This article was downloaded by: [University of Dayton] On: 08 January 2015, At: 19:57 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Journal of Personality Assessment Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjpa20
Temperament in Early Childhood David C. Rowe & Robert Plomin Published online: 10 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: David C. Rowe & Robert Plomin (1977) Temperament in Early Childhood, Journal of Personality Assessment, 41:2, 150-156, DOI: 10.1207/s15327752jpa4102_5 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4102_5
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Journal of Personality Assessment, 1977, 41, 2
Temperament in Early Childhood DAVID C. ROWE and ROBERT PLOMIN University of Colorado Summary:
Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
The structure of temperament proposed by the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) of Thomas and collaborators (1963, 1968) was compared to Buss and Plomin's (1975) EASI temperament theory. An objective inventory was developed for the NYLS temperaments. Mothers rated 182 children on both NYLS and EASI temperaments. Only two of the nine NYLS dimensions, attention span-persistence and distractibility, were supported by factor analysis. The four EASI dimensions (emotionality, activity, sociability, and impulsivity) were replicated. A similar sociability factor emerged from both the NYLS and EASI svstems. but other temveraments were uniaue. The NYLS and EASI svstems were merged to- form ' the Colorad; Childhood Temperament Inventory, a parental rating instrument for children 1-6 years of age.
The New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) (Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968; Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig, & Korn, 1963) and Buss and Plomin's (1975) temperament theory of personality development represent two attempts to understand personality in young children. In their theory, Buss and Plomin proposed four temperaments (which they define as personality traits with an inherited component): emotionality, activity, sociability, and impulsivity (EASI). On the basis of both extensive parental interviews and direct observation, the NYLS attempted to describe childhood temperament in terms of nine dimensions that appear early in life: activity, rhythmicity, approach-withdrawal, adaptability, intensity of reaction, threshold of responsiveness, quality of mood, distractibility, and attention-span persistence. One goal of the present study was to quantify the nine NYLS temperaments, which have previously been studied primarily by means of interviews (Thomas et al., 1963, 1968; Garside, Birch, Scott, Chambers, Kolvin, Tweddle, & Barber, 1975). While the interview approach provides information rich in detail, it has the disadvantages of being somewhat subjective and difficult to replicate. Though one The authors express thanks to the mothers of twins who participated in this study and to mothers of twins clubs in the Boulder-Denver area for their enthusiastic support of this research. Reprint requests should be sent to Robert Plomin, Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309.
questionnaire measure is available (Carey 1970, 1972), it was designed principally for the pediatric screening of infants under 1 year of age. The present study aims at the development of an objective instrument designed for research purposes and applicable to a broader age range. This instrument will permit tests of the factor structure of the nine hypothesized temperaments and an assessment of their reliability. Previous factor analyses of the interview data (Thomas et al., 1968; Garside et al., 1975) suggest that a simpler factor structure may underlie the NYLS temperaments. A second purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the NYLS temperaments and the EASI temperaments, with the expectation that the two systems would show some similarity of factor structure. On the basis of this comparison, we proposed to develop a comprehensive description of early childhood temperament that merges the NYLS and EASI systems. To accomplish these goals, we constructed an objective set of items from the data of the NYLS,asked mothers to rate their young children on these items and on the EASI items, compared the factor structures of the two systems of temperament, and created a hybrid instrument (the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory) from their merger. Method Six items were written to tap each of the nine temperaments suggested by the
Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
DAVID C . ROWE and ROBERT PLOMIN NYLS. Many of the items were close rephrasings of the interview protocols given in the appendix to the Thomas et al. (1963) report; for instance, the example, "No startle reaction to noises. No reaction to lights" under Threshold of Responsiveness (p. 111) became the questionnaire item, "Child dislikes bright lights and loud noises." The 20 items of the short form of the EASI Temperament Survey (Buss & Plomin, 1975) were added to those derived from the NYLS, and a questionnaire was composed of the 74 items in random order. All items were rated from 1 ("not at all like the child") to 5 ("a lot like the child") by the children's m~others.The items are available from the authors. The questionnaires were mailed to 91 mothers of twins, recruited from mothers of twins clubs in the Denver area. Each of these women completed a questionnaire for each twin; thus 91 mothers rated 182 children. Most of the women were white and were middle or upper class (mean family income, $17,056; mean years of schooling, 14.4). Their children had a mean age of 3.6 years (range, 5 months to 9 years), with the distribution skewed toward the younger ages (86% of the children were less than 6 years old). Retest reliabilities were obtained by mailing another questionnaire to randomly selected ]mothers and asking them to rate one of their twins (also selected randomly) a second time. We received 31 completed iretest questionnaires at an average test-retest interval of about one week. Return rates for the questionnaires were about 50% for the initial mailing and about 80% for the retest mailing. All factor analyses were conducted using the SPSS (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Steinbrenner, & Bent, 1975) principal-factor solution with an iterative multiple correlation prlocess to estimate communalities. The principal-factor solution was rotated orthogonally with the Varimax criterion culling factors to an eigenvalue of 1.0. Factor analyses were replicated for younger (less than four years) and older (greater than four years) age groups in order to assess the effects of development on the structure of temperament.
151
Results Factor Analysis of the NYLS Temperarments Seven interpretable factors emerged from the 54 NYLS items: reaction to food, attention span-persistence, sociability, stubbornmess, sleep rhythmicity, reactivity, and soothability. These seven factors were 1-4 and 6-8 in order of extraction; factor 5 was a doublet. They accounted for 63% of the common variance and 40% of the total variance. Two facl ors, attention spanpersistence and soothability (a distractibility-calming factor), were the same as the prior NYLS traits. Sleep rhythmicity was a more narrow version of the NYLS rhythmicity temperament. The remaining factors were composites of the NYLS temperaments. For example, sociability and reac~onto1 food were both related to items from tlhe NYLS dimensions of approach-withdlrawal, adaptability, and threshold of responsiveness. The sociability factor invallved reactions to people, and the reaction-to-food factor is selfexplanatory. This analysis suggests that the approach-withdrawal, adaptability, and threshold-of-responsiveness temperaments of the NYLS are not factorially distinct. Factor Amlysif of the EASI Temperaments The 20 EASI items were analyzed separately. In order of extraction, activity, sociability, emotionality, and impulsivity factors vvere obtained. These four factors accounted for 93% of the common variance and 53% of the total variance. Thus, as shown previously (Buss & Plomin, 19751, the EASI temperaments are factorially distinct. Comparison of the NYLS and EASl Scales Correlations between the NYLS and EASI systems are presented in Table 1. For these anallyses, scales were derived only from i t e m loading above .3 on a factor. Both $ystems contributed sociability factors, and the correlation between them is "64 (p < .001). Two scales were unique tal their respective systems:
Temperament in Early Childhood Table 1 Intercorrelations of NYLS and EASI Scales EASI Factors NYLS Factors Emotionality
Sociability
Impulsivity
Reaction to food
.04
Attention span-persistence
-.56*
Sociability
-.01
Stubborness Sleep rhythmicity Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
Activity
Reactivity Soothability
.43 *
-.lo .20* -.26*
Note: N = 182. * p < .01. activitv to the EASI, and sleev rhvthmicity tb the NYLS. The E A S ~scales of emotionality and impulsivity were related to several of the NYLS scales. Emotionality was related to NYLS stubbornness, soothability, reactivity, and reaction to food. Impulsivity was primarily related to NYLS attention span-persistence, although it is also correlated with stubbornness, soothability, and reactivity. A canonical correlation (Nie et al., 1975) verified that the two systems of temperament shared considerable variance, Three significant canonical correlations were extracted: .73, .66 and .53, respectively. The first could be called extraversion and it involved the relationship between the EASI sociability and impulsivity scales and the related NYLS scales (sociability, attention span-persistence and stubbornness). The second canonical variate reflected EASI and NYLS sociability. The third variate represented the emotionality and impulsivity cluster as discussed above: EASI emotionality and impulsivity were related to NYLS attention span-persistence, soothability and reaction to food.
The Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventoiy (CCW The NYLS and EASI items were factor analyzed together to determine their joint factor structure. The six factors which emerged from both systems were sociability, emotionality, activity, attention spanpersistence, reaction to food, and soothability. These were factors 1-5 and factor 8 in order of extraction (factor 6 was deleted because three of its five items loading above .3 had greater loadings on factor 1, and factor 7 was deleted because it was a doublet). The six factors accounted for 56% of the common variance and 36% of the total variance. The sociability factor consisted of items with loadings above .3 from both the NYLS and the EASI. Three of the factors attention span-persistence, reaction to food, and soothability-consisted primarily of items from the NYLS. The emotionality and activity factors were largely from EASI items. Separate factor analyses were conducted for boys (N = 75) and girls (N= 107) and for children from 1 to 4 years of age (N= 100) and from 4 to 8 years of age (N
,
153
DAVID C. ROWE and ROBERT PLOMIN Table 2 Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory: Items and Factor Loadings
-
Factor Loadings Scale Full Set
Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
-
-
Sociability Child makes friend easily. Child is very friendly with strangers. Child is very sociable. Child takes a long time to warm up to strangers. (reversed) Child tends to be shy. (reversed) Emotionality Child gets upset easily. Child tends to be somewhat emotional. Child reacts intensely when upset. Child cries easily. Child often fusses and cries. Activity Child is very energetic. Child is always on the go. Child prefers quiet, inactive games to more active ones. (reversed) Child is off and running as soon as he wakes up in the morning. When child moves about, he usually moves slowly. (reversed) Attention Span-Persistence Plays with a single toy for long periods of time. Child persists at a task until successful. Child goes from toy to toy quickly. (reversed) Child gives up easily when difficulties are encountered. (reversed) With a difficult toy, child gives up quite easily. (reversed)
CCTI Alone
154
Temperament in Early Childhood Table 2 (cont'd) Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory: Items and Factor Loadings Factor Loadings Scale Full Set
CCTI Alone
Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
Reaction to Food Rarely took a new food without fussing. Child consistently dislikes many kinds of food. Child makes faces at new foods. Once the child decides he doesn't like something, there is no getting him to like it. Child has strong likes and dislikes in food. Soothability Whenever child starts crying, he can be easily distracted. When upset by an unexpected situation, child quickly calms down. Child stopped fussing whenever someone talked to him or picked him up. If talked to, child stops crying. Child tolerates frustration well? agecause only four items had loadings above .3 on the soothability factor, this item was added. = 60). Although the order of extraction varied, all four of these analyses revealed essentially the same factor structure. The CCTI was derived from the joint factor analysis of NYLS and EASI items. The five highest-loading items for each of the six factors were included. The items and their factor loadings (both for the full set of 54 NYLS items and 20 EASI items and for only those 30 items included in the CCTI) are listed in Table 2. Because only four items had loadings above .3 on the soothability factor, one item was added. Table 3 presents means, standard deviations, internal consistencies, and testretest reliabilities for the six scales of the CCTI. The means fall near the center of the range (5 to 25). Mean differences
were tested for children younger and older than 4 years of age and for boys vs. girls. Only two differences were significant: Boys were rated as more active than girls (t = 3.92, p < .001), which is consistent with previous research (Buss & Plomin, 1975); and older children had a stronger reaction to food than younger children (t = 3.32, p < .01). It should be emphasized that the major finding was that boys and girls, as well as younger and older children, have similar temperament ratings. The obtained alpha coefficients (Cronbach, 1951) indicate considerable internal consistency, and test-retest reliabilities are moderately high for all scales except soothability. The intercorrelations presented in Table 4 indicate that the six scales of the
DAVID C. ROWE and ROBERT PLOMIN Table 3 Scale Statistics of the Six Scales of the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory
Scale
Mean
SD
r
Reliability
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Alpha Sociability
17.4
5.1
.88
Emotionality
15.2
4.1
.80
Activity
20.2
3.7
.82
Attention span-persistence
16.9
Reaction to food
12.6
Soothability
17.3
Retest.
Note: Scoring was reversed on negatively worded items. The scale score was the sum of item values. Table 4 Intercorrelations of the Six Scales of the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory .
SOC (1) 1. Sociability
-
2. Emotionality 3. Activity
ACT (3) .16*
.-
ASP (4)
SOOTH (6)
.13
.17*
-.02
-.08
-.42
-
-.03
-.08
**
4. Attention span-persistence 5. Reaction to food 6. Soothability
-
.25"* -.I1 -
* p < .05. ** p < .001. CCTI are quite independent, with the exception of the relationship between emotionality and soothability. The pattern of correlations is similar for boys and girls and for children younger and older than four years of age.
Discussion Of the nine hypothesized NYLS temperaments, only two clearly survived the test of factor analysis. The majority of the NYLS temperaments were not factorially distinct. This finding is consist-
Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
Temperament in Early Childhood ent with the preliminary factor analysis conducted by the NYLS group (Thomas et al., 1968) and with a factor analysis of semi-structured interview data (Garside et al., 1975). The latter, unfortunately, reported only a principal components analysis. All four EASI temperaments were verified factorially. Six dimensions of personality appeared in the merger of the NYLS and EASI temperament systems. The EASI temperaments emerged as suggested by Buss and Plomin (1975), except that impulsivity broke into two components, attention span-persistence and soothability (distractibility-calming), whch were suggested by the NYLS group. In addition, a specialized factor, reaction to food, was contributed by the NYLS items. The CCTI, a parental rating instrument for children 1-6 years of age, was derived from the joint factor analysis of NYLS and EASI items. It was shown to be psychometrically promising, but the question of its validity must be left to future studies. References Buss, A. H., & Plomin, R. A temperament theory of personality development. New York: Wiley, 1975.
Carey, W. B. A simplified method for measuring infant temperament. Journal of Pediatrics, 1970, 77(2), 188-194. Carey, W. B. Clinical applications of infant temperament measurements. Journal o f Pediatrics, 1972,81(4), 823-828. Cronbach, L. J. Coefficient alpha and the internal consistency of tests. Psychometrika, 1951,16, 297-334. Garside, R. F., Birch, H., Scott, D. Mcl., Chambers, S., Kolvin, I., Tweddle, E. G., & Barber, L. M. Dimensions of temperament in infant school children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1975, 16, 219-231. Nie, N. H., Hull, C. H., Jenkins, J. G., Steinbrenner, K., & Bent, D. H. SPSS: Statistical package for the social sciences. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. Thomas, A., Chess, S., & Birch, H. G. Temperament and behavior disorders in children. New York: New York University Press, 1968. Thomas, A., Chess, S., Birch, H. G., Hertzig, M. E., & Korn, S. Behavioral individuality in early childhood New York: New York University Press, 1963. David C. Rowe, PhD Dept. of Psychology Muenzinger Building University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado 80302 Received: May 29,1976 Revised: August 6,1976
Journal of Personality Assessment Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjpa20
Temperament in Early Childhood David C. Rowe & Robert Plomin Published online: 10 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: David C. Rowe & Robert Plomin (1977) Temperament in Early Childhood, Journal of Personality Assessment, 41:2, 150-156, DOI: 10.1207/s15327752jpa4102_5 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4102_5
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Journal of Personality Assessment, 1977, 41, 2
Temperament in Early Childhood DAVID C. ROWE and ROBERT PLOMIN University of Colorado Summary:
Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
The structure of temperament proposed by the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) of Thomas and collaborators (1963, 1968) was compared to Buss and Plomin's (1975) EASI temperament theory. An objective inventory was developed for the NYLS temperaments. Mothers rated 182 children on both NYLS and EASI temperaments. Only two of the nine NYLS dimensions, attention span-persistence and distractibility, were supported by factor analysis. The four EASI dimensions (emotionality, activity, sociability, and impulsivity) were replicated. A similar sociability factor emerged from both the NYLS and EASI svstems. but other temveraments were uniaue. The NYLS and EASI svstems were merged to- form ' the Colorad; Childhood Temperament Inventory, a parental rating instrument for children 1-6 years of age.
The New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) (Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968; Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig, & Korn, 1963) and Buss and Plomin's (1975) temperament theory of personality development represent two attempts to understand personality in young children. In their theory, Buss and Plomin proposed four temperaments (which they define as personality traits with an inherited component): emotionality, activity, sociability, and impulsivity (EASI). On the basis of both extensive parental interviews and direct observation, the NYLS attempted to describe childhood temperament in terms of nine dimensions that appear early in life: activity, rhythmicity, approach-withdrawal, adaptability, intensity of reaction, threshold of responsiveness, quality of mood, distractibility, and attention-span persistence. One goal of the present study was to quantify the nine NYLS temperaments, which have previously been studied primarily by means of interviews (Thomas et al., 1963, 1968; Garside, Birch, Scott, Chambers, Kolvin, Tweddle, & Barber, 1975). While the interview approach provides information rich in detail, it has the disadvantages of being somewhat subjective and difficult to replicate. Though one The authors express thanks to the mothers of twins who participated in this study and to mothers of twins clubs in the Boulder-Denver area for their enthusiastic support of this research. Reprint requests should be sent to Robert Plomin, Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309.
questionnaire measure is available (Carey 1970, 1972), it was designed principally for the pediatric screening of infants under 1 year of age. The present study aims at the development of an objective instrument designed for research purposes and applicable to a broader age range. This instrument will permit tests of the factor structure of the nine hypothesized temperaments and an assessment of their reliability. Previous factor analyses of the interview data (Thomas et al., 1968; Garside et al., 1975) suggest that a simpler factor structure may underlie the NYLS temperaments. A second purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the NYLS temperaments and the EASI temperaments, with the expectation that the two systems would show some similarity of factor structure. On the basis of this comparison, we proposed to develop a comprehensive description of early childhood temperament that merges the NYLS and EASI systems. To accomplish these goals, we constructed an objective set of items from the data of the NYLS,asked mothers to rate their young children on these items and on the EASI items, compared the factor structures of the two systems of temperament, and created a hybrid instrument (the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory) from their merger. Method Six items were written to tap each of the nine temperaments suggested by the
Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
DAVID C . ROWE and ROBERT PLOMIN NYLS. Many of the items were close rephrasings of the interview protocols given in the appendix to the Thomas et al. (1963) report; for instance, the example, "No startle reaction to noises. No reaction to lights" under Threshold of Responsiveness (p. 111) became the questionnaire item, "Child dislikes bright lights and loud noises." The 20 items of the short form of the EASI Temperament Survey (Buss & Plomin, 1975) were added to those derived from the NYLS, and a questionnaire was composed of the 74 items in random order. All items were rated from 1 ("not at all like the child") to 5 ("a lot like the child") by the children's m~others.The items are available from the authors. The questionnaires were mailed to 91 mothers of twins, recruited from mothers of twins clubs in the Denver area. Each of these women completed a questionnaire for each twin; thus 91 mothers rated 182 children. Most of the women were white and were middle or upper class (mean family income, $17,056; mean years of schooling, 14.4). Their children had a mean age of 3.6 years (range, 5 months to 9 years), with the distribution skewed toward the younger ages (86% of the children were less than 6 years old). Retest reliabilities were obtained by mailing another questionnaire to randomly selected ]mothers and asking them to rate one of their twins (also selected randomly) a second time. We received 31 completed iretest questionnaires at an average test-retest interval of about one week. Return rates for the questionnaires were about 50% for the initial mailing and about 80% for the retest mailing. All factor analyses were conducted using the SPSS (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Steinbrenner, & Bent, 1975) principal-factor solution with an iterative multiple correlation prlocess to estimate communalities. The principal-factor solution was rotated orthogonally with the Varimax criterion culling factors to an eigenvalue of 1.0. Factor analyses were replicated for younger (less than four years) and older (greater than four years) age groups in order to assess the effects of development on the structure of temperament.
151
Results Factor Analysis of the NYLS Temperarments Seven interpretable factors emerged from the 54 NYLS items: reaction to food, attention span-persistence, sociability, stubbornmess, sleep rhythmicity, reactivity, and soothability. These seven factors were 1-4 and 6-8 in order of extraction; factor 5 was a doublet. They accounted for 63% of the common variance and 40% of the total variance. Two facl ors, attention spanpersistence and soothability (a distractibility-calming factor), were the same as the prior NYLS traits. Sleep rhythmicity was a more narrow version of the NYLS rhythmicity temperament. The remaining factors were composites of the NYLS temperaments. For example, sociability and reac~onto1 food were both related to items from tlhe NYLS dimensions of approach-withdlrawal, adaptability, and threshold of responsiveness. The sociability factor invallved reactions to people, and the reaction-to-food factor is selfexplanatory. This analysis suggests that the approach-withdrawal, adaptability, and threshold-of-responsiveness temperaments of the NYLS are not factorially distinct. Factor Amlysif of the EASI Temperaments The 20 EASI items were analyzed separately. In order of extraction, activity, sociability, emotionality, and impulsivity factors vvere obtained. These four factors accounted for 93% of the common variance and 53% of the total variance. Thus, as shown previously (Buss & Plomin, 19751, the EASI temperaments are factorially distinct. Comparison of the NYLS and EASl Scales Correlations between the NYLS and EASI systems are presented in Table 1. For these anallyses, scales were derived only from i t e m loading above .3 on a factor. Both $ystems contributed sociability factors, and the correlation between them is "64 (p < .001). Two scales were unique tal their respective systems:
Temperament in Early Childhood Table 1 Intercorrelations of NYLS and EASI Scales EASI Factors NYLS Factors Emotionality
Sociability
Impulsivity
Reaction to food
.04
Attention span-persistence
-.56*
Sociability
-.01
Stubborness Sleep rhythmicity Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
Activity
Reactivity Soothability
.43 *
-.lo .20* -.26*
Note: N = 182. * p < .01. activitv to the EASI, and sleev rhvthmicity tb the NYLS. The E A S ~scales of emotionality and impulsivity were related to several of the NYLS scales. Emotionality was related to NYLS stubbornness, soothability, reactivity, and reaction to food. Impulsivity was primarily related to NYLS attention span-persistence, although it is also correlated with stubbornness, soothability, and reactivity. A canonical correlation (Nie et al., 1975) verified that the two systems of temperament shared considerable variance, Three significant canonical correlations were extracted: .73, .66 and .53, respectively. The first could be called extraversion and it involved the relationship between the EASI sociability and impulsivity scales and the related NYLS scales (sociability, attention span-persistence and stubbornness). The second canonical variate reflected EASI and NYLS sociability. The third variate represented the emotionality and impulsivity cluster as discussed above: EASI emotionality and impulsivity were related to NYLS attention span-persistence, soothability and reaction to food.
The Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventoiy (CCW The NYLS and EASI items were factor analyzed together to determine their joint factor structure. The six factors which emerged from both systems were sociability, emotionality, activity, attention spanpersistence, reaction to food, and soothability. These were factors 1-5 and factor 8 in order of extraction (factor 6 was deleted because three of its five items loading above .3 had greater loadings on factor 1, and factor 7 was deleted because it was a doublet). The six factors accounted for 56% of the common variance and 36% of the total variance. The sociability factor consisted of items with loadings above .3 from both the NYLS and the EASI. Three of the factors attention span-persistence, reaction to food, and soothability-consisted primarily of items from the NYLS. The emotionality and activity factors were largely from EASI items. Separate factor analyses were conducted for boys (N = 75) and girls (N= 107) and for children from 1 to 4 years of age (N= 100) and from 4 to 8 years of age (N
,
153
DAVID C. ROWE and ROBERT PLOMIN Table 2 Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory: Items and Factor Loadings
-
Factor Loadings Scale Full Set
Downloaded by [University of Dayton] at 19:57 08 January 2015
-
-
Sociability Child makes friend easily. Child is very friendly with strangers. Child is very sociable. Child takes a long time to warm up to strangers. (reversed) Child tends to be shy. (reversed) Emotionality Child gets upset easily. Child tends to be somewhat emotional. Child reacts intensely when upset. Child cries easily. Child often fusses and cries. Activity Child is very energetic. Child is always on the go. Child prefers quiet, inactive games to more active ones. (reversed) Child is off and running as soon as he wakes up in the morning. When child moves about, he usually moves slowly. (reversed) Attention Span-Persistence Plays with a single toy for long periods of time. Child persists at a task until successful. Child goes from toy to toy quickly. (reversed) Child gives up easily when difficulties are encountered. (reversed) With a difficult toy, child gives up quite easily. (reversed)
CCTI Alone
154
Temperament in Early Childhood Table 2 (cont'd) Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory: Items and Factor Loadings Factor Loadings Scale Full Set
CCTI Alone
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Reaction to Food Rarely took a new food without fussing. Child consistently dislikes many kinds of food. Child makes faces at new foods. Once the child decides he doesn't like something, there is no getting him to like it. Child has strong likes and dislikes in food. Soothability Whenever child starts crying, he can be easily distracted. When upset by an unexpected situation, child quickly calms down. Child stopped fussing whenever someone talked to him or picked him up. If talked to, child stops crying. Child tolerates frustration well? agecause only four items had loadings above .3 on the soothability factor, this item was added. = 60). Although the order of extraction varied, all four of these analyses revealed essentially the same factor structure. The CCTI was derived from the joint factor analysis of NYLS and EASI items. The five highest-loading items for each of the six factors were included. The items and their factor loadings (both for the full set of 54 NYLS items and 20 EASI items and for only those 30 items included in the CCTI) are listed in Table 2. Because only four items had loadings above .3 on the soothability factor, one item was added. Table 3 presents means, standard deviations, internal consistencies, and testretest reliabilities for the six scales of the CCTI. The means fall near the center of the range (5 to 25). Mean differences
were tested for children younger and older than 4 years of age and for boys vs. girls. Only two differences were significant: Boys were rated as more active than girls (t = 3.92, p < .001), which is consistent with previous research (Buss & Plomin, 1975); and older children had a stronger reaction to food than younger children (t = 3.32, p < .01). It should be emphasized that the major finding was that boys and girls, as well as younger and older children, have similar temperament ratings. The obtained alpha coefficients (Cronbach, 1951) indicate considerable internal consistency, and test-retest reliabilities are moderately high for all scales except soothability. The intercorrelations presented in Table 4 indicate that the six scales of the
DAVID C. ROWE and ROBERT PLOMIN Table 3 Scale Statistics of the Six Scales of the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory
Scale
Mean
SD
r
Reliability
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Alpha Sociability
17.4
5.1
.88
Emotionality
15.2
4.1
.80
Activity
20.2
3.7
.82
Attention span-persistence
16.9
Reaction to food
12.6
Soothability
17.3
Retest.
Note: Scoring was reversed on negatively worded items. The scale score was the sum of item values. Table 4 Intercorrelations of the Six Scales of the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory .
SOC (1) 1. Sociability
-
2. Emotionality 3. Activity
ACT (3) .16*
.-
ASP (4)
SOOTH (6)
.13
.17*
-.02
-.08
-.42
-
-.03
-.08
**
4. Attention span-persistence 5. Reaction to food 6. Soothability
-
.25"* -.I1 -
* p < .05. ** p < .001. CCTI are quite independent, with the exception of the relationship between emotionality and soothability. The pattern of correlations is similar for boys and girls and for children younger and older than four years of age.
Discussion Of the nine hypothesized NYLS temperaments, only two clearly survived the test of factor analysis. The majority of the NYLS temperaments were not factorially distinct. This finding is consist-
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Temperament in Early Childhood ent with the preliminary factor analysis conducted by the NYLS group (Thomas et al., 1968) and with a factor analysis of semi-structured interview data (Garside et al., 1975). The latter, unfortunately, reported only a principal components analysis. All four EASI temperaments were verified factorially. Six dimensions of personality appeared in the merger of the NYLS and EASI temperament systems. The EASI temperaments emerged as suggested by Buss and Plomin (1975), except that impulsivity broke into two components, attention span-persistence and soothability (distractibility-calming), whch were suggested by the NYLS group. In addition, a specialized factor, reaction to food, was contributed by the NYLS items. The CCTI, a parental rating instrument for children 1-6 years of age, was derived from the joint factor analysis of NYLS and EASI items. It was shown to be psychometrically promising, but the question of its validity must be left to future studies. References Buss, A. H., & Plomin, R. A temperament theory of personality development. New York: Wiley, 1975.
Carey, W. B. A simplified method for measuring infant temperament. Journal of Pediatrics, 1970, 77(2), 188-194. Carey, W. B. Clinical applications of infant temperament measurements. Journal o f Pediatrics, 1972,81(4), 823-828. Cronbach, L. J. Coefficient alpha and the internal consistency of tests. Psychometrika, 1951,16, 297-334. Garside, R. F., Birch, H., Scott, D. Mcl., Chambers, S., Kolvin, I., Tweddle, E. G., & Barber, L. M. Dimensions of temperament in infant school children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1975, 16, 219-231. Nie, N. H., Hull, C. H., Jenkins, J. G., Steinbrenner, K., & Bent, D. H. SPSS: Statistical package for the social sciences. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. Thomas, A., Chess, S., & Birch, H. G. Temperament and behavior disorders in children. New York: New York University Press, 1968. Thomas, A., Chess, S., Birch, H. G., Hertzig, M. E., & Korn, S. Behavioral individuality in early childhood New York: New York University Press, 1963. David C. Rowe, PhD Dept. of Psychology Muenzinger Building University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado 80302 Received: May 29,1976 Revised: August 6,1976
