA. However, typically developing children showed systematic variation in parasympathetic activity (RSA) depending on both emotion valence (more activation for negative emotion, reduced activation for positive emotion) and task demand (more activation for suppression than induction). In contrast, children with ADHD displayed a stable pattern of elevated parasympathetic activity (RSA) across all task conditions compared to baseline. No group differences in sympathetic activity (PEP) were observed. It is concluded ADHD in childhood is associated with abnormal parasympathetic mechanisms involved in emotion regulation.