Temperament
A childs style, or how they experience and respond to the world
- Reactivity, novelty, postive/negative expressiveness
A child’s ‘general’ behavior, not their specific reactions
3 categories of babies:
- (40%) Easy - happy, adaptable, regular
- (10%) Difficult - unhappy, irregular, negative responses to novelty
- (15%) slow-to-warm-up - unhappy, not upset by unfamiliar situations
- (35%) unclassified - mix of traits
These results were based on a longitudinal interview with the parents
Judging temperament is a particularly difficult, hard to observe child in a ‘normal’ state in lab
In lab temperament observations:
- Measure how infants respond to general situations:
- behaviors
- physiological responses (heart rate, frontal brain activity (right and left frontal lobes))
- objective measurements, not biased like parental report