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Temperament
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How important is it?
Synthesis of experts' texts - June 2012 (Rev. ed.)
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Topic Editor: Mary K. Rothbart, PhD, University of Oregon, USA
Topic funded by: The Lawson Foundation
Temperament refers to individual characteristics that are assumed to have a biological basis and that determine the individual’s affective, attentional and motor responses in various situations. For example, temperament can affect young children’s mood and emotions, how they approach and react to situations, their level of fear, frustration, sadness and discomfort, etc. These responses also play a role in subsequent social interactions and social functioning. A temperamental disposition refers to distinctive patterns of feelings and behaviours that originate in the child’s biology and appear early in development. Children’s temperaments shape their outcomes, in part by forming the ways that children engage and evoke responses from their environments. Children interpret their environmental experiences differently depending on their temperaments.
One of the basic dimensions of temperament is effortful control. Effortful control includes the abilities to voluntarily manage attention and inhibit or activate behaviour as needed to adapt to the environment, especially when the child does not particularly want to do so. These abilities underlie the emergence of self-regulation. The skills involved in effortful control are likely quite important for learning and children’s emerging adjustment and social competence. Also, children who are not well regulated are likely to elicit negative reactions from both peers and adults.
Temperament’s influence on developmental pathways and outcomes has now been recognized, even in areas that have traditionally been seen as almost exclusively the result of socialization, such as conduct problems, empathy and the development of conscience.
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Last update : 05-21-2013
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