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Many researchers have used the terms 'temperament' and 'personality' interchangeably when describing parents' behavioral styles. Although individual relationships among parents' temperament and personality, parenting behaviors, other parent characteristics, and young children's outcomes have been documented in the literature, parents' temperament and personality have not been examined collectively in conjunction with parenting and child outcome variables. As part of this study, 214 culturally diverse mothers with young children who ranged in age from 2- to 6-years rated their own temperament and personality, their parenting characteristics, and their young child's functioning (i.e., temperament and emotional and behavioral functioning). When examining mothers' temperament and personality together, factor analyses revealed a three-factor solution (i.e., General Life Approach, Rhythmicity, and Sticktoitiveness) and suggested that temperament and personality generally were separate but related constructs. Hierarchical and mediation regression analyses suggested the importance of examining both temperament and personality in the context of parenting behaviors and the outcomes experienced by young children. Overall, these findings suggested that mothers' temperament and personality play a significant role in parenting young children and optimizing young child outcomes. These findings are particularly helpful for professionals working with families experiencing difficulties dealing with their young child's difficult temperament styles as well as difficult emotional and behavioral functioning.

Several theoretical risk models were proposed previously regarding the prediction of child maltreatment. Although child maltreatment was predicted individually in these models by such variables as parent temperament, emotional and behavioral regulation, stress, coping, and child temperament, these variables were not yet examined collectively. As such, a new transactional theory was proposed for the current study. As part of this study, a national community sample of 158 culturally diverse mothers of young children who were between the ages of 1½- to 5-years rated their own temperament, emotional and behavioral regulation abilities, parenting stress, daily hassles, and coping behaviors as well as their young children's temperament. Correlational analyses demonstrated many significant relationships among the variables of interest. In addition, hierarchical regression analyses suggested that several parent (i.e., mother mood quality, mother flexibility/rigidity, emotion dysregulation, parenting stress, cumulated severity of stress, and emotion-focused coping) and child characteristics (i.e., young child mood quality) added unique incremental variance to the prediction of child maltreatment potential. Finally, mediation analyses indicated that mothers' emotion dysregulation mediated the relationship between mothers' flexibility/rigidity and child maltreatment potential. Overall, this study contributed information regarding the importance of emotion dysregulation as a mechanism through which difficult mother temperament may be related to increased child maltreatment potential. Accordingly, these findings suggested that emotion regulation skills may serve as a potential point of intervention for mothers who are at increased risk for child maltreatment due to difficult temperament characteristics.

Executive functioning (EF) facilitates a wide range of purposeful actions and plays a significant role in adaptive functioning. Despite considerable variability in EF, little is known about the factors underlying individual differences in EF in early childhood. The aims of the present research were to explore the genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in EF and the factors underlying the relations between EF and developmentally-significant outcomes. The sample comprised 209 4-year-old twin pairs (79 monozygotic, 130 dizygotic). EF was assessed with the NIH Toolbox: Early Childhood Cognitive Battery, a computerized battery of multidimensional measures. Both observers and parents provided ratings of temperament and parents evaluated behavior problems. School readiness was assessed with a standardized test of basic skills. Model-fitting procedures revealed that variability in set-shifting and inhibitory control could be attributed to both genetic (i.e., 36% and 46%, respectively) and nonshared environmental (i.e., 64% and 54%, respectively) influences. A moderate phenotypic association (r=.30) was found between set-shifting and inhibitory control. Multivariate behavioral genetic models revealed that approximately 85% of the genetic effects on inhibitory control covaried with set-shifting. Set-shifting and inhibitory control were associated with observer-rated task orientation (rs= .29 and .26, respectively) and school readiness (rs= .33 and .34, respectively). Both task orientation and school readiness were heritable (h2= 28% and 82%, respectively) and the correlations between both set-shifting and inhibitory control and these outcomes were due to common genetic influences. Parent-rated temperament was not associated with EF, but a related construct, effortful control, was inversely related to hyperactivity and externalizing behavior problems (rs= -.46 and -.41, respectively). Genetic and environmental factors underlie these associations. These findings indicate that both facets of EF share common genetic underpinnings and that these effects also underlie their associations with developmental outcomes. The present study contributes novel information about the etiology of early EF, with implications for cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral development, and ultimately, prevention and intervention efforts.

Alcohol abuse is one of the costliest human health problems in the United States. Studies assessing the etiology of alcohol use disorders (AUDs) in adulthood suggest that these disorders are predicted by trait-like differences, such as low or impaired central serotonin or temperamental anxiety. Few studies, however, have assessed neonatal, infant, and adolescent characteristics that lead to alcohol abuse in adolescence. Given that the expression of AUDs is rooted in biological processes, the set of studies presented in this work investigate the early origins of excessive alcohol use in adolescence, with an overall goal of identifying risk factors that may aid in prevention or intervention efforts to deter future alcohol abuse. Due to their evolutionary similarities, as well as similarities in their patterns of alcohol consumption, these studies utilize a nonhuman primate model (Macaca mulatta). A series of three studies investigating neonatal, infant, and adolescent predictors of adolescent alcohol intake were conducted. In study one, we assessed the relationship between neurobehavioral measures at two weeks of life and voluntary alcohol intake in adolescence. In study two, we assessed the relationship between behaviors that reflect an anxiety-like temperament in the first six months of life and excessive alcohol intake in adolescence. In study three, we investigated the relationship between infant and adolescent trait-like stress-induced cortisol and adolescent anxiety-like behaviors and alcohol intake in adolescence. The findings from this set of studies lends itself to an increased understanding of early-life, biologically-based predictors of excessive alcohol intake in adolescence and provides critical information to establishing early interventions for individuals at risk for the development of later AUDs.

Past research has focused extensively on the influence of temperament and mother-child interactions for the development of psychopathology. However, there is a paucity of research that has examined the role of natural variations in temperament and mother-child interactions on socioemotional outcome in samples of low-risk typically developing children. Furthermore, most research has investigated temperament and mother-child interactions in separate studies. Accordingly, the present work addressed three issues: 1) the short-term and long-term continuity of temperament and joint attention in typically developing children; 2) the predictive value of temperament and joint attention for socioemotional outcome in typically developing children; and 3) joint attention behaviours in a clinical sample of children. Temperament was assessed through maternal report on the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ) beginning when children were between 18 and 3 7 months of age while joint attention was assessed through direct observation. All the IBQ subscales showed 9-month continuity and 4 of the 6 IBQ subscales showed moderate to high stability. Although there was 9-month continuity for all the joint attention measures, only 4 out of the 7 joint attention behaviors showed low to moderate levels of stability. There was little 4-year continuity or stability of temperament. Cross-sectional relations were found between temperament and socioemotional outcome at both 18 and 37 months of age as well as 69 and 88 months of age. Established joint attention, measured when children were between 18 and 37 months of age, significantly predicted internalizing behaviours in typically developing children between the ages of 69 and 88 months. Significant differences in joint attention were also found in a clinical sample of children with internalizing disorders between the ages of 5 and 8 years. The present results suggest that some ofthe same temperament and joint attention behaviours that are associated with atypical development are also associated with typical variations in socioemotional development. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Objectives: 1) To examine the effectiveness of Audiovisual (AV) interventions at reducing preoperative anxiety (PA) and its associated outcomes in children undergoing surgery; 2) To assess the psychometric properties of a new scale, the Children’s Perioperative Multidimensional Anxiety Scale (CPMAS); 3) To examine the feasibility and acceptability of a novel tablet-based intervention, Story-Telling Medicine (STM), for reducing children’s PA; 4) To examine the relation between temperament and PA in the surgical context. Methods: A systematic review of studies where the primary outcome was children’s PA was conducted (Study 1). A study of the reliability and validity of the CPMAS were assessed at preoperative assessment (T1), on the day of surgery (T2), and 1 month postoperatively (T3) was also undertaken (Study 2). The feasibility and acceptability of STM were then examined and compared its effect to Usual Care (UC) (Study 3). Finally, children’s temperament was examined using the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory at T1 along with the CPMAS assessed at T1 and T2 (Study 4). Results: Fourteen of the 18 studies led to reductions in children’s PA (Study 1). The CPMAS demonstrated good internal consistency, stability and convergent validity across all visits (Study 2). The participant recruitment and study procedures were shown to be feasible and children in the STM group demonstrated greater reductions in CPMAS compared to the UC group (Study 3). Shyness predicted lower PA at T1, while sociability predicted higher PA at T1 and T2 (Study 4). Conclusions: AV interventions appear useful but full-scale RCTs of these treatments are required to pinpoint those that are most effective. The CPMAS is a promising tool for evaluating children’s PA and preliminary evidence suggests that STM is a feasible intervention for reducing children's PA. Finally, our findings highlight the importance of considering individual differences in predicting anxiety in the surgical setting. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Preoperative anxiety affects up to 5 million children in North America annually and is associated with many adverse psychological, behavioural, and health effects. These problems not only produce significant distress for children and families, but can have immediate and long-term effects on a child’s mental health and development. Current methods to reduce preoperative anxiety in children (e.g., medications and psychological preparation programs) are limited by their expense and/or time-intensive nature. In an attempt to reduce children’s preoperative anxiety and its associated negative outcomes, this work examined the usefulness of audiovisual interventions in reducing children’s preoperative anxiety, sought to develop a new instrument to measure children’s preoperative anxiety, tested a new tablet-based application to reduce children’s preoperative anxiety, and examined the relation between children’s temperament and preoperative anxiety. The goal is to improve the surgical experience for children and families, and to reduce psychological and physical problems in children undergoing surgery.

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The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether developmental researchers were influenced in the laboratory by the characteristics of children who participate in their research. I hypothesized that experimenters, as social partners, would adapt their speaking and other behaviors to the child’s perceived temperamental profile and language proficiency. I specifically focused on whether experimenters would adhere to the experimental laboratory procedure of two elicited imitation tasks, Feed Bear and Make a Rattle, in an archival dataset. Participants included 61 primarily white 15-month-olds. Coders transcribed infant directed speech (IDS) and analyzed transcriptions for total words, words per sentence, and percentage of words with six or more letters. The present study revealed differential correlational findings across temperamental dimensions, experimenter IDS, and elicited imitation tasks. An investigation of this kind provides new information concerning procedural fidelity and how experimenters may be influenced by their child research participants.

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