Читать книгу The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development - Группа авторов - Страница 25

Beginning in the 1950s, investigators such as Thomas and Chess (Thomas et al., 1968) utilized the construct of temperament to account for early‐emerging, stable individual differences in infants’ and children’s responses to their environments. Subsequent refinements to theory and research extended knowledge about the origins of temperament. Much of what was learned supported the hypothesis that temperament, although not impervious to environmental influences, has a genetic or neurological basis (Kagan, 2007).

Advances were made in the conceptualization of temperament, the specification of component dimensions, and the development of reliable assessments. Descriptive taxonomies (e.g., easy, difficult, slow‐to‐warm‐up) were replaced with theory‐driven models that attributed temperamental variations to specific emotional, cognitive, or behavioral processes (emotional reactivity to novel stimuli; Kagen & Snidman, 2007; effortful control, negative affectivity, extroversion‐surgency; Rothbart, 2007). Empirical work clarified how temperamental characteristics were related to other aspects of children’s social development, including their behavior, relationships, and adjustment (Rothbart 2007).