The Relations of Effortful Control and Impulsivity to Children's Sympathy: A Longitudinal Study

The relations of children's (n = 214 at Time 1; M age = 6 years at Time 1) dispositional sympathy to adult-reported and behavioral measures of effortful control (EC) and impulsivity were examined in a longitudinal study including five assessments, each two years apart. Especially for boys, relatively high levels of EC and growth in EC were related to high sympathy. Teacher-reported impulsivity was generally modestly negatively related to measures of teacher-reported sympathy for boys, and a decline in impulsivity was linked to boys’ sympathy. Some findings suggested a positive association between impulsivity and children's self-reported sympathy. EC, especially when reported by teachers, was more often a unique predictor of sympathy than was impulsivity. Results generally support the argument that sympathetic individuals, especially boys, are high in EC and that EC is a more consistent predictor of sympathy than impulsivity.     

Relationships between regulatory temperament dimensions and self-regulatory behaviors at 4 and 6 months of age

The present study focused on relationships between temperament and behavior in early regulation development. Unlike most studies on the topic, we observed infant behavior in a naturalistic playful situation rather than in experimental stressful procedure, and employed temperament measures uniquely reflecting regulatory dispositions rather than a global measure of reactivity. The infant's self-regulatory behaviors were observed at 4 and 6 months during face-to-face interactions and regulatory dimensions were assessed at 4 months. We found that low intensity pleasure and soothability dimensions, related to the infant physical and social experience, respectively, significantly affected regulatory behavior and their influence showed to depend on the infant's age, with the former dimension being influential at the earlier age and the latter being influential when the behavior was observed at the later age. Results are interpreted on the light of a dynamic view of regulation development.     

The Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised: Factor structure in a culturally and sociodemographically diverse sample in the United States

The recommended factor structure for the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R), a widely used parent-report measure of infant temperament, has limited empirical support. Moreover, the recommended factors were developed using homogenous samples not representative of current United States (U.S.) sociodemographics. The objective of this study was to examine the factor structure of the IBQ-R in a culturally and sociodemographically diverse U.S. cohort (N = 380 mother-infant dyads). Mothers were assessed during pregnancy on a range of cultural and sociodemographic characteristics and completed the IBQ-R when their infants were 6 months of age. The sample was diverse on maternal marital status, educational attainment, household income, race/ethnicity, primary language spoken, and country of birth. Initial confirmatory factor analysis for the recommended three-factor model yielded a poor fit. Modifications employed in other studies failed to improve model fit. An exploratory factor analysis revealed an acceptable model fit for a three-factor solution that showed similarities to as well as differences from the originally proposed factor structure. Additional analyses suggested lack of invariance on several factor and scale scores by maternal country of birth, race/ethnicity, and household income. The findings suggest that the commonly used IBQ-R factor structure may need to be adjusted for diverse samples and deserves further study.     

Infant patterns of reactivity to tactile stimulation during parent-child interaction

Touch is the primary modality infants use to engage with the world; atypical responses to tactile stimuli may indicate risk for disordered outcomes. The current study examined infants’ responses to tactile stimulation within parent-child interaction, adding to prior knowledge based on parent report. Nine-month-old infants (N = 497) were observed while parents painted and pressed infants’ hands and feet to paper to make designs. Positive and negative affect and gazing away, exploring, and resistance behaviors were coded. Latent Class Analysis of observed behaviors yielded four tactile response patterns partially consistent with current nosology for sensory processing patterns: Low Reactive, Sensory Overreactive, Sensory Seeking, and Mixed Over/Underreactive. To evaluate whether patterns made valid distinctions among infants, latent classes were examined in relation to parent-reported temperament. Infants in the Mixed Over/Underreactive class were rated higher in distress to limitations and activity level than other infants. Sensory processing patterns observed in parent-child interaction are consistent with those identified by parent-report and may be used in future research to elucidate relations with temperament and typical and atypical development.     

Temperament and sleep behaviors in infants and toddlers living in low-income homes

Temperament is a dynamic trait that can be shaped by maturity and environmental experiences. In this study, we sought to determine whether and the extent to which temperament was predicted by sleeping behaviors in an understudied sample of primarily Black and White infants and toddlers living in low-income homes (N = 150). Sleeping behaviors were assessed at 15–19 months of age with caregiver report of the Tayside Children’s Sleep Questionnaire. Temperament was examined as effortful control, negativity, and surgency with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Very Short Form at 9–12 months of age and with the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire Short Form at 20–24 months of age. Covariates were maternal education, household income, and child sex and race. Continuous variables were standardized, then missing data from independent variables were multiply imputed in 20 datasets. Regression analyses showed that about 1 SD improvement in toddler sleep behaviors significantly predicted about 1/5 SD better toddler effortful control. However, sleep behaviors did not significantly predict toddler surgency or negative affect. This study shows that for a sample of infants and toddlers in low-income homes, how a child learns to regulate sleeping behaviors may influence the development of overall effortful control about six months later.     

Prenatal origins of temperament: Fetal cardiac development & infant surgency,negative affectivity,and regulation/orienting

Temperament, i.e. individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation, emerges early in infancy; might temperament originate during fetal development? Mixed findings and methodological issues in the literature examining this consideration limit our understanding of the continuity between these fetal indices and infant temperament. The primary aims of the current study were to improve on published studies by (a) using standardized and well-accepted fetal cardiac (actocardiograph) and infant temperament measures (the Infant Behavior Questionnaire—Revised; IBQ-R) (b) expanding fetal assessments to include coupling (the cross correlation of heart rate with movement), and (c) examining a diverse sample to determine if findings of associations between fetal neurobehavior and infant temperament generalize beyond cohorts that are demographically well-resourced and predominantly white. Building on theory and empirical findings, we hypothesized that (1) FHR would be positively associated with Surgency and Negative Affectivity, (2) FHRV would be positively associated with Surgency, and Regulation/Orienting and inversely associated with Negative Affectivity, and (3) fetal coupling would be positively associated with Regulation/Orienting and Surgency and inversely associated with Negative Affectivity. We collected 20 min of fetal data (m gestational age = 34.42 weeks) and mothers completed the IBQ-R (n = 90 women; 60 % non-Caucasian race; 63 % Latina ethnicity). We found that FHR was positively associated with Negative Affectivity but not associated with Surgency (or Regulation/Orienting). FHRV was inversely associated with Surgency but not associated with Negative Affectivity or Regulation/Orienting. Coupling was positively associated with Regulation/Orienting and Surgency but not associated with Negative Affectivity. Our findings, from a more diverse sample and with established measures, provide further evidence that individual differences in reactivity and regulation can be identified in the in-utero period and show theory-based continuity to specific infant temperament constructs.     

Developmental patterns of emotion regulation in toddlerhood: Examining predictors of change and long‐term resilience

Emotion regulation is critical for optimal functioning across a wide range of domains and may be even more important for individuals in high‐risk environments. While evidence suggests that childhood is generally a period of emotion regulation growth and development, research is needed to examine factors that may contribute to deviations from a typical trajectory. In a prospective study of 1,905 children, latent class growth analysis (LCGA) was used to identify trajectory groups of emotion regulation across toddlerhood (age 14–36 months), examine predictors of those trajectory groups from child temperament, parenting behaviors, and environmental risk, and explore predictions of resilience in 5th grade from the identified groups. LGCA supported a three‐class model, with a Stable Incline group, a Decline group, and a Catch‐Up group. Child negative emotionality, positive and negative parenting, and environmental risk predicted group membership. These trajectory groups in toddlerhood were predictive of child resilient functioning in the 5th grade. Our findings highlight the importance of utilizing developmental models of emotion regulation and provide implications for prevention and early intervention services to enhance emotion regulation development in early childhood.     

Infant effects on experimenter behavior

The present study explored experimenters’ looking behavior in a gaze-following task as a function of infant temperament. Two experienced female experimenters ran 62 15-month-olds through a six-trial gaze-following procedure in which infants were not distracted on the first three trials, but were distracted on the latter three trials by an Elmo video playing in the background. Although experimenters were trained to look at target objects for eight seconds per trial and were blind to infant temperamental status, both experimenters looked significantly longer during the non-distracted trials when infants were rated by their caregivers as high on effortful control or surgency. These results suggest that even experienced experimenters are susceptible to infant-driven influences. More importantly, these results highlight the importance of conceptualizing lab-based infant research involving human experimenters as, in Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) terms, representing the totality of a functional social system that does not exclude the experimenters.     

Temperament and negative semantic priming in children 7 to 12 years old

The present research assessed whether children with high and low scores on temperament traits differed in their ability to inhibit irrelevant task information in a lexical decision task. Children from 7 to 12 years old were classified based on temperament dimensions measured using a version of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire. The participants were instructed to either attend to (and remember) or to ignore a masked prime word followed by a central probe target on which they made a lexical decision. The results revealed several notable outcomes. First of all, recognition memory was better for attended than ignored words, providing further evidence that attention instructions influenced the processing of the primes.

Secondly, although no negative priming effect was obtained in the “ignore” condition, 43% of children showed this effect. Thirdly, children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and Impulsivity showed ignored negative priming, whereas children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and low on Impulsivity ignored facilitation. Data are discussed within the framework of negative priming as a complex phenomenon that involves the interaction of different factors such as age, type of task, and certain temperament traits.