Using data from 468 parents and taking into account internal consistency, breadth of item content, within-scale factor analysis, and patterns of missing data, we developed short (94 items, 15 scales) and very short (36 items, 3 broad scales) forms of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001), a well-established parent-report measure of temperament for children aged 3 to 8 years. We subsequently evaluated the forms with data from 1,189 participants. In mid/high-income and White samples, the CBQ short and very short forms demonstrated both satisfactory internal consistency and criterion validity, and exhibited longitudinal stability and cross-informant agreement comparable to that of the standard CBQ. Internal consistency was somewhat lower among African American and low-income samples for some scales. Very short form scales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency for all samples, and confirmatory factor analyses indicated marginal fit of the very short form items to a three-factor model.

This article describes the development, reliability, and factor structure of a finely differentiated (18 dimensions) parent-report measure of temperament in 1.5 to 3-year-old children, using a crosssectional sample (N = 317) and a longitudinal sample of primary (N = 104) and secondary (N = 61) caregivers. Adequate internal consistency was demonstrated for all scales and moderate interrater reliability was evident for most scales. Longitudinal stability correlations were primarily large over 6-and 12-month spans and moderate to large from 18 to 36 months. Factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure of Surgency/Extraversion, Negative Affectivity, and Effortful Control. In both samples and for both primary and secondary caregivers, older children received higher scores for Attention Focusing, Discomfort, Inhibitory Control, and Positive Anticipation. Primary caregivers rated females higher in Fear, and lower in High-intensity Pleasure, than males; secondary caregivers rated females higher than males in several aspects of Effortful Control.Increases in the number of empirical studies of temperament in recent years (Rothbart & Bates, 1998, in press) have been matched by an expanded and more finely defined list of dimensions considered within the temperament realm. Although fine-grained instruments have been developed to assess temperament in infants (Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003) and older children (Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001), an analogous instrument appropriate for use with children between the ages of 1 and 3 has not been made available. The current study describes the psychometric characteristics, factor structure, and demographic correlates of an instrument designed to fill this gap: the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (ECBQ).The ECBQ was originally designed to supplement the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire (TBAQ; Goldsmith, 1996), a widely-used parent-report temperament questionnaire for young children. The TBAQ includes 108 items that address five aspects of temperament: Activity Level, Pleasure, Social Fearfulness, Anger Proneness, and Interest/ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sam Putnam, Department of Psychology, Bowdoin College, 6900 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011. Persistence. Goldsmith (1996) documented internal consistency and interrater reliability of the instrument, as well as convergence with other temperament measures. Subsequent studies (e.g., Eiden, Edwards, & Leonard, 2004;Kochanska & Knaack, 2003;Lemery, Goldsmith, Klinnert, & Mrazek, 1999) have provided support for the construct validity of the instrument. The value of this measure is further indicated by successful translations to Japanese (Kusanagi, Chen, & Hoshi, 2000), Spanish (Salinas, Montesinos, & Carnicero, 1999), and Dutch (Van Bakel & Riksen-Walraven, 2004).Several aspects of temperament assessed by the new instrument, but not the TBAQ, reflect differences between our theoretical approach and the approach that guided the creation of the TBAQ. Whereas Gold...

Using data from parents of 761 infants from 6 independent samples, short (91 items, 14 scales) and very short (37 items, 3 broad scales) forms of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R), a well-established caregiver report measure of temperament for infants aged 3 to 12 months, were developed. The forms were subsequently evaluated with data from 1,619 participants from 11 samples. Over 90% of Cronbach's alphas and part-whole correlations calculated for the short and very short form scales were greater than.70. Interparent agreement was nearly identical to that obtained with standard IBQ-R scales, averaging.41 and ranging from.06 to.76. Longitudinal stability over multiple time spans, and estimated retest reliability of the short form scales, were highly similar to those of standard forms, with estimated retest reliability averaging.72 and ranging from.54 to.93. Convergent and predictive validity of select short form scales were comparable to, but slightly lower, than those observed for standard IBQ-R scales. Recommendations for the use of the standard, short, and very short scales are discussed.

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 measures was supported, as all fine‐grained dimensions exhibited stability across adjacent measurement periods, and all scales found on both the ECBQ and CBQ were most highly correlated with their equivalent scales. At the factor level, Surgency and Negative Affect factors were stable across all time points, and Effortful Control/Regulatory Capacity was stable across adjacent time periods. High‐Intensity Pleasure, Activity Level, and Impulsivity contributed strongly to continuity of Surgency, and Sadness, Frustration, and Falling Reactivity played strong roles in the continuity of Negative Affect. Heterotypic continuity was also found. High levels of Infant Surgency predicted high toddler Effortful Control, whereas high toddler Surgency predicted low Effortful Control in preschoolers. Infant Surgency dimensions especially predicted Toddler Attention Shifting and Low‐Intensity Pleasure, and toddler Activity Level was most closely associated with later deficits in Effortful Control. Inverse relations were also obtained between Negative Affect and Effortful Control, with substantial negative connections between toddler Negative Affect and preschool Attention Focusing and Inhibitory Control. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The now‐classic article “What Is Temperament? Four Approaches” by H. H. Goldsmith et al. (1987) brought together originators of four prominent temperament theories—Rothbart, Thomas and Chess, Buss and Plomin, and Goldsmith—to address foundational questions about the nature of temperament. This article reviews what has been learned about the nature of temperament in the intervening 25 years, It begins with an updating of the 1987 consensus definition of temperament that integrates more complex current findings. Next, 4 “progeny” trained in the original temperament traditions assess contributions of their respective approaches. The article then poses essential questions for the next generation of research on the fundamentals of temperament, including its structure, links with personality traits, interaction with context, and change and continuity over time.

The present study was conducted to examine the contributions of early appearing temperament attributes to toddler and preschool-age behavior problems. High levels of negative emotionality and low levels of effortful control were linked to both externalizing and internalizing difficulties. All fine-grained dimensions of negative affect were concurrently associated with internalizing problems whereas relations between components of negative affect and externalizing were observed only for frustration, sadness, and low falling reactivity. Higher surgency was associated with increased risk for externalizing behaviors whereas low surgency increased the likelihood of internalizing problems. Trait-by-trait moderation occurred, such that negative emotionality was most closely related to behavior problems when orienting/regulatory capacity or effortful control was low or when infant surgency was high. Results of this study have implications for theory linking temperament and psychopathology, and clinical applications utilizing temperament assessment to prevent behavior problems.

Multiple manifestations of emerging conscience, their development, organization, and links with temperament were studied in 171 21-70-month-old children. A new parental report instrument was designed to measure conscience, with good psychometric qualities and predictive of children's behaviors in a laboratory. For most aspects of conscience, the major developmental shifts occurred around age 3.2 components of early conscience emerged in factor analyses: Affective Discomfort, significantly higher for girls, that encompassed guilt, apology, concern about good feelings with the parent following wrongdoing, and empathy with others, and Active Moral Regulation/Vigilance, which included confession and reparation following wrongdoing, internalization of rules of conduct (self-regulation), and concern about others' wrongdoing. Children's temperament, assessed by maternal reports, was associated with conscience. Low impulsivity and high inhibitory control were associated with Active Moral Regulation/Vigilance for both sexes and, for girls only, also with Affective Discomfort. For girls, temperamental reactivity related positively to Affective Discomfort and negatively to Active Moral Regulation/Vigilance.

Temperament, effortful control, and problem behaviors at 4.5 years were assessed in 72 children classified as exuberant, inhibited, and low-reactive as 2-year-olds. Exuberant toddlers were more positive, socially responsive to novel persons, less shy, and rated as having more problem behaviors including externalizing and internalizing behaviors, than other children as preschoolers. Two forms of effortful control, the ability to delay a response and the ability to produce a subdominant response, were associated with fewer externalizing behaviors, while expressing more negative affect (relative to positive/neutral affect) when disappointed was related to more internalizing behaviors. Interaction effects implicated high levels of unregulated emotion during disappointment as a risk factor for problem behaviors in exuberant children. Keywordstemperament; externalizing; internalizing; exuberant; inhibited; toddlers One of the primary aims of developmental research is to identify pathways from early behavior to later childhood competence, or alternatively, to behavioral dysfunction. One construct that has received considerable research attention for its theoretical and empirical links to these outcomes is temperament. In the present study we examined developmental outcomes, specifically externalizing and internalizing behavior, of children varying on the temperament dimensions of approach and inhibition. This research is based on the theoretical model which proposes that temperament may have a critical role in the development of psychopathological conditions (Frick & Morris, 2004;Rothbart, Posner, & Hershey, 1995). Likewise, our study is informed by the developmental psychopathology framework (Cicchetti & Cohen, 1998) which emphasizes the application of normative development to understanding atypical populations and the study of individual developmental pathways as essential to identifying those most likely to develop maladaptive behaviors.Several pathways by which temperament may be related to high-risk conditions or psychopathology have been proposed (Rothbart et al., 1995). Psychopathology, for example, may directly map onto a temperamental extreme, as when an infant who has difficulty Please send correspondence to: 105 White Building, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16803, 814-865-2666 (office), 814-865-4417 (fax), TVR@PSU.EDU. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptDev Psychopathol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2013 August 04. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript attending for long periods develops attention deficit disorder. Temperament may also contribute to psychopathology by providing a context that interacts with other factors to increase the probability of a disorder. A tendency to be easily frustrated, for example, may create difficulties interacting with peers, which in turn may lead to heightened aggression. On the positive side, temperament may also act as a buffer to conditions that put a child at risk, as in the example of a chil...