Poster #212 - Stability of Child Temperament: Multiple Moderation by Child and Mother Characteristics

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Child temperament has been hypothesized to be relatively stable, but emerging scientific opinion about the stability of temperament is in flux. First, change generally is rapid and thoroughgoing in childhood, and, second, theoretical, methodological, and statistical perspectives contend that childhood temperament may be far from fixed. Genetics, neurohormones, and brain structures that likely underlie temperament emerge and change across childhood, and they may alter the expression and consequently the stability of temperament (Saudino, 2012; Shiner et al., 2012; Vandermeer et al., 2018). Temperament is also open to exogenous influences (Rothbart, 2011) such as experience and environment (Goldsmith, Buss, & Lemery, 1997; Johnson et al., 2016; Rothbart, 2011). 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 9,713 White children from the Bristol, UK area (48.5% female) participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) rated child temperament at 3, 5, and 6 years old. Mothers completed the Emotionality Activity Sociability Temperament Survey for Children (EAS; Bus & Plomin, 1984) at each wave.

Stability of temperament was large across all data collection waves on all 4 EAS scales. The stability estimates from 5 to 6 years were larger than the stability estimates from 3 to 5 years on all 4 scales, χ2s ranged from 45.70 to 86.30, ps < .001. Table 1 shows stability coefficients across time for groups of moderators: child gender (girls vs. boys), birth order (firstborns vs. laterborns), and term status (term and post-term vs. preterm children), and maternal age (teenage mothers vs. mothers in their twenties, thirties, and forties), education (low vs. high education), anxiety (normal vs. high levels of anxiety), and depression (normal vs. high levels of depression). Overall, stability was large across all data collection waves on all 4 EAS scales for all groups, and differences in stability across moderators were generally small.

The study of temperament stability enhances understanding of individual differences in childhood and has implications for other areas of development because child temperament has been integrated into models of developing personality, links to children’s perceptions and interpretations of their experiences, and shapes the quality of the child-caregiver relationship, processes associated with socialization, and parenting (Bates, 1987; Bates & Pettit, 2015; Chen & Schmidt, 2015; Paulussen-Hoogeboom, Stams, Hermanns, & Peetsma, 2007; Porter & Hsu, 2003; Shiner & Caspi, 2012). The present study provides evidence of largely consistent temperament stability across multiple moderators. Further research on possible biological and environmental factors influencing stability and change of child temperament is needed.

Authors

• Diane L. Putnick, NICHD
  Presenting Author

• Chun-Shin Hahn, NICHD
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elisabeth Mistur, NICHD
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marc H. Bornstein, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development & Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, UK
  Non-Presenting Author