Temperament in middle childhood: A behavioral genetic analysis of fathers’ and mothers’ reports

Mullineaux, Paula Y.; Deater‐Deckard, Kirby; Petrill, Stephen A.; Thompson, Lee A.; DeThorne, Laura S.

doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2009.04.008

Cited by 45 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Subsequent longitudinal analyses of this sample showed that the temporal stability of individual differences was accounted for by stable genetic influences (Deater-Deckard & Wang, 2012). These results are consistent with the literature showing age-based increases in heritabilities for EC and EF (Mullineaux et al, 2009), resulting in very substantial heritability and genetic overlap between sub-components of EF by early adulthood along with distinct genetic variances for subdomains of EF (Miyake & Friedman, 2012). …”

Section: Gene-environment Interplaysupporting

confidence: 92%

Family Matters

Deater‐Deckard

2014

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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111

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Individual differences in self-regulation include executive function (EF) components that serve self-regulation of attentive behavior by modulating reactive responses to the environment. These factors “run in families”. The purpose of this review is to summarize a program of research that addresses familial inter-generational transmission and inter-personal processes in development. Self-regulation of attentive behavior involves inter-related aspects of executive function (EF) including attention, inhibitory control, and working memory. Individual differences in EF skills develop in systematic ways over childhood, resulting in moderately stable differences between people by early adolescence. Through complex gene-environment transactions, EF is transmitted across generations within parent-child relationships that provide powerful socialization and experiential contexts in which EF and related attentive behavior are forged and practiced. Families matter as parents regulate home environments and themselves as best they can while also supporting cognitive self-regulation of attentive behavior in their children.

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Section: Gene-environment Interplaysupporting

confidence: 92%

Family Matters

Deater‐Deckard

2014

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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111

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“…The individual facets of shyness and soothability were reverse scored for inclusion in the factor composites, so that higher values represented higher Surgency and Negative Affectivity respectively. In previous analyses, we confirmed the measurement structure of the CBQ-SF and found the reliability (i.e., alpha coefficients) to be satisfactory (Mullineaux, Deater-Deckard, Petrill, Thompson, & DeThorne, 2009). Despite concerns regarding bias in the use of parent reporting, such measures are able to reflect children’s behaviors across time and context, thereby offering a fuller view of development than a single observational or standardized assessment.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 74%

“…Means ranged from 5.00 to 5.70 ( SD s from .56 to .88) for Effortful Control and its individual facets, from 3.52 to 4.67 ( SD s from .70 to 1.20) for Surgency/Extraversion and its facets, and from 3.58 to 4.25 ( SD s from .66 to 1.10) for Negative Affectivity and its facets. As reported elsewhere (Mullineaux et al, 2009), the correlations between the three temperament factors on the CBQ-SF were generally modest in magnitude.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 60%

Volubility as a mediator in the associations between conversational language measures and child temperament

DeThorne

Deater‐Deckard

Mahurin-Smith

et al. 2011

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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Background Despite support for the use of conversational language measures, concerns remain regarding the extent to which they may be confounded with aspects of child temperament, extraversion in particular. Aims This study of 161 twins from the Western Reserve Reading Project (WRRP) examined the associations between children’s conversational language use and three key aspects of child temperament: Surgency (i.e., introversion/extraversion), Effortful Control (i.e., attention and task persistence), and Negative Affectivity (e.g., fear, anger, sadness). Child biological sex was considered as a possible moderating factor. Methods & Procedures Correlational analyses were conducted between aspects of temperament during early school-age years (i.e., 7 to 8 yrs), as measured by the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire-Short Form (CBQ; Putnam & Rothbart, 2006), and six different measures of children’s conversational language use: total number of complete and intelligible utterances (TCICU), number of total words (NTW), mean length of utterance (MLU), total number of conjunctions (TNC), number of different words (NDW), and measure D (i.e., a measure of lexical diversity). Values for NTW, TNC, and NDW were derived both on the entire sample and on the first 100 C-units. Correlations between language and temperament were compared between girls and boys using the Fisher r-to-z transformation to examine the significance of potential moderating effects. Outcomes & Results Children’s reported variability in Effortful Control did not correlate significantly with any of the child language measures. In contrast, children’s Negative Affectivity and Surgency tended to demonstrate positive, albeit modest, correlations with those conversational language measures that were derived from the sample as a whole, rather than from a standardized number of utterances. MLU, as well as measures of NDW and NTW derived from standardized sample lengths of 100 C-units, did not correlate with any measure of child temperament. TNC demonstrated an unexpected negative correlation with child Surgency when it was derived from a standardized number of C-units but not when derived from the entire sample length. Child biological sex did not moderate the significant associations between language and temperament measures. Conclusions & Implications Overall, measures that control for volubility did not correlate significantly with child temperament; however, measures that reflected volubility tended to correlate weakly with some aspects of temperament, particularly Surgency. Results provide a degree of discriminant evidence for the validity of MLU and measures of type (i.e., NDW) and token use (i.e., NTW) when derived from a standardized number of utterances.

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“…In terms of behavioral SR, studies of effortful control among children and adolescents point to evidence, across informants, of moderate levels (typically 40 to 60% range) of heritable and nonshared environmental variance and negligible shared environmental variance (Goldsmith, Buss, & Lemery, 1997; Lemery-Chalfant, Doelger, & Goldsmith, 2008; Mullineaux, Deater-Deckard, Petrill, Thompson, & DeThorne, 2009; see Yamagata et al, 2005 for similar findings in adults). Similar results have been obtained for children’s self-control (Wright & Beaver, 2005) with evidence accruing for assortative mating and heritable intergenerational transmission from parent-offspring designs (Boutwell & Beaver, 2010).…”

Section: Genetic Influencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergenerational transmission of self-regulation: A multidisciplinary review and integrative conceptual framework.

Bridgett¹,

Burt²,

Edwards³

et al. 2015

Psychological Bulletin

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490

476

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This review examines mechanisms contributing to the intergenerational transmission of self-regulation. To provide an integrated account of how self-regulation is transmitted across generations, we draw from over 75 years of accumulated evidence, spanning case studies to experimental approaches, in literatures covering developmental, social, and clinical psychology, and criminology, physiology, genetics, and human and animal neuroscience (among others). First, we present a taxonomy of what self-regulation is and then examine how it develops – overviews that guide the main foci of the review. Next, studies supporting an association between parent and child self-regulation are reviewed. Subsequently, literature that considers potential social mechanisms of transmission, specifically parenting behavior, inter-parental (i.e., marital) relationship behaviors, and broader rearing influences (e.g., household chaos) are considered. Finally, literature providing evidence that prenatal programming may be the starting point of the intergenerational transmission of self-regulation is covered, along with key findings from the behavioral and molecular genetics literatures. To integrate these literatures, we introduce the Self-Regulation Intergenerational Transmission Model, a framework that brings together prenatal, social, and neurobiological mechanisms (spanning endocrine, neural, and genetic levels, including gene-environment interplay and epigenetic processes) to explain the intergenerational transmission of self-regulation. This model also incorporates potential transactional processes between generations (e.g., children’s self-regulation and parent-child interaction dynamics that may affect parents’ self-regulation) that further influence intergenerational processes. In pointing the way forward, we note key future directions and ways to address limitations in existing work throughout the review and in closing. We also conclude by noting several implications for intervention work.

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Temperament in middle childhood: A behavioral genetic analysis of fathers’ and mothers’ reports

Cited by 45 publications

References 34 publications

Family Matters

Family Matters

Volubility as a mediator in the associations between conversational language measures and child temperament

Intergenerational transmission of self-regulation: A multidisciplinary review and integrative conceptual framework.

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