Within the temperament
dimension effortful control all subscales were significantly different between the groups in the expected direction, with the referred group scoring lower than the population group (Table 2).
Not exact matches
The current list of temperament
dimensions includes three broad basic
dimensions: Extraversion / Surgency, which is related to positive emotionality, activity level, impulsivity and risk - taking; Negative Affectivity, which is related to fear, anger, sadness and discomfort; and
Effortful Control, which is related to attention shifting and focusing, perceptual sensitivity, and inhibitory and activational c
Control, which is related to attention shifting and focusing, perceptual sensitivity, and inhibitory and activational
controlcontrol.
One of the basic
dimensions of temperament is
effortful control.
One of the basic
dimensions of temperament is
effortful control.
The current list of temperament
dimensions includes three broad basic
dimensions: Extraversion / Surgency, which is related to positive emotionality, activity level, impulsivity and risk - taking; Negative Affectivity, which is related to fear, anger, sadness and discomfort; and
Effortful Control, which is related to attention shifting and focusing, perceptual sensitivity, and inhibitory and activational c
Control, which is related to attention shifting and focusing, perceptual sensitivity, and inhibitory and activational
controlcontrol.
Frustration acted as a general risk factor predicting severity of maladjustment; low
Effortful Control and Fear acted as
dimension - specific risk factors that predicted a particular type of psychopathology; whereas Shyness, High - Intensity Pleasure, and Affiliation acted as direction markers that steered the conditional probability of internalizing versus externalizing problems, in the event of maladjustment.
With regard to familial loading and temperament, it is important to distinguish general risk factors (Frustration) from
dimension - specific risk factors (familial loadings,
Effortful Control, Fear), and direction markers that act as pathoplastic factors (Shyness, High - Intensity Pleasure, Affiliation) from both types of risk factors.
Children's temperament is often defined as biologically - based differences in reactivity and self - regulation.1 Research has focused most on temperament
dimensions of self - regulation or
effortful control, general positive emotional reactivity, general negative emotional reactivity, and more specific aspects of negative emotionality reflecting fearfulness and inhibition on the one hand, and anger and irritability on the other hand.
Our second objective was to analyze whether fine - grained
dimensions of reactivity (fear, anger, discomfort, sadness, activity level, approach, high intensity pleasure, impulsivity) and self - regulation (attentional shifting, attentional focusing, inhibitory
control), as well as the higher order temperamental factors (negative affectivity, surgency, and
effortful control) represent unique correlates of CU traits and ODD - related problems.
In addition to independent contributions of temperament
dimensions, potential moderator effects between negative affectivity and
effortful control on ODD problems were also tested.
The second aim was to analyze whether both fine - grained
dimensions (fear, anger, discomfort, sadness, activity level, approach, high intensity pleasure, impulsivity, attentional shifting, attentional focusing, inhibitory
control) and higher order temperamental factors (negative affectivity, surgency, and
effortful control) represent unique correlates of CU traits and ODD - related problems, during this time of development.
For the fine - grained components of
effortful control — the self - regulative temperamental
dimension — we found that higher attentional focusing was related to lower levels of CU traits.
Additionally, based on Rothbart's (2007) model of temperament, we analyzed whether fine - grained
dimensions of reactivity (fear, anger, discomfort, sadness, activity level, approach, high intensity pleasure, impulsivity) and self - regulation (attentional shifting, attentional focusing, inhibitory
control), as well as the higher order temperamental factors of negative affectivity, surgency and
effortful control are associated with CU traits and ODD - related problems.
These analyses revealed that attention focusing, as a fine - grained
dimension of self - regulative
effortful control, was significantly and negatively associated with CU traits.
Second, relations between the broad temperament
dimensions (negative affectivity, surgency, and
effortful control) and externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors were examined and compared between clinically referred and general population children by using multigroup path analyses in M - plus 6.11 [34].
The third
dimension,
effortful control (self - regulation), represents the ability to voluntarily regulate behavioral reactivity and attention, expressed by the inhibition of a dominant response and activation of a subdominant response [15].
This definition allows for inclusion of multiple
dimensions of emotionally - salient processes and regulation of these processes, including but not limited to: emotional reactivity, arousal, sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, impulsivity,
effortful control, behavioral and emotional inhibition, emotional awareness, and features of temperament [e.g., 16, 17, 18 •, 22].
Low levels of
effortful control and more fine - grained traits within this
dimension (such as attention focusing, inhibitory
control and low - intensity pleasure) were found to predict externalizing problem behavior, also when internalizing problems co-occurred [22, 24].
Internal consistency (Cronbach's alphas across items for the total group) of the
dimensions was 0.69 for negative affectivity, 0.63 for surgency and 0.71 for
effortful control.
In young children, age three through seven, three broad temperament
dimensions have been identified by Rothbart and colleagues: negative affectivity, extraversion / surgency and
effortful control [13, 14].
The independent variables were the three broad temperament
dimensions plus a quadratic term for
effortful control, and interactions between negative affectivity and the linear and quadratic term for
effortful control.
The results suggest clearly diverging temperament profiles for these groups of children, with High - Intensity Pleasure and Shyness (representing the broad
dimension of Surgency) steering the conditional probability of internalizing and externalizing problems (direction markers), Frustration mainly being related to maladaptation in general (severity marker), and Fear and
Effortful Control being associated with both the severity and the direction of internalizing and externalizing problems, respectively.