Stability of child temperament: Multiple moderation by child and mother characteristics

Abstract

This 3-wave longitudinal study focuses on stability of child temperament from 3 to 6 years and considers child age, gender, birth order, and term status as well as mother age, education, anxiety, and depression as moderators of stability. Mothers of approximately 10,000 children participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children rated child temperament. Stability coefficients for child temperament scales were medium to large, and stability was generally robust across moderators except child gender and birth order and mother age and education, which had small moderating effects on reports of stability of child temperament. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Some is known about the stability of temperament in infancy in small samples, but much less is known about the stability of temperament in early childhood or its moderation. What does this study add? This study uses a large sample (˜10,000) to trace the stability of temperament from 3 to 6 years in three waves and considers child age, gender, birth order, and term status as well as mother age, education, anxiety, and depression as moderators of stability.

Temperamental Development among Preterm Born Children. An RCT Follow-Up Study

“…Children's sociability, shyness, and levels of activity were similar in the two preterm groups, after adjusting for parental level of education and parenting stress in infancy. This study thus confirms the high stability of several temperamental dispositions recently reported in a large sample of American children [26]. In an early work by Buss and Plomin, both emotionality and sociability were described as "superfactors" that seemed to "pervade temperament measures in infancy and early childhood" [45].…”

“…Others point out that sensitive and supportive parenting is particularly important for children with challenging temperament dispositions [3,21,22] as it is for preterms [23][24][25]. Lastly, it is reported that factors such as the child's age and gender and maternal factors (e.g., age and education) may influence temperamental development [26,27].…”

Stability of core language skill from infancy to adolescence in typical and atypical development

“…At ages 6 months, 1 year 6 months, and 2 years 6 months, the social achievement scores of the adapted DDST ( 53 ) were used. At ages 3 years 2 months, 4 years 9 months, and 5 years 9 months, the sociability scores from the Emotionality, Activity, Sociability Temperament questionnaire ( 66 , 67 ) were used.…”

Objective Assessment of Temperament in Temperamentally Vulnerable Children: Role in the Studies on Their Stress Levels

“…Currently, there are many studies devoted to various aspects of temperament in children. Among the factors affecting its development are things such as genetic impact (Qiu, Martin, & Blache, 2017; Sallis, Davey Smith, & Munafo, 2018; Saudino, 2005), prenatal influences (Brand, Engel, Canfield, & Yehuda, 2006; Gartstein & Skinner, 2018; Schlotz, Godfrey, & Phillips, 2014), sleep quality (De Marcas, Soffer‐Dudek, Dollberg, Bar‐Haim, & Sadeh, 2015) and other neurobiological bases of temperament (Davis & Panksepp, 2011; Whittle, Allen, Lubman, & Yucel, 2006), temperament stability throughout life (Bornstein, Hahn, Putnick, & Pearson, 2019; Kagan, Snidman, Kahn, & Towsley, 2007; Kopala‐Sibley, Olino, Durbin, Dyson, & Klein, 2018), outcomes (Caspi, Moffitt, Newman, & Silva, 1996; Kubzansky, Martin, & Buka, 2009), and many more. The overwhelming majority of these studies are based on measures derived from parental and other‐report questionnaires, at least three dozen of which exist for only research with children (Gartstein, Bridgett, & Low, 2012).…”