tional problems compared to the uninhibited chil-
dren.
Others have found that children who withdraw
from situations or who throw tantrums have more
marital and work-related problems in adulthood
compared to other children. Temperament measures
are good tools to help uncover early adjustment prob-
lems. Predicting adult personality from infant tem-
perament, however, is not as easily achieved for those
in the middle range compared to those at the ex-
treme ends. Some children change in response to
their experiences with their parents, teachers, and
peers. In addition, children begin to exert conscious
control over their behavioral tendencies during child-
hood. Part of healthy development is learning how to
adapt to the demands of different contexts. Some ac-
tive children learn restraint and some emotional chil-
dren learn peacefulness.
Measuring Temperament
While researchers tend to agree on the basic defi-
nition of temperament, they differ on the types of
temperament styles they investigate. According to
McCall, most temperament studies focus on four di-
mensions: activity, reactivity, emotionality, and socia-
bility. Activity is the intensity and rate of a child’s
movement and speech. How much does the child
move around during play or at her desk at school? Re-
activity is the intensity of a child’s approach or with-
drawal from a situation and how long the child is
interested in and stays in the situation. How much
does a child withdraw from novel toys or new situa-
tions? Emotionality is the degree to which a child ex-
presses negative or positive emotions and how often
she expresses them. Does a child get upset easily or
become angry quickly? Sociability is the tendency to
initiate social contact and the preference to be with
others. Is the child friendly?
Not all temperament characteristics fit neatly into
these four dimensions. Shyness, for example, has
been investigated as an aspect of reactivity (i.e., the
tendency to withdraw from new social situations) and
as the opposite end of sociability (i.e., the tendency to
not want to be around people). While many research-
ers have focused on one or more of these dimensions,
others have categorized children based on combina-
tions of traits and styles.
Thomas and Chess divided children into three
categories based on nine temperament dimensions:
activity level, approach-withdrawal in new situations,
adaptability, threshold of responsiveness, intensity of
reactions, quality of mood, distractibility, persistence,
and rhythmicity of biological functions (e.g., sleeping,
feeding, needing to be changed). They were interest-
ed in the ‘‘goodness-of-fit’’ between the children’s
characteristics and their social environments. Forty
percent of the children in their study were classified
as ‘‘easy’’ babies. These children adapted easily to new
situations, were sociable and playful, and had regular
biological functions. These children were not too re-
active or emotional, and so they were easy to parent.
Another 15 percent of the babies fell into the ‘‘slow-
to-warm-up’’ category. These children withdrew from
new situations somewhat, took a little longer to adapt
to environments, and were less active. They needed
more attention and time compared to easy babies, but
they adapted to their surroundings without too much
trouble. About 10 percent of the infants were classi-
fied in the ‘‘difficult’’ temperament category. Chil-
dren with difficult temperaments were very
emotional, had irregular biological functions, and
had intense negative reactions to new situations.
These children were the most difficult to parent and
required a great deal of effort, time, and patience.
The remaining children fell into more than one cate-
gory or could not be classified.
Dimensions of temperament are measured in a
variety of ways. Parents are interviewed about their
children’s behavior at home, and teachers are inter-
viewed about the children’s behavior at school. De-
pending on the dimension being assessed, these
adults may be asked about children’s reactions to new
toys or people (i.e., reactivity) or about their energy
levels (i.e., activity). Parent and teacher reports of
children’s behavior may be limited to that context
and influenced by their own perceptions of the world
(i.e., they may be biased). So, scientists also use behav-
ioral and observational methods to assess children’s
temperament. Activity level in infancy, for example,
can be measured using a device that measures the
number of times a baby’s arms and legs move. Most
of the time, trained researchers observe the children
at home, at school, or in a novel environment (e.g.,
a playroom in a researcher’s laboratory). Coders look
for visible signs of the child’s underlying tempera-
ment style. For example, a child who approaches an
unfamiliar student on a school playground and talks
to the new child would be coded as high in sociability.
Some dimensions of temperament have to be as-
sessed in specific contexts. Reactivity and shyness, for
instance, must be observed in novel situations because
the behavior of interest may not appear in familiar
contexts or may appear for only some children. For
example, children who are withdrawn in unfamiliar
situations are considered temperamentally shy. Chil-
dren who are withdrawn in both familiar and unfamil-
iar situations, on the other hand, are considered
anxious and possibly at risk for developing an anxiety
disorder. Sometimes children’s behavior is ambigu-410 TEMPERAMENT