Behavioral individuality in early childhood.

Measurement of Temperament in Infancy

“…The first attempt at large-scale assessment of infant temperament via parent report was the work of Thomas, Chess, and their colleagues (Thomas & Chess 1977, Thomas, Chess, & Birch 1968, Thomas et al 1963 Parents of 141 children from 85 New York famihes were mterviewed durmg the first 2 years of their infants' lives After a content analysis of their first 22 interviews, Thomas et al (1963) chose the following temperament charactensbcs for further analysis activity level, rhythmicity, approach, adaptabihty, threshold, intensity, attenbon span, distracbbihty, and persistence These dimensions were chosen because they were found to be scorable for all protocols and because they allowed a sufficiently wide distnbution of scores for furtber study Two-hour interviews were scored on three-point scales for all behavior items corresponding to given temperament vanables Preponderance scores were then determined by tallying frequencies of high, medium, and low responses for each child The Thomas et al studies have been highly mfluenbal m the study of infant temperament, although there are some problems in interpretmg their results First, it is impossible to determine the extent of homogeneity within any given behavior scale for example, if acbvity is menboned rarely by the mother, a high score on activity could result from activity only dunng the feeding situabon Temperament scales are also constrained by the three-point scale used m protocol sconng Second, the subjects ranged m age from 2 months to 6 months at the bme of the first mterview, with subsequent interviews beld at 3-month periods Some of the subjects were thus considerably older than other subjects dunng all phases of the study, and differences related to age may have confounded findings of actual individual differences among the children Finally, the New York sample was highly restricted with respect to SES and ethnic group, and 47* of the families contributed more than one subject to the project Since the Thomas et al studies, there have been several attempts to devise parent report instruments based on the New York temperament interviews Scarr and Salapatek (1970) chose Items based on examples from ITiomas et al's 1963 book, to which mothers were asked to respond "mostly true" or "mostly false" Children m the study ranged m age from 2 months to 24 months Item analyses were carried out for 70 mothers' responses to these items, but the investigators reported that internal consistency of the scales "was found to be rather low " The Scarr-Salapatek questionnaire has not been used in subsequent studies of infant temperament A quesbonnaire devised by Carey (1970), however, has been used m the Rochester infancy study (Bakow, Sameroff, Kelly, & 2;ax, Note 2) and extensively m other temperament research (reviewed by 'Thomas & Chess [1977]) Carey originally developed a 70-item quesbonnaire pnmanly as a clmical screening device for pediatncians The quesbons were also based on the Thomas et al work, and nine scales measured the charactensbcs defined in the New York study No item analysis was earned out for Carey's first instrument More recently, however, Carey and McDevitt (1978) have revised the nine scales, usmg 203 4-8-monthold infants for a standardizabon populabon Internal consistency of this revised scale ranges from 49 to 71 (statistic unspecified), with a median of 57…”

“…Temperament as a psychobiological concept has been used m connecbon with the study of mdividual differences m other animal species (Diamond 1957), research on behavior genebcs (Goldsmith & Gottesman 1981), and the study of mdividual differences among human infants (Thomas & Chess 1977) Since the concept of temperament provides an mtegrative approach to the study of the development of individual differences (Rothbart & Derryberry, m press-a) and may eventually allow us to bace the relabon between children's early charactenstics and their social and cognitive development, the task of developing adequate measures for temperament is an important one Although psychologists, pediatricians, and parents have been to some extent aware of temperamental differences among infants, only recently have researchers attempted to develop techniques for assessing temperamental characteristics of infants beyond the neonatal period (Bates, Freeland, & Lounsbury 1979, Carey 1970, Carey & McDevitt 1978, Persson-Blennow & McNeil 1979, Scarr & Salapatek 1970, Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig, & Kom 1963, Torgersen & Knnglen 1978 In this paper, temperament will be defined as individual differences in reacbvity and self-regulation Temperament self-regulabon Parent report measures of temperament may thus be seen as assessing temperament as it IS demonstrated withm the infant-caregiver system of interacbon Viewed m this way, parent-reported temperament allows us to make group and developmental comparisons, for example, examining developmental sex differences in temperament m the home or charactenzmg the behavior of Down's syndrome infants m comparison with matched normal infants (Hanson 1979), but we must reahze in making these comparisons that our temperament measure is not mdependent of the children's home environment…”

“…Pederson, Anderson, and Cam (Note 1) have developed a Q sort measure for assessing parents' percepbons of Thomas et al's (1963Thomas et al's ( , 1968 nine categories of temperament They report corrected spht-half reliabilibes for the dimensions of acbvity, rhythmicity, adaptability, approach, and positive mood ranging from 54 to 69, wath a median of 60 They had less success measuring the dimensions of threshold, persistence, distracbbihty, and intensity, with corrected split-half correlations ranging from 31 to 48, with a median of 40 A quesbonnaire in Swedish (Persson-Blennow & McNeil 1979) and an mterview schedule in Norwegian (Torgersen & Knnglen 1978) based on the Thomas et al (1963Thomas et al ( , 1968 categories have also been developed Bates et al (1979) have developed a caretaker-rabng instrument, the Infant Characteristics Quesbonnaire, consisbng of 24 items scored on seven-point scales Responses of 322 mothers of 4-6-month-oId infants were factor analyzed, yielding four factors labeled by Bates et al as (1) fussy/difficult, (2) unadaptable, (3) dull, and (4) unpredictable Internal consistency estimates for the factor scales with a cross-vahdabonal sample of 2V = 196 ranged from 39 to 79, with a median coefficient « of 63…”

An Examination of the Interrelationship Between Caregiver Behaviors, Infant Temperament and Perceptual-Cognitive Development

“…The Thomas et al (1963) study used a complex and lengthy interview and observation period to access temperament. Both the Carey (1972) and the Thomas et al (1963) methods were tested on the same subjects and results were significantly similar (Carey, 1972). This reliability test on the Carey instrument, however, involved only a small sample of subjects.…”

“…The present study sought to extend the Lewis and Goldberg (1968) study and to include the parameter of infant temperament as defined by Thomas et al (1963). As in the Goldberg study, the index of response.decrement was used as a measure of the infant's development.…”