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Temperament and behavior problems in early childhood : a longitudinal family study

Heesbeen, D.G.M.

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Citation for published version (APA):Heesbeen, D. G. M. (2006). Temperament and behavior problems in early childhood : a longitudinal familystudy. Boxtel: Bordat-Maxtra.

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Temperament and Behavior Problems in Early Childhood

A Longitudinal Family Study

© 2006, D.G.M. Heesbeen All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanically, by photocopy, by recording, or otherwise, without permission from the author. Printed by Bordat-Maxtra, Boxtel Cover: Elaine Treisman, Abstract Family #2 , 1988 Coverdesign: Loet Bordat

Temperament and Behavior Problems in Early Childhood

A Longitudinal Family Study

ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT

ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam

op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. P.F. van der Heijden

ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Aula der Universiteit

op woensdag 25 oktober 2006, te 12.00 uur

door Daniella Gerdina Maria Heesbeen geboren te Heerlen

Promotiecommissie: Promotor: prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom Overige leden: prof. dr. M.A.G. van Aken prof. dr. S.M. Bögels prof. dr. J.M.A. Hermanns

prof. dr. J.M.A.M. Janssens dr. F.J. Oort prof. dr. B. Orobio de Castro

Faculteit: Faculteit der Maatschappij- en Gedragswetenschappen

Contents

Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1 Temperament 1

1.2 Behavior Problems 3

1.3 Temperament and Behavior Problems 4

1.4 The Longitudinal Research Project 5

1.5 Outline of the Present Thesis 5

Chapter 2: Intergenerational Transmission of Effortful Control,

Extraversion, and Negative Affect 9 2.1 Introduction 10

2.2 Method 13

2.2.1 Participants 13

2.2.2 Procedure 13

2.2.3 Instruments 14

2.2.4 Measures 16

2.2.5 Data Analysis 17

2.3 Results 17

2.4 Discussion 18

Chapter 3: Parental and Child Negative Affect, Effortful Control,

and Extraversion in Relation to Internalizing and Externalizing Child

Behavior Problems: Direct Effects and Family Resemblance 25 3.1 Introduction 26

3.2 Method 28


3.2.2 Procedure 29


3.2.4 Measures 30


3.3 Results 31

3.4 Discussion 34

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Chapter 4: Temperament and Internalizing and Externalizing

Behavior Problems: A Longitudinal Sibling Study 39 4.1 Introduction 40

4.2 Method 44


4.2.2 Procedure 45


4.2.4 Measures 48


4.3 Results 50

4.3.1 Gender and Age Differences 50

4.3.2 Longitudinal Models of Temperament and Behavior Problems 50

4.4 Discussion 55

Chapter 5: Summary and Conclusions 61 5.1 Findings and Conclusions 61

5.2 Limitations and Strengths 63

5.3 Recommendations 64

References 69

Samenvatting en Conclusies (Summary and Conclusions in Dutch) 81

Dankwoord (Acknowledgements) 89

Curriculum Vitae 93

II

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 1: Introduction

Simple, everyday life situations like playing with a household object can reveal individual differences in temperament. We observed children while playing with an icing syringe in order to detect differences in interest. In our laboratory, some children were absorbed in how this object can be disassembled and put together again. Other children thought we were crazy calling playing with an icing syringe a game, and were not interested at all. One of the many children we observed imagined being under water surrounded by sharks, and spying on people relaxing on the beach. Another child imagined being a cowboy, and waited for the experimenter to return, so he could shoot her. These children were obviously very interested in playing with the household object. However, the first child I described received the highest score on temperamental interest, because it played with the object and manipulated it, for three minutes long. I am grateful I have had the opportunity to attend and observe al these wonderful children and I have enjoyed their curiosity and creativity.

The introduction will proceed with an elaboration of the concepts of temperament and behavior problems. Next, some issues important for the relation between these concepts will be discussed. Furthermore, the longitudinal research project in which the data used in this thesis were gathered is discussed. Finally, the outline of the subsequent chapters will be presented. 1.1 Temperament

Research on individual differences in temperament can be traced back as far as to

ancient Greco-Roman times. In the early twentieth century, research in Europe was especially influential to current temperament research. Among the important research projects at that time was a project of two Dutch researchers, Heymans and Wiersma. They asked physicians to observe both parents and children and to complete temperament questionnaires on each person in order to identify the structure of temperament (in Rothbart, 2001). In essence, temperament research to date is concerned with the same research questions (i.e., what is the structure of temperament and how can we assess temperamental differences) these two Dutch scholars had in 1908, and even nowadays the use of both questionnaires and observations is an asset to temperament research. Nevertheless, the usage of observational measures has been neglected for a long time, despite the insight that a combination of measures is preferable. Nowadays, some research groups have obtained observational data, but many still rely on questionnaire data. Therefore, in the present thesis temperament was assessed using these two measurement approaches.

In the late sixties of the twentieth century renewed interest in child temperament originated from the awareness of bidirectionality in parent-child interactions. When the child is actively involved in creating the parent-child relationship, his or her characteristics are very important. In addition, advances in neuroscience linked temperament to genes and neural networks, thus providing new insights in the constitution of temperament. Ever since the pioneering New York Longitudinal Study of Thomas and Chess (1977), childhood

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temperament research has been a fast growing field of investigation. Stemming from this tradition - and taken as the theoretical perspective for the present study - is Rothbart’s psychobiological view of temperament as constitutionally based individual differences in emotional, motor and attentional reactivity and self-regulation (Rothbart, 1989). In other words, temperament is how children feel, move and direct their attention in reaction to various stimuli in their environment, such as a barking dog or a mother who tickles them. Self-regulation is a system that modulates these reactions to stimuli. The constitutional base of temperament is dynamically influenced by genetic inheritance (the influence of inherited genes is not fully present at birth, but is activated at different points in life), maturation (e.g., the development of the regulatory system), and experience (e.g., being bitten by a dog). Using questionnaire measures based on this definition, Rothbart and colleagues (2001) found evidence for a three factor structure of temperament, encompassing extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control. Sociable, outgoing and active children are high in extraversion, children high in negative affect show much anger, sadness, and fear, and children very capable of modulating their attention and behavior are high in effortful control. In the current dissertation, these three factors have been investigated in order to provide knowledge about broad temperamental traits.

But instead of focusing on several temperament dimensions or factors, temperament can also be viewed as a configuration of these different dimensions (Clark, 2005). Some researchers have explored temperament profiles, where the combination of different levels of several dimensions are thought to describe the concept of temperament better (Nigg, 2006; Rettew & McKee, 2005). This person-centered approach of temperament might be especially fruitful in light of the concept of goodness of fit, another important contribution of Thomas and Chess to temperament research (Chess & Thomas, 1991). Goodness of fit is achieved when a child’s temperament is adequate to master the demands, expectations, and opportunities of his or her environment. For instance, when a parent is keen on the cognitive development of his or her child, there is a goodness of fit between the parent’s expectations and the child’s characteristics when the child is very interested in understanding the world around her. This goodness of fit will lead to another developmental outcome than when these expectations and characteristics are in conflict. Therefore, the concept emphasizes the importance of the child’s relationship with primary caregivers as central to understanding the developmental processes leading from early temperament to later functioning. Although both proximal (quality of parenting behavior) and distal conditions (e.g., maternal depression, lack of social support, marital problems) have been examined as factors influencing the caregiver-child relationship, surprisingly little research has been devoted to parental temperament as a contributing force to child development.

Recently, interest has emerged into links between temperamental differences and later personality structure. Some aspects of temperament might provide the developmental substrates for the Big Five of personality (Graziano, 2001). Clark (2005) even states that the three temperament factors of negative affectivity, positive affectivity, and (dis)inhibition are the differentiating dimensions leading to both adult personality and psychopathology. Indeed, Ahadi and Rothbart (1994) have been able to successfully relate several temperament dimensions to the Big Five components extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness.

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Another approach to link childhood temperament to adult characteristics is to investigate temperament in adults. The same three behavioral dimensions of temperament, extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control, have been found in adults, in addition to orienting sensitivity (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Evans, 2000). This, in combination with the development of different temperament questionnaires for consecutive age ranges, offers the possibility to study temperament across the lifespan. Another advantage of studying adult temperament is the possibility to assess the same constructs in parents and children. Thereby, questions such as the intergenerational transmission of temperament and the goodness of fit of family members’ temperaments can be addressed.

Temperament is known to be a predictor of developmental outcomes such as behavior problems (Caspi, Henry, McGee, Moffitt, & Silva, 1995) and psychopathology (Merikangas, Swendsen, Preisig, & Chazan, 1998), and is a precursor of adult personality and psychopathology. Therefore, temperament has life-span implications (Nigg, 2006), and it is thus important to assess the degree of intergenerational transmission in temperament. Several mechanisms could cause parents and offspring to resemble each other in temperament, including shared genetic influence on behavior. Since temperament has a constitutional base, and changes in temperament are regulated by genetic influences (Saudino, 2005), it is likely that parents and children share some part of their temperamental characteristics. 1.2 Behavior Problems

Behavior problems in early childhood were considered typical of toddlerhood (i.e., the

terrible two’s) and to have few long-term implications for later functioning (Campbell, Shaw, & Gilliom, 2000). Research on developmental precursors of psychopathology has focused primarily on school-age children, until relatively recently. Nowadays, investigating behavior problems in preschoolers is much more common, and considered to be important to understand developmental pathways to adjustment. Behavior problems are typically assessed using two approaches, a categorical and a dimensional approach. The first method classifies children in terms of disorders like ADHD and autism. The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) is an example of this approach. The second method, the dimensional approach, provides information on all children investigated, whether they have a disorder or not, and assesses child behavior problems on a continuous scale. The Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1991) exemplifies this latter approach, and is used to assess child adjustment in the present investigation. Indeed, evidence is accumulating that for many disorders it is difficult to assess category boundaries, and therefore, it is recommended to treat disorders as dimensions instead of categories (Clark, 2005).

Researchers using the dimensional approach consider child behavior problems to be comprised of an internalizing (i.e., anxious/depressed, withdrawn behavior, and somatic complaints) and an externalizing component (i.e., aggressive and delinquent behavior; Achenbach, 1991). Recently, the applicability of this distinction has been discussed in connection to adult personality disorders as well (Krueger & Tackett, 2003). In addition to the aforementioned broad temperamental traits, we included internalizing and externalizing

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behavior problem measures in the present studies. Our focus was therefore on the relation between broadband structures of child functioning, since these broadband measures of temperament and behavior problems are the best candidates as developmental antecedents for adult functioning (Mervielde, de Clercq, de Fruyt, & van Leeuwen, 2005). 1.3 Temperament and Behavior Problems

Individual differences in temperament have been related to an array of developmental

outcomes, such as morality, self-esteem, psychopathology and school performance. For instance, fearful children, who were gently disciplined by their mothers, had a better-developed conscience than less fearful children (Kochanska, 1997). In addition, numerous temperament studies have been dedicated to its link with behavior problems (for reviews see Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Sanson, Hemphill, & Smart, 2004). Clark (2005) even concludes that innate temperament dimensions are the foundation upon which both adult personality and psychopathology are built. Especially the extremes of temperament are risk factors for the development of psychopathology. The possible mechanisms of association between temperament and psychopathology have been described in four models: a spectrum model in which temperament is a subclinical manifestation of psychiatric disorders; a vulnerability model, that states that certain temperament traits are a risk factor for, while others are a buffer against the development of psychopathology; a pathoplastic model, where temperament alters the course of a disorder once it occurs; and a scar effects model, in which pathological processes alter temperament or personality, and therefore, leave a scar (Clark, Watson, & Mineka, 1994; Nigg, 2006; Rettew & McKee, 2005).

The empirical relation between temperament and specific behavior problems can be modeled in many different ways according to Rothbart and Bates (1998). They distinguish five different processes that may link temperament and adjustment: direct effects (e.g., children high in negative affect are also high in depression); indirect effects (e.g., fearful children are not exposed to scary things, which in turn might develop into an anxiety disorder); temperament-environment interactions (e.g., children high in effortful control can use their regulation as a buffer against risk factors); within temperament interactions (e.g., children high in extraversion and low in control might be at risk for externalizing behavior problems, whereas the combination of extraversion and high control results in very sociable behavior); and a rest category called miscellaneous (e.g., adjustment shapes temperament). Especially direct linkages between temperament and behavior problems have been reported. The studies in the present thesis will also focus on direct effects between temperament and behavior problems.

Although temperament is theoretically assumed to influence the development of behavior problems, since individual differences in temperament emerge as early as in infancy, causality can only be studied using longitudinal research designs. Such designs are not widely employed in temperament and behavior problem research. Also, the relation between temperament of family members and the child’s behavior problems has been underexposed. In the present thesis, child temperament and child behavior problems were assessed longitudinally. In addition, measures of parental temperament and measures of family

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members’ resemblance in temperament were included. 1.4 The Longitudinal Research Project

The data for the investigations presented in this thesis were gathered in a longitudinal

family study at the University of Amsterdam, conducted by Dymph van den Boom, Mirjana Majdanžić, and Daniëlle Heesbeen. We were assisted by numerous students of the Department of Education, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Goals of this project were to study temperamental differences in siblings, and the consequences of these differences for parenting behavior, social cognition, and behavior problems. Participants of the study were Dutch families with at least two children. They visited our laboratory at four measurement occasions. These measurement occasions were scheduled in such a manner, that the youngest sibling was of the same age at the third wave of data collection, as the eldest sibling was at the first wave. Accordingly, the fourth wave of data collection was scheduled such that the youngest was of the same age as the eldest at the second wave. Thus, siblings were studied at the same age. The families started participating in this research when the siblings were approximately 2 and 4 years of age.

For the current dissertation, data on child and parental temperament and child behavior problems were used. Temperament of the siblings was assessed using a multimethod approach; both mothers and fathers provided information on their children’s temperament, in addition to structured laboratory observations. Furthermore, mothers and fathers rated child behavior problems. Lastly, parents provided information on their own temperament. For more information regarding the sample and methods the reader is referred to the following empirical chapters. 1.5 Outline of the Present Thesis

After the introductory chapter, the present thesis continues with three empirical studies. Chapter 2 presents a study on the intergenerational transmission of temperament. Maternal and paternal temperament were related to both siblings’ temperament. Chapter 3 focuses on the relation between child temperament and behavior problems, cross-sectionally. Furthermore, parental temperament and the resemblance of family members’ temperament were included. Mother-child, father-child, and sibling resemblance was assessed using a couple-centered approach. Chapter 4 reports on a longitudinal investigation concerning child temperament and child behavior problems. Two alternative models were tested for the eldest and youngest siblings, separately. Finally, in Chapter 5 the results of the three empirical studies are briefly summarized, some final conclusions are drawn and possible directions for future research are discussed.

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Chapter 2 Intergenerational Transmission of Effortful Control,

Extraversion, and Negative Affect

Chapter 2: Intergenerational Transmission of Effortful Control, Extraversion, and Negative Affect Heesbeen, D. G. M., van den Boom, D. C., & Majdandžić, M. (submitted for publication) The central issue of the current study was the intergenerational transmission of temperament. In 65 families with two children, maternal, paternal, and child temperament was assessed using questionnaires and observations, when both children were 5 years old. Structural equation modeling was used to concurrently test parent-child and interparental resemblance. Results indicate that the youngest child modestly resembled the father on effortful control, that no intergenerational transmission existed for extraversion, and that for negative affect both children resembled the mother, while the eldest resembled the father. Intergenerational transmission was highest for negative affect. Assortative mating was absent. Results suggest that intergenerational transmission occurs primarily in a temperament component that is the precursor of adult neuroticism. Parental involvement in prevention programs aimed at reducing the risk of developing psychopathology seems to be a promising road.

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2.1 Introduction

The treatment and prevention of child psychopathology is increasingly directed at training the child’s temperament, especially the ability to regulate attention and behavior. The training of children’s attentional skills and emotion regulation is already an aspect of treatment programs for children with anxiety disorders, depression, or disruptive behavior disorders (Muris & Ollendick, 2005). The question to what extent temperament is moldable is important for these exciting efforts in clinical practice. Twin and adoption studies have reported considerable heritability of temperament, and stability has been found to be predominantly due to genetic factors (Saudino, 2005). However, investigating parental temperament more directly is important, since it influences the child’s environment, and could counteract efforts to shape the child’s temperament. Therefore, the recurrence of temperament in successive generations is an urgent issue for the field of developmental psychopathology. The main focus of intergenerational research has been on the transfer of risk for negative developmental outcomes, such as aggression (Cairns, Cairns, Xie, Leung, & Hearne, 1998; Capaldi & Clark, 1998; Conger, Neppl, Kim, & Scaramella, 2003), and psychopathology (Hicks, Krueger, Iacono, McGue, & Patrick, 2004; Lainhart, 1999; Merikangas et al., 1998). The intergenerational transmission of personality is also well documented (Ahern, Johnson, Wilson, McClearn, & Vandenberg, 1982; Cohen, Kasen, Brook, & Hartmark, 1998; van Tuijl, Branje, Dubas, Vermulst, & van Aken, 2005). Because temperament has been put forward as the base for both personality and psychopathology (Clark, 2005) and thus may exert lifelong effects (Nigg, 2006), understanding the recurrence of temperamental characteristics in offspring might be even more crucial than the developmental outcomes as such. Nevertheless, the intergenerational transmission of temperament has not been studied as thoroughly as in the domains of personality or psychopathology. In the current study we investigated the temperament factors effortful control, extraversion, and negative affect in a family design including mothers, fathers, and siblings.

Temperament plays an undisputed role in the development of psychopathology and numerous empirical studies have provided evidence for their relation (e.g., Mervielde et al., 2005; Yoo et al., 2006). Furthermore, the relation between temperament and adult personality is becoming increasingly established (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005). Taking these empirical data one step further, Clark (2005) states that adult personality emerges from three innate temperament dimensions, namely negative affectivity, positive affectivity, and (dis)inhibition, and that it shares these genetic diatheses with psychopathology. Thus, three constitutional temperament dimensions are assumed to be the shared factors underlying both personality and psychopathology. Since genetic factors account for roughly half of the observed variance in temperament and personality traits (Asendorpf, 2001; Clark, 2005), intergenerational transmission of temperament is likely to occur.

When studying intergenerational transmission, several considerations are of importance. Intergenerational research is methodologically complex because, ideally, parents and children should be assessed at the same age, using the same instruments. However, since temperament research is a rapidly progressing field of inquiry, few theories or measurement instruments hold for more than 25 years. Still, such a long time span is necessary for offspring

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to reach the same age as when parents were assessed (Cohen et al., 1998). In our study parents and children were assessed at different ages, since temperament researchers have developed instruments to assess the concept of temperament across the life course (Rothbart, 2001). To reduce biasing effects that may occur when applying different measures (Chassin, Presson, Todd, Rose, & Sherman, 1998), we used instruments stemming from a common theoretical perspective; Rothbart’s (2004) psychobiological view on temperament as constitutionally based individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation. Furthermore, the majority of studies on intergenerational transmission have focused on mothers and only one child per family. However, the assumption often held in developmental inquiries, that what counts for one child, counts for every child in a family, has proven to be an erroneous one (Deal, Halverson, & Wampler, 1994). Although siblings share many environmental influences, they grow up to be very different people (Plomin, Asbury, & Dunn, 2001). We therefore included two siblings per family in the current study, and assessed them at the same age. Hence, differential intergenerational transmission for the youngest and the eldest child could not be attributed to age differences of the siblings.

In addition to contributing directly and indirectly to child temperament through caretaking and being part of the family context, parents also contribute to child temperament by transmitting their genes (Phares & Compas, 1992; Rutter, 1998). Therefore, it is important to include both parents when investigating intergenerational transmission of temperament. Also, taking into account the level of assortative mating for the trait under investigation is of great importance (Rutter, 1998). A high level of assortative mating can create a more homogeneous environment for the child, for instance, when both parents are extraverts. Assortative mating in temperament can thus increase the possibility that parents pass on similar genes to their children. These processes can cause children to resemble their parents more than without assortative mating for temperament. Including both mothers and fathers in this intergenerational study enabled us to determine the extent of assortative mating for temperament and to take this into account when assessing parent-child resemblance.

Studies investigating the level of assortative mating for temperament or personality have yielded contradicting results (Blum & Mehrabian, 1999; Dubuis Stadelmann, Fenton, Ferrero, & Preisig, 2001; Glicksohn & Golan, 2001; Watson et al., 2004), but most studies report moderate positive assortment. Moderate assortative mating has been found for psychopathology as well (Maes et al., 1998; Quinton, Pickles, Maughan, & Rutter, 1993). These results substantiate the inclusion of assortative mating in the current study. A simultaneous test of intergenerational transmission and assortative mating has, to our knowledge, never been performed. Structural equation modeling offers the possibility to test multiple links between maternal, paternal, and child temperament simultaneously in one model, while controlling for assortative mating.

In general, child temperament measures are taken from maternal reports (Mangelsdorf, Schoppe, & Buur, 2000). The main criticism on this practice is the possibility of perceptual biases in the informant (Kagan, 1998). Since observational measures also have limitations (for a review, see Rothbart & Bates, 1998), a combination of the two methods of assessment is recommended. Therefore, we combined paternal ratings, maternal ratings and observations into a robust measure of child temperament, to reduce rater bias. Since self-reports are widely

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accepted as a means of investigating adult personality, we used a self-report measure to assess adult temperament. We focused on the three broadband temperament factors of effortful control, extraversion, and negative affect, because they represent the three innate factors of temperament that are related to personality and psychopathology (Clark, 2005; Mervielde et al., 2005).

Our discussion of previous empirical research is organized around the three temperament factors effortful control, extraversion, and negative affect. None of the studies addressing intergenerational transmission included siblings or differentiated between the siblings that were assessed. Bratko and Marušić (1997), who studied conscientiousness, and Weber, Levitt, and Clark (1986), who studied attention, a component of effortful control, found low parent-child resemblance. When both mothers and fathers are investigated, inconsistent findings have emerged; Bratko and Marušić (1997) only found father-child resemblance, whereas Cohen et al. (1998) found no resemblance of persistence for either of the parents. Because effortful control is a broader construct than the constructs investigated in these studies, and because of the assumed constitutional basis of temperament, we still hypothesized to find some evidence for the intergenerational transmission of effortful control.

Parent-child resemblance for extraversion has often been found (Cohen et al., 1998; Field, Vega-Lahr, Scafidi, & Goldstein, 1987; Kochanska, Friesenborg, Lange, & Martel, 2004; Plomin, Coon, Carey, DeFries, & Fulker, 1991; Weber et al., 1986). However, findings on mother-child versus father-child resemblance have been mixed. Kochanska et al. (2004) reported modest correlations between maternal personality and child temperament, but no convergence between paternal personality and child temperament. These opposing results were attributed to differences in level of involvement with the child. Cohen et al. (1998) and Plomin et al. (1991) found no difference in parent-child resemblance for both mothers and fathers. In general, parent-child resemblance has been found to be stronger for extraversion than for effortful control. Consequently, we expected to find a higher level of intergenerational transmission for extraversion than for effortful control.

Negative affect is a well documented temperament factor and intergenerational transmission of negative affect has been demonstrated for mothers and children (Bratko & Marušić, 1997; Carmichael & McGue, 1994; Cohen et al., 1998; Daniels, Plomin, & Greenhalgh, 1984; Field et al., 1987; Plomin et al., 1991; Weber et al., 1986). Although fathers have been examined less often than mothers, three studies that did include fathers (Bratko & Marušić, 1997; Daniels et al., 1984; Plomin et al., 1991) found no association between paternal and child negative affect. In a study assessing parents and children at the same developmental stage, no evidence was found of increased resemblance (Carmichael & McGue, 1994). Thus, we expected the highest level of intergenerational transmission for negative affect, and we hypothesized the intergenerational transmission for negative affect to be stronger for mothers than for fathers.

In conclusion, considering the assumed constitutional base of temperament, we expected to find intergenerational transmission of effortful control, extraversion, and negative affect, using robust measures of child temperament consisting of both laboratory measures and parental questionnaires. We hypothesized to find intergenerational transmission of extraversion for both parents. For effortful control we expected to find intergenerational

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transmission, but this association might be stronger for fathers than for mothers. For negative affect we predicted child temperament to be more strongly associated to maternal temperament than to paternal temperament. We also expected a higher level of intergenerational transmission for negative affect than for effortful control and extraversion. In accordance with previous studies on assortative mating in temperament, we hypothesized to find a low positive relation between maternal and paternal effortful control and negative affect, but not extraversion. We included two siblings per family and assessed them at the same age, in order to rule out age effects on intergenerational transmission. Because of the lack of previous research on siblings, we refrained from hypothesizing about sibling differences in the intergenerational transmission of temperament. 2.2 Method 2.2.1 Participants

The sample was drawn from the municipal health register of Amsterdam and

surroundings. Families (N = 94) with two children between the ages of two and four years were asked to participate in a longitudinal study consisting of four waves of data collection. Parents were Caucasian and primarily highly educated. The present inquiry consisted of the second and fourth wave of data collection of the study, in which 65 families still participated. Attrition was mostly due to migration to other Dutch cities. The fourth wave of data collection was designed to take place when the youngest child had reached the same age his or her older sibling had at the second wave of data collection (i.e., approximately two years earlier). Hence, children’s temperament was assessed when they were of the same age. Mean age of the eldest children (27 girls, 38 boys) was 4.9 years (M = 58.95 months, SD = 3.97). The youngest children (31 girls, 34 boys) were 5.0 years old (M = 60.34 months, SD = 4.22). Mother’s average age was 39.8 years (SD = 3.82), the fathers were 42.5 years old on average (SD = 5.19). 2.2.2 Procedure

The children participated in two laboratory visits per wave of data collection, once

with the mother and once with the father, which were one or two weeks apart. At these visits a set of episodes from the Preschool Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB; Goldsmith, Reilly, Lemery, Longley, & Prescott, 1995) was administered to each child separately, by mostly female experimenters. Mothers and fathers were asked to independently complete the Dutch version (Majdandžić & van den Boom, in press) of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart et al., 2001) for both of their children and to rate their own temperament on the Dutch version (also translated by the authors) of the Adult Temperament Questionnaire (ATQ; Rothbart et al., 2000) at the fourth wave of data collection. They filled out these questionnaires at home.

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2.2.3 Instruments Lab-TAB The Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB; Goldsmith et al., 1995) is a standardized instrument for laboratory observation of temperament, including episodes measuring fearfulness, distress (anger/sadness), joy/pleasure, and interest/persistence. Based upon the original Lab-TAB, but slightly adjusted to avoid recognition effects (Majdandžić & van den Boom, in press), 13 (Time 2) or 14 (Time 4) episodes were administered to the children. These episodes were divided into two sets. Because the data for this investigation stemmed from different waves of data collection, the eldest and youngest children did slightly different tasks. However, these tasks were designed to elicit the same emotional response.

The dimension joy/pleasure was measured with three episodes: Popping Bubbles, Throwing Game (youngest child only) and Suprise Parent. In Popping Bubbles, the experimenter asked the child to pop the bubbles with his/her elbows, feet, and hands. In Throwing Game, the experimenter and child were competing in throwing six rings around a moving toy seal. The experimenter let the child win. Surprise Parent consisted of suprising the child with a pop-up mouse (Time 2) or doll with its brains popping out (Time 4), and then asking the child to surprise his or her parent with it.

Fear was measured with three episodes: Jumping Animal, Stranger Approach and Scary Mask. In Jumping Animal, the child was asked to pet a toy snake (Time 2) or spider (Time 4) which the experimenter moved as the child touched the animal. During Stranger Approach, the child was left alone in the assessment room, and a male research accomplice entered the room. He talked to the child and asked for a book (Time 2) or was dressed up as a window cleaner and asked for a sponge (Time 4). In Scary Mask, a female research accomplice entered the room and talked to the child, put on a mask of a tiger (T2) or a lion (T4) and asked the child to touch the mask and to put it on.

Sadness/disappointment and anger/frustration were both elicited in two disappointing episodes and three frustrating episodes. The two disappointing episodes were: Empty Present and No Present Left. In the first episode the child searched for a present in a surprise box (Time 2) or in four tins (Time 4), which were empty. In No Present Left the child was shown a small present, but the experimenter left the room and returned with a broken present, and told the child there were no presents left. After both episodes, the child received a (promised) present.

The three frustrating episodes to measure sadness and anger were Drawing Figures, Unreachable Toy and Toy Removal. In Drawing Figures, the experimenter asked the child to draw squares and subsequently criticized all squares mildly. The child was encouraged to keep drawing for 3.5 minutes. In Unreachable Toy an attractive toy was placed into a bottle (Time 2) or safe (Time 4) and the child was left alone and invited to get the toy out of it. However, it was impossible to get the toy out. In Toy Removal, the parent took away a game from the child (tumbling game at Time 2, pinball game at Time 4) while saying he or she did not want to play anymore. After 1 minute he or she returned the toy to the child.

Interest/persistence was measured with Exploring Object, Bead Sorting and Slides. In the first episode the child was invited to play with a salad spinner (Time 2) or orange juicer

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(Time 4) and left alone in the room for three minutes. During Bead Sorting, the child was asked to sort beads of different colors on sticks (Time 2) or on a little pegboard (Time 4) and was left alone for three minutes. In Slides, pictures of animals, plants, humans and buildings were presented to the child on a computer monitor, with varying durations (7 s, 9 s, 11 s, 13 s, 15 s: three trials; 15 slides in total). CBQ

The Children’s Behavior Questionnaire consists of 195 items scored on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “extremely untrue of your child” to “extremely true of your child”. Each item is a description of an everyday situation. A “not applicable” category can be chosen if parents never saw their child in the situation described. The 195 items of the questionnaire are grouped into 15 scales. Subsequent analyses were performed on the three temperament factors negative affect, extraversion, and effortful control, found by Rothbart et al. (2001) through factor analysis on the 15 scales. We formed the three factors by averaging corresponding scales. Negative affect consisted of the scales: anger, discomfort, fear, sadness, and the reversed items of soothability. Extraversion was composed of activity level, high intensity pleasure, impulsivity, and the reversed items of shyness. Attentional focusing, inhibitory control, low intensity pleasure, perceptual sensitivity, and smiling and laughter constituted the factor effortful control. The scale positive anticipation was omitted, because it loaded highly on all three factors. Internal consistency estimates based on coefficient α’s for the factors obtained from maternal and paternal ratings of the eldest and the youngest child ranged from .85 to .95. Univariate outliers were absent. Skewness and kurtosis were not significant.

ATQ

The ATQ consists of 77 items, also in a 7-point Likert-scale format. The items are grouped into the 13 scales, fear, sadness, discomfort, frustration, inhibitory control, activation control, attentional control, sociability, high intensity pleasure, positive affect, neutral perceptual sensitivity, affective perceptual sensitivity, and associative sensitivity. In a factor analysis, Rothbart et al. (2000) obtained 4 factors which were labeled negative affect (fear, sadness, discomfort, and frustration), effortful control (inhibitory control, activation control, and attentional control), extraversion (sociability, high intensity pleasure, and positive affect) and orienting sensitivity. In the current study, factors were created by averaging the scales. The last factor was not used, because it has no counterpart in the CBQ. Two items (“when I see an attractive item in a store, it’s usually very hard for me to resist buying it” and “I would not enjoy the feeling that comes from yelling as loud as I can”, respectively) were deleted because of negative item-total correlations. The first one belonged to the factor effortful control and the second one to extraversion. Internal consistency estimates based on coefficient α’s for the factors of the ATQ ranged from .72 to .85. Skewness and kurtosis were not significant. One univariate outlier (on negative affect) was removed from subsequent analyses.

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2.2.4 Measures Coding of the Lab-TAB Coding was done according to Lab-TAB guidelines. Episodes were divided into ‘epochs’ that lasted 10 or 20 seconds, or as long as a particular event lasted (e.g., the dialogue in Stranger Approach). Coded variables were peak-intensities of facial, bodily, and verbal expressions of the target emotion within an epoch, and other relevant behaviors. In exuberance, fear, and interest episodes, latency to first response was also coded, and in interest episodes, durations were recorded as well. Episodes that were terminated because of distress were coded as if the episode was completed and the distress continued. Nineteen coders were trained to score one or two dimensions. Training consisted of studying a coded videotape of three children per episode with low, average, and high levels of emotional response, and after that the coding of ten pilot children. The first and third author also coded 21% of the tapes in order to obtain interobserver reliability estimates, using Cohen’s kappa of the raw scores per epoch. Mean Cohen’s kappa per episode ranged from .71 to .81 for the eldest children, and from .79 to .90 for the youngest. Reliability of latencies was calculated within 2 seconds of difference, and ranged from 74 to 92% for the eldest, and from 67 to 100% for the youngest. Aggregation of the Lab-TAB All coded variables were averaged across epochs. Because of non-normal distributions, latencies of exuberance and fear episodes were transformed using the reverse of the square root. Latencies of interest episodes were rescaled by division by episode duration. The mean variables and transformed latencies were standardized and averaged to create episode summary scores. Popping Bubbles, Throwing Game, and Surprise Parent were averaged to create the extraversion factor. Negative affect consisted of Jumping Animal, Stranger Approach, Scary Mask, Empty Present, No Present Left, Drawing Figures, Unreachable Toy, and Toy Removal. The effortful control factor was composed of Exploring Object, Bead Sorting, and Slides. Internal consistency estimates based on coefficient α’s for the factor scores of the youngest and the eldest child ranged from .22 to .61. Thus, the episodes seemed to elicit somewhat different emotional responses. Because temperament is not supposed to be equally well revealed in all contexts (Rothbart & Bates, 1998), we assumed that different episodes are needed to adequately capture this complex trait. Therefore, we combined the different episodes into one measure of temperament, in spite of their low convergence. Skewness and kurtosis of the factors were not significant. Aggregation of Lab-TAB and CBQ Factor scores derived from observations and from paternal and maternal ratings of the children were standardized and averaged. If only one factor score was available, the case received a missing value. The final temperament measure of the children was thus composed of behavior displayed in two or three different contexts, which contributed equally. Systematic differences in child behavior across interactions with mothers and fathers

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(Mangelsdorf et al., 2000) endorse the view that maternal and paternal ratings are contextually different. 2.2.5 Data Analysis

Structural equation modeling (SEM) offers the possibility to test the links between

maternal, paternal, and child temperament simultaneously in one model. We chose to test a pathmodel instead of a latent variable model, since our main focus was on intergenerational transmission and not on the convergence of observations and paternal ratings. Furthermore, given our sample size, simple models are preferable. In this model we tested the links between maternal, paternal, and child temperament, while also investigating assortative mating of temperament (see Figure 2.1). The AMOS 4.0 program (Arbuckle & Wothke, 1999) was used to specify the model. Non-significant paths were omitted for reasons of parsimony.

Temperament mother

Temperament youngest

Temperament father

Temperament eldest

Figure 2.1. Basic model of intergenerational transmission of temperament 2.3 Results

The results of the correlational analyses are presented first. Next, we describe the

results of the SEM models. The three temperament factors effortful control, extraversion, and negative affect were tested in separate models. Relations between Parental and Child Temperament

In Table 2.1, correlations between parental and child temperament are presented. Paternal effortful control was associated with effortful control of the youngest child. None of the correlations between parental and child extraversion reached significance. For negative affect however, all associations but one were significant. Maternal negative affect was correlated with negative affect of both the youngest and the eldest child, and paternal negative affect with negative affect of the eldest. Correlations between maternal and paternal effortful control, extraversion, and negative affect were not significant.

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Table 2.1 Correlations between Parental and Child Temperament Temperament factor Eldest Youngest Effortful control

Mother .15 a .13 b

Father .05 c .28 * d

Extraversion Mother .16 e .13 b

Father .13 f .10 d

Negative affect Mother .29 * e .44 ** b

Father .30 * g .14 c

Note. an = 58. bn = 62. cn = 55. dn = 57. en = 59. fn = 56. gn = 54. * p < .05. ** p < .01. SEM Models of Intergenerational Transmission of Temperament

The next step was to examine the SEM models (i.e., the associations between the observed variables simultaneously) and to test which paths could be omitted from the models. For effortful control, the final model (χ2 (5, N = 65) = 8.92, p = .11; TLI = .98, CFI = .99, RMSEA = .11, 95% CI = 0 - .23) contained one structural path (standardized β = .28) from paternal effortful control to effortful control of the youngest child. This path explained 8% of the variance in child effortful control. No assortative mating in effortful control was found. For extraversion, none of the structural paths reached significance. Therefore, the final model (χ2 (6, N = 65) = 5.90, p = .43; TLI = 1, CFI = 1, RMSEA = 0, 95% CI = 0 - .16) contained no structural paths. Thus, no intergenerational transmission or assortative mating for extraversion could be detected in this study. The negative affect model that fitted the data best is presented in Figure 2.2. Maternal negative affect was related to negative affect of both the eldest and the youngest child. Especially the association with the youngest child was quite strong (standardized β = .44). Paternal negative affect was related to negative affect of the eldest child. Maternal and paternal negative affect explained 12% of the variance in negative affect of the eldest child, and 19% of the variance in negative affect of the youngest was explained by maternal negative affect. Maternal and paternal negative affect were not correlated.

2.4 Discussion

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the intergenerational

transmission of temperament. The relations between child temperament, consisting of parental reports and observations, and maternal and paternal self-reported temperament were tested in one model. The three temperament factors of effortful control, extraversion, and negative affect were investigated. After interpreting the results we will address possible consequences of our findings for future temperament research and developmental psychopathology.

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.44

.24

.25 Negative affect eldest

Negative affect father

Negative affect youngest

Negative affect mother

Figure 2.2. Final SEM model of negative affect Fit measures: χ2 (3, N = 65) = 5.09, p = .17 ; TLI = .98 ; CFI = 1 ; RMSEA = .10 ; 95% CI = 0 - .26.

Despite the fact that clear evidence for genetic influence on temperamental traits has been found in behavioral genetic studies (Asendorpf, 2001; Saudino, 2005), we found little evidence for the intergenerational transmission of the two temperament factors extraversion and effortful control. This may be due to the inextricable influence of environmental factors, causing relatives to differ on complex heritable traits, and to gene-environment interactions. According to temperament researchers, temperament and its elicitors, expressions, and correlates are influenced by maturity and experience. Parental temperament is exposed to these influences longer than the temperament of their children. Thus, though child temperament is assumed to be the basis of adult temperament (Clark, 2005), it may be so in truncated form (MacDonald, 1998). Alternatively, the dynamic nature of genes, which changes the quantity and quality of their effects (Saudino, 2005), may cause parents and children to be different, even on a genetically influenced trait like temperament. Unfortunately, gene and environment contributions could not be disentangled in the present study, because of the use of non-twin siblings. Alternatively, our results might be due to the assessment of parents and offspring in different developmental stages, although Carmichael and McGue (1994) found no increase in intergenerational transmission when offspring was assessed in adolescence. Since the children in the present study were only five years old at the time of assessment, it would be interesting to reassess our subjects at the same age as their parents, to examine whether resemblance in temperament would increase.

Despite the absence of intergenerational transmission found for effortful control between maternal and child temperament, we did find a significant path between effortful control of the youngest child and the father. An interaction between paternal characteristics and birth order effects is a possible source of this difference between mothers and fathers. Although such an interaction has rarely been investigated in relation to child behavior, one could argue that fathers are inclined to create a different environment for their child than mothers do. Fathers engage in more reading and television viewing with their children compared to mothers (Parke, 2002). A speculative explanation would be that since these situations require effortful control skills from the child, effortful control is developed more in proximity of the father than the mother, causing children to resemble their fathers more on this aspect of temperament. Why this effect is stronger for the youngest child awaits further investigation.

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As expected, we did find intergenerational transmission for negative affect. In accordance with these findings, Masi et al. (2003) found that relatives of adolescents suffering from anxiety and/or depression are high on emotionality, but not on activity and sociability. This result can be caused by intergenerational transmission of negative affect. Other studies also reported more resemblance between parents and children for negative affect (or similar constructs such as emotionality and neuroticism) than for extraversion (Ahern et al., 1982; Stevenson & Fielding, 1985). The higher transmission of maternal negative affect than paternal affect may be accounted for by differences in childrearing between mothers and fathers. In general, mothers are more involved in socializing negative emotions than fathers (Bayrakdar Garside & Klimes-Dougan, 2002). Children’s emotional responses may thus be primarily shaped in interactions with their mother. Also, women express more negative emotions (Brody & Hall, 2000), which the child may imitate. Furthermore, mothers talk more about emotions with their children than fathers do (Fivush, Brotman, Buckner, & Goodman, 2000). If parent-child interaction is seen as a co-evolving system, a passive genotype-environment interaction might be the mechanism of transmission (MacDonald, 1998). Perhaps children are genetically inclined to learn more from their mother’s (as opposed to their father’s) socializing behavior regarding negative emotionality, which the mother is genetically inclined to provide (MacDonald, 1998). This may cause children to resemble their mothers more than they resemble their fathers on negative affect.

We did not find any support for assortative mating in temperament. In light of the contradicting findings of previous studies among married couples, this is not suprising. The distinction between consensual and idiosyncratic mate prefences (Watson et al., 2004) can be helpful in understanding this lack of assortative mating in temperament. Everybody prefers a smart, agreeable partner, but not everyone wants a conservative mate. The first preferences are consensual, and therefore less strong than the latter, idiosyncratic, one. In temperament, preferences might be consensual, as has been found in personality research (Buss & Barnes, 1986; Watson et al., 2004), causing assortative mating for these traits to be low. Watson et al. (2004) indeed found strong similarity among couples in religiousness and political orientation, moderate similarity in education, modest similarity in values, and little similarity in personality.

The current study has several strengths. It is the first to assess parental and child temperament with measures stemming from the same conceptual basis. Also, child temperament was assessed using observational measures as well as parent reports. Furthermore, two children and two parents per family were assessed at the same age. Limitations of our study include the limited sample size, which imposes restrictions on the power to detect differences between correlations, a point also stressed by Rutter (1998) with regard to intergenerational research. Yet, the models we tested were simple and contained only few parameters, which is recommended with a limited sample size (MacCallum & Austin, 2000). Furthermore, when using observations as elaborative as the Lab-TAB, it is difficult to assess a large amount of families longitudinally. The high educational level in our sample is another limitation. Our relative weak findings might be caused by our homogeneous sample, and replication of these findings in a more heterogeneous sample is therefore needed. Furthermore, testing bi-directional effects of parental and child temperament is an interesting

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next step in this line of inquiry. Our finding of the highest intergenerational transmission for negative affect is

important for research on the life-span implications of temperament (Nigg, 2006). Negative affect is regarded as a precursor of the personality factor of neuroticism (Caspi et al., 2005), and is associated with a broad range of disorders (Clark, 2005), including both internalizing and externalizing psychiatric disorders (Caspi et al., 2005). In future inquiries the search for causes of child psychopathology should also focus on parental negative affect as a contributing factor. Our findings have implications for clinical practice with regard to the focus of prevention or intervention programs. Child-directed programs aimed at redressing negative emotionality may be expected to be less effective, because of the fact that parents also high in negative emotions may counteract the beneficial program effects. When specifically addressing temperamental negative affect, parents should be involved in training both their own and their child’s way of dealing with negative emotions. In contrast, when addressing the child’s attention regulation, or effortful control, parental treatment seems not necessary, but parents can be instructed to encourage the child and are able to function as a well-regulated model. Hence, intergenerational research on temperament is a promising road to determine how parents should be involved effectively in intervention programs aimed at reducing children’s vulnerability to develop psychological problems.

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Chapter 3 Parental and Child Negative Affect, Effortful Control, and Extraversion in

Relation to Internalizing and Externalizing Child Behavior Problems: Direct Effects and Family Resemblance

Chapter 3: Parental and Child Negative Affect, Effortful Control, and Extraversion in Relation to Internalizing and Externalizing Child Behavior Problems: Direct Effects and Family Resemblance Heesbeen, D. G. M., Majdandžić, M., & van den Boom, D. C.

(submitted for publication)

Although child temperament has been examined repeatedly as a predictor of behavior problems, other family member’s temperament has received relatively little attention. Child, sibling, and parental temperament and temperament profile resemblance were related to internalizing and externalizing problem behavior. Two four- to six-year-old children per family (N = 69) and their parents were assessed using both questionnaires and observational measures. The Child Behavior Checklist was administered to measure child behavior problems. Temperamental resemblance was operationalized using a couple-centred approach. Internalizing problem behavior was related to children’s own negative affect, effortful control, and extraversion. Externalizing problem behavior was related to both child and paternal effortful control and extraversion. Parents with more similar temperament profiles had children with less internalizing problem behavior. Not only child temperament, but also parental temperament and the resemblance of parental temperament profiles are important predictors of behavior problems. Therefore, the inclusion of family members in studies concerning the development of behavior problems seems warranted, both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view.

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3.1 Introduction Temperamental differences are related to child development in general, and to the

development of behavior problems in particular. Although child temperament has been examined repeatedly as a predictor of behavior problems (e.g., Caspi et al., 1995; Eisenberg et al., 2001; Guerin, Gottfried, & Thomas, 1997), studies including parental temperament as a predictor are rare. Nevertheless, parents are part of the proximal processes that function as the engines of development (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000). In addition to affecting the context in which the child develops, as sibling temperament does, parental temperament also contributes to the development of behavior problems through intergenerational transmission. For negative affect, a temperamental component that has been found to relate to behavior problems (Kochanska, Clark, & Goldman, 1997), intergenerational transmission has been shown to be especially profound (Heesbeen, van den Boom, & Majdandžić, 2006). Hence, parental temperament should be incorporated in research concerning the precursors of behavior problems. In this study, parental and sibling temperament as well as the resemblance between family members were investigated in relation to externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. A couple-centred approach was used to operationalize family resemblance.

A clear empirical relation between temperament and externalizing (i.e., delinquent, aggressive behavior) and internalizing behavior problems (i.e., withdrawn, anxious/depressed behavior, somatic complaints) has been demonstrated over the past 15 years, both concurrently and predictively (Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Organized around the temperament factors negative affect, effortful control, and extraversion (e.g., Rothbart, 2001) studies on child temperament and behavior problems will be passed in review first. The temperamental concept of difficultness, mainly reflective of negative emotionality (Bates, 1989), has been shown to be related to externalizing behavior problems (Guerin et al., 1997; Olson, Bates, Sandy, & Lanthier, 2000). Children high in anger, fearfulness, and sadness were more likely to belong to a status group with externalizing or internalizing problems than children low on these temperament scales (Eisenberg et al., 2001; Eisenberg et al., 2005). Hence, negative affect is related to both types of problem behavior (Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Sanson et al., 2004). Therefore, we expected child negative affect to be positively associated with both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems.

Studies focusing on effortful control demonstrated that children with lower levels of control were higher on externalizing behavior problems (e.g., Kochanska & Knaack, 2003; Murray & Kochanska, 2002). For internalizing problems the opposite holds; high levels of control or inhibition are associated with more internalizing problem behavior (Colder & O'Connor, 2004; Putnam & Stifter, 2005). Eisenberg and colleagues (2001; 2005) found that children with externalizing problems were lower on control and higher in impulsivity. In sum, we expected effortful control to be negatively associated with externalizing behavior problems, and positively related to internalizing behavior problems.

The temperament factor extraversion is less well examined in relation to behavior problems. Nevertheless, Rothbart and Bates (1998) and Sanson and colleagues (2004) reported that impulsive, highly active children were more prone to externalizing behavior, whereas shy children were less prone to externalizing, and more prone to internalizing behavior problems. Therefore, the temperament factor extraversion was hypothesized to be

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mainly related to externalizing problem behavior. Although children’s temperament is often examined as a predictor of behavior problems, parental temperament is not. In empirical research that did focus on maternal and paternal temperament, negative emotionality was found to be positively related to children’s problem behavior (Cumberland-Li, Eisenberg, Champion, Gershoff, & Fabes, 2003). Conversely, both maternal and paternal regulation were negatively associated with problem behavior. However, when child adjustment was rated by teachers none of the relations found remained significant. In a study by Kochanska et al. (1997) maternal negative emotionality was found to be associated with behavior problems. Constraint was negatively related to behavioral problems and disagreeableness positively, but very modestly. The abovementioned studies examined parental temperament and its influence on child behavior problems, but without controlling for child temperament. Therefore, the relations found could have been mediated by child temperament. Eisenberg and colleagues (2001) conducted one of the few studies that included maternal as well as child temperament as predictors of behavior problems. Mothers scoring high on positive affect and low on negative affect had children high in regulation, and these children in turn scored low on internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. In line with these results, we expected parental negative affect to be positively associated with child behavior problems, and parental effortful control negatively.

The aforementioned studies on parental and child temperament and their role in the development of behavior problems have focused on specific temperament dimensions or a specific type of problem behavior. Our aim was to study temperament and behavior problems as broad, complex traits. Therefore, the whole temperamental range (namely the three factors negative affect, effortful control, and extraversion) and both externalizing and internalizing problem behavior were included in this inquiry. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used, because it offers the possibility to test the links between maternal, paternal, child temperament, and behavior problems simultaneously in one model. Although parents or caregivers are the most consulted sources of information on child temperament because of their extensive knowledge base of their child’s behavior, more objective measures of child temperament can control for possible perceptual biases (Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Modest convergence between parental reports and laboratory assessments has been found (e.g., Majdandžić & van den Boom, in press), showing that these temperament measures tap different aspects of child behavior. To create a robust measure of child temperament and because of existing advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches, we combined parent reports and laboratory observations of child temperament. Furthermore, we included both mothers and fathers in this study instead of focusing on maternal temperament alone, as is done predominantly. Although siblings are also part of the family environment, sibling temperament has to our knowledge not been included in research addressing the predictors of child behavior problems, but has been used as a predictor of sibling relationship quality instead (e.g., Brody, Stoneman, & Gauger, 1996). Thus, by including both parents and two siblings, a full family design was employed.

The interplay between child and parental characteristics in the development of behavior problems has been referred to in the literature on goodness of fit, where individual differences are viewed as system properties that moderate the adaptation of the parent-child relationship (Chess & Thomas, 1991; Seifer, 2000). For instance, mothers high in negative

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affect could exacerbate fearful behavior in their children, which in turn could contribute to the development of internalizing problem behavior. Because these models have remained mostly theoretical and little is known about the empirical relation between parent-child resemblance and the development of problem behavior (for a notable exception, see van Tuijl et al., 2005), both parent-child and sibling resemblance on temperament were included in the present study. Resemblance between family members was operationalized using a couple-centred approach, as is done in research on assortative mating in married couples (Luo & Klohnen, 2005). This results in a measure of similarity existing of a temperament profile comparison per couple, in contrast to a variable-centred approach that only provides information on a single characteristic for the whole group of participants. In the current study parent-child and sibling similarity was assessed in terms of the correlation between their profiles consisting of a number of temperament dimensions. This correlation per couple was then related to child behavior problems. Briefly, couple-centred measures do not have the disadvantages of more conventional similarity measures, such as absolute difference scores that are difficult to interpret and confounded by their component scores in the case of unequal variances, and interaction terms, which do not necessarily reflect similarity (Luo & Klohnen, 2005).

In summary, considering the vast amount of empirical support for the relation between child temperament and behavior problems, both effortful control and negative affect were expected to be associated with problem behavior. Effortful control was hypothesized to have a negative relation with externalizing problem behavior and a positive relation with internalizing problem behavior; negative affect to be positively related to both types of problem behavior; and extraversion to externalizing problem behavior. For parental temperament, we expected to find a negative association between effortful control and child behavior problems and a positive association for negative affect and behavior problems. We expected interparental, parent-child, and intersibling resemblance to be associated with behavior problems, but refrained from hypothesizing about the nature of this association, since the use of a couple-centred measure is unprecedented in temperament research. For the same reason, no relations between sibling temperament and child behavior problems were specified. 3.2 Method 3.2.1 Participants

The sample was drawn from the municipal health register of the city of Amsterdam and surroundings. All families with two children in the age of two and four years were asked to participate in a longitudinal study, consisting of four waves of data collection. Participants were Caucasian, highly educated parents (N = 94). The present study consisted of the third and fourth wave of data collection of the study, in which 69 families still participated. Mean age of the eldest children (28 girls, 41 boys) was 6.1 years (M = 72.84 months, SD = 6.21), the youngest children (32 girls, 37 boys) were 4.4 years old (M = 52.50 months, SD = 3.89). Mother’s average age was 39.8 years (SD = 3.82), the fathers were 42.5 years old on average (SD = 5.19).

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3.2.2 Procedure

The children visited our laboratory once with their mothers and once with their fathers. At these visits, which were approximately two weeks apart, the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB; Goldsmith et al., 1995) was administered. Mothers and fathers were asked to independently complete the Dutch translations of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart et al., 2001; Majdandžić & van den Boom, in press) and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991; Verhulst, van der Ende, & Koot, 1996) for both of their children at home. They also filled out the Adult Temperament Questionnaire (ATQ; Rothbart et al., 2000, also translated by the second and third author). Lab-TAB, CBQ and CBCL data were gathered at the third wave of data collection, ATQ data at the fourth wave. 3.2.3 Instruments CBCL The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991) is designed to measure child behavior problems. It consists of 120 statements rated on a 3-point scale. These statements form an internalizing and an externalizing scale, which were used in this study. Lab-TAB The Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Goldsmith et al., 1995) was used to observe child temperament in a standardized setting. It includes episodes measuring fearfulness, distress (anger/sadness), joy/pleasure, and interest/persistence. During the first wave of data collection, the original Lab-TAB was administered. Different versions of the episodes were developed for the other waves (Majdandžić, van den Boom, & Heesbeen, 2006). CBQ

The Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart et al., 2001) consists of 195 items that describe everyday situations scored on a 7-point Likert scale. One item of the Fear scale (161; is not afraid of heights) was deleted, due to lack of reliability. Another item of the Shyness scale (45; acts very friendly and outgoing with new children) was deleted because of a translation problem. The 195 items of the questionnaire are grouped into 15 scales. Factor analysis of these scales resulted in three temperament factors negative affect, effortful control, and extraversion (Rothbart et al., 2001). In the current study, one scale (Positive Anticipation) was omitted because it loaded highly on all three factors. Analyses were performed on these three factors, which were formed by averaging the corresponding scales. Internal consistency estimates based on coefficient α’s for the factors ranged from .85 to .94 (M = .91). ATQ

The Adult Temperament Questionnaire (Rothbart et al., 2000) consists of 77 items, like the CBQ in a 7-point Likert-scale format. The items are grouped into 13 scales, which constitute four factors, labelled negative affect, effortful control, extraversion, and orienting

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sensitivity. Orienting sensitivity was not used in this investigation, because it has no counterpart in the CBQ or Lab-TAB. The two items numbered 63 (belonging to the factor effortful control) and 77 (belonging to the factor extraversion) were deleted because of negative item-total correlations. Internal consistency estimates based on coefficient α’s for the factors of the ATQ ranged from .72 to .85. Skewness and kurtosis were not significant. One univariate outlier (z > 3.29, on negative affect) was truncated (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). 3.2.4 Measures CBCL Scores Statements were summed into an internalizing and an externalizing score. Coefficient α’s of these scales were .76 and .87. Two univariate outliers, one on the internalizing scale and one on the externalizing scale, were truncated. The scales were not normally distributed; skewness (range .71 – 1.51) and kurtosis (range -.33 – 2.41) were significant. This was expected, since a non-clinical sample was tested, while this questionnaire is designed to measure psychopathology. However, since maximum likelihood estimation in SEM requires data to be normally distributed (Enders, 2001; Lei & Lomax, 2005), we normalized the CBCL data using the PRELIS procedure (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2002). This resulted in normally distributed scales (skewness: range .03 – .10 and kurtosis: range -.14 – -.29). Coding of the Lab-TAB

Coding proceeded according to Lab-TAB guidelines (Goldsmith et al., 1995). Episodes were divided into ‘epochs’ lasting 10 or 20 seconds, or as long as a particular event lasted. Coded variables were peak-intensities of facial, bodily, and verbal expressions of the target emotion within an epoch, latency to first response, and in some episodes durations. Training of the nine coders consisted of studying a coded videotape of three children per episode with low, average, and high levels of emotional response and the coding of ten pilot children, which was discussed. The first author coded 21% of the tapes to obtain interobserver reliability estimates. These were calculated on the lowest level of coding, using Cohen’s kappa, and ranged from .39 to 1.00 (M = .85, SD = .15) for the eldest child and from .50 to 1.00 (M = .87, SD = .11) for the youngest child. Reliability of latencies was calculated within 2 seconds of difference, and ranged from 29% to 100% (M = 86%, SD = .18). Aggregation of the Lab-TAB

All coded variables were averaged across epochs. Latencies of exuberance and fear episodes were transformed using the reverse of the square root, latencies of interest episodes were rescaled by division by episode duration. The mean variables and transformed latencies were standardized and averaged to create episode scores. Lastly, the episode scores were averaged into the factor scores for negative affect, effortful control, and extraversion. Internal consistency estimates for the factor scores based on episode scores of the eldest and the youngest child ranged from α = .15 to α = .80. Especially the interest episodes seemed to elicit different emotional responses. Because child temperament differs dependent on the context in which it is observed (Mangelsdorf et al., 2000), we assumed that contextually different episodes are needed to adequately measure it. Therefore, we combined the different

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episodes into one measure of temperament, despite their low convergence. Aggregation of Lab-TAB and CBQ Lab-TAB and paternal and maternal ratings of CBQ factor scores were standardized and averaged, provided that at least two of these measures were available. Final child temperament measures were therefore composed of behavior displayed in two or three different contexts. Skewness and kurtosis were not significant, and no univariate outliers were found. Measures of Resemblance The profile correlations were based on corresponding scales of the CBQ and the ATQ. After consulting the main author of the questionnaires, we matched 9 scales of the CBQ and ATQ: Anger (Frustration), Sadness, Fear, Discomfort, Attentional Focusing (Attentional Control), Inhibitory Control, High Intensity Pleasure, and Perceptual Sensitivity. CBQ Shyness was reversed to match the ATQ scale Sociability. After standardizing the parental and child scales, we transposed the datamatrix, and then calculated the profile correlation per couple. These correlations (ranging from -1.0 to 1.0) reflect the similarity of the temperament profiles, that is, the similarity between the couple’s rank order of the temperament scales. 3.2.5 Data Analysis

Correlations between the temperament measures and behavior problems were

examined before proceeding with SEM, which offers the possibility to test the links between maternal, paternal, and child temperament and behavior problems simultaneously. We chose to test a path model instead of a latent variable model because, given our sample size, simple models are preferable. The AMOS 4.0 program (Arbuckle & Wothke, 1999) was used to specify the model. First we tested a model in which al independent variables were correlated. Then we omitted the non-significant covariances, and investigated the structural paths between the temperament and externalizing or internalizing measures. Finally, non-significant structural paths were omitted for reasons of parsimony.

Raw data were analysed using the full information maximum likelihood function, to account for missing data. T-tests revealed no significant differences between cases with and without missing data on all variables. The percentage of missing values ranged from 4.3% to 14.5%. The obtained covariance matrix served as input for model testing. 3.3 Results Preliminary Analyses Gender differences were investigated using t-tests. Boys and girls did not differ significantly on both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and the temperament measures. Eldest children scored significantly higher on internalizing behavior problems than youngest children, t(66) = 2.04, p < .05. For temperament, no differences between eldest and youngest children were found. Within the groups of youngest and eldest children, age did not correlate significantly with temperament or behavior problems.

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Inspection of the correlations between temperamental profile resemblance and children’s internalizing and externalizing behavior revealed only two significant findings (see Table 3.1). Table 3.1 Correlations Between Profile Resemblance and Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Internalizing Externalizing N E Y E Y E Y Profile with father -.06 -.11 -.17 -.19 56 55 Profile with mother .06 .06 -.28* -.03 57 56 Profile with sibling -.17 -.00 -.14 -.12 65 65 Profile parents -.30* .00 -.25 -.21 55 55 Note. E = eldest child. Y = youngest child. * p < .05. Profile resemblance of the parents was negatively associated with internalizing behavior problems of the eldest children. Profile resemblance of mothers and the eldest children correlated negatively with externalizing problem behavior of the eldest children. More similar temperament profiles between family members were thus associated with less behavior problems.

Correlations between maternal, paternal, and child temperament and internalizing and externalizing behavior are shown in Table 3.2. Internalizing problem behavior was mainly associated with negative affect. Maternal and sibling negative affect, as well as children’s own negative affect were positively correlated with internalizing behavior. Furthermore, effortful control of the eldest child was negatively correlated with his or her own internalizing behavior, and extraversion of the youngest child correlated negatively with his or her internalizing behavior. Externalizing problem behavior was also primarily associated with negative affect. Paternal and sibling negative affect, as well as children’s own negative affect, were positively related to externalizing behavior. In addition, paternal effortful control and effortful control of the eldest were negatively associated with externalizing behavior. For extraversion, the only association found was between extraversion of the eldest and his or her own externalizing behavior. SEM Models of Profile Resemblance and Behavior Problems The aforementioned relations between all family members’ profile resemblance and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems were tested simultaneously in path models. The models that fitted the observed data best yielded the same results as the correlational analyses (model fit: for internalizing behavior: χ2(25, N = 70) = 28.07, p = .31; TLI = .99, CFI = .99, RMSEA = .04, 95% CI = 0 - .11; for externalizing behavior: χ2(25, N = 70) = 32.01, p = .16; TLI = .97, CFI = .98, RMSEA = .06, 95% CI = .00 - .12). Thus, profile similarity of the parents explained 9% of the variance (standardized β = -.29) in internalizing behavior of the eldest, and profile similarity of the mother and the eldest child explained 7% of the variance (standardized β = -.27) in externalizing behavior.

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Table 3.2 Correlations Between Maternal, Paternal, and Child Temperament and Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems Internalizing Externalizing N E Y E Y Negative affect

Eldest .31* .23 .29* .20 65 Youngest .33** .29* .25* .37** 65

Mother .34** -.08 .18 .18 58 Father .14 .21 .34** .40** 57

Effortful control Eldest -.32** -.04 -.37** -.19 65 Youngest .22 .08 .10 -.16 65 Mother -.14 .03 -.12 -.18 58 Father -.04 -.18 -.39** -.30* 57 Extraversion Eldest -.21 .16 .35** .10 65 Youngest -.03 -.37** -.12 .16 65 Mother -.20 .08 -.08 -.03 58 Father -.16 -.18 -.08 -.03 57 Note. E = eldest child. Y = youngest child. * p < .05. ** p < .01. SEM Models of Temperament and Behavior Problems

The influence of paternal, maternal, and child negative affect, effortful control and extraversion on child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems was also tested using path models. Six models were tested, one for each temperament factor in combination with either internalizing or externalizing problem behavior.

The final model for negative affect and internalizing behavior problems did not fit the data well (χ2(11, N = 70) = 26.74, p = .01; TLI = .95, CFI = .97, RMSEA = .14, 95% CI = .08 - .21). Only one structural path reached significance, namely between negative affect of the mother and internalizing problem behavior of the eldest. Because of the poor fit of the model, we will not elaborate on this finding. In the final model of effortful control and internalizing problem behavior (χ2 (13, N = 70) = 14.64, p = .33 ; TLI = 1.00 ; CFI = 1.00 ; RMSEA = .04 ; 95% CI = .00 - .13), effortful control of the eldest contributed to his or her own internalizing problem behavior (standardized β = -.31), and explained 10% of the variance. Extraversion was also associated with internalizing problem behavior. Extraversion of the youngest and the eldest child were negatively correlated with their own internalizing problem behavior (χ2 (12, N = 70) = 10.95, p = .53 ; TLI = 1.00 ; CFI = 1.00 ; RMSEA = .00 ; 95% CI = .00 - .11). For the youngest child, 13% of the variance in internalizing problem behavior was explained (standardized β = -.36), and for the eldest, 7% of the variance (standardized β = -.26).

Externalizing problem behavior was associated with child and paternal negative affect (see Figure 3.1). These explained 17% of the variance in externalizing problem behavior of

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the youngest, and 13% of the variance in externalizing problem behavior of the eldest. Negative affect of the youngest and the eldest child were significantly correlated, and so were negative affect of the youngest child and the mother.

NA father

NA mother

.54

e

e

.24

NA eldest

.30

.29

.30

.33

.21

NA youngest

EXT eldest

EXT youngest

Figure 3.1. Final SEM model of negative affect (NA) and externalizing problem behavior (EXT). Path coefficients are standardized. Fit measures: χ2 (8, N = 70) = 13.23, p = .10 ; TLI = .98 ; CFI = .99 ; RMSEA = .10 ; 95% CI = .00 - .19. Effortful control of the child, father and sibling explained 27% of the variance in externalizing problem behavior of the eldest, and paternal effortful control explained 8% of the variance in externalizing problem behavior of the youngest child (see Figure 3.2). Except for the positive relation between effortful control of the youngest and externalizing behavior problems of the eldest, all β’s were negative, indicating that more effortful control was associated with less externalizing behavior problems. Lastly, extraversion of both children was positively associated with their own externalizing problem behavior (χ2 (12, N = 70) = 8.916, p = .71 ; TLI = 1.00 ; CFI = 1.00 ; RMSEA = .00 ; 95% CI = .00 - .09). Extraversion of the youngest explained 5% of the variance (standardized β = .23) in problem behavior and extraversion of the eldest explained 8% of the variance (standardized β = .28) in problem behavior. 3.4 Discussion

The relation between child, maternal, paternal, and sibling temperament and child

internalizing and externalizing behavior problems was addressed in this study. In addition, the influence of temperament profile resemblance was included. Children low in effortful control and extraversion seem to be at risk for developing internalizing behavior problems. Previous research focusing on inhibition (e.g., Putnam & Stifter, 2005) found results opposite to our finding concerning effortful control and internalizing behavior problems, perhaps because effortful control is a broader and more

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EC father

EC mother

EXT youngest

EXT eldest

.24

EC eldest -.22

-.29

-.40

e

e

.60

EC youngest Figure 3.2. Final SEM model of effortful control (EC) and externalizing problem behavior (EXT). Path coefficients are standardized. Fit measures: χ2 (10, N = 70) = 12.79, p = .24 ; TLI = .99 ; CFI = 1.00 ; RMSEA = .06 ; 95% CI = .00 - .15. positive concept than inhibition. Children higher in the ability to focus attention and to control their inhibition may be less anxious or depressed, because they can exert more control over their environment. The contribution of negative affect to internalizing problem behavior remains unclear.

Effortful control of the eldest, the youngest, and the father explained a large proportion of the variance in externalizing behavior problems of the eldest child. Especially striking was the positive relation with effortful control of the youngest. It has been demonstrated that siblings choose separate niches and create independent identities (Feinberg, McHale, Crouter, & Cumsille, 2003), so perhaps having a younger brother or sister who is good at controlling his or her behavior leads to more acting out behavior in the eldest. Birth order has been shown to influence reciprocity, as younger siblings imitate older siblings more often than the reverse, thus creating asymmetry in the relationship (Abramovitch, Corter, & Lando, 1979). Contrast effects, that is the tendency of parents to exaggerate differences between their children, may be at stake as well. Evidence of such effects has been found in temperament (Saudino, Wertz, Gagne, & Chawla, 2004) and for ADHD in twin research (Price et al., 2005). Perceiving the younger child as high in effortful control could lead parents to rate the eldest child as more impulsive or aggressive. Although the occurrence of contrast effects in sibling ratings of temperament has been investigated (Majdandžić et al., 2006; Saudino et al., 2004), contrast effects between temperament and behavior problems have not, but could be an illuminating line of inquiry. Because fathers are more tactile and physical in their play, whereas mothers are more verbal and didactic (Parke, 2002), fathers with a lower level of behavioral control and more negative emotions may provide a rougher play context than is usually the case. Thus, the context in which fathers interact with their children may be more prone to transferring undercontrolled behavior than that of mothers. Furthermore, the fact that children high in extraversion were also high in externalizing behavior problems may

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result from the impulsivity component of extraversion. Impulsive children may react more aggressively than less impulsive children who choose their reaction more deliberately.

A more similar temperament profile for mothers and their eldest children was related to less externalizing behavior of that child, as was found for personality by van Tuijl et al. (2005). This effect was not found for the youngest child and, therefore, awaits further investigation. Also, when mothers’ and fathers’ temperament profiles resembled each other more, the eldest child was less prone to internalizing problem behavior. Personality profile similarity has been found to be related to marital quality (Luo & Klohnen, 2005) and, consequently, parents whose temperament profiles are more alike might have a better marriage, and fewer conflicts. Since marital conflict has been found to be related to child behavior problems (Cummings, Goeke Morey, & Papp, 2004; Martin & Clements, 2002), this association could account for the negative relation between parental profile resemblance and internalizing behavior problems. Furthermore, parental temperament resemblance may foster a more consistent rearing environment, which has been found to be related to good parenting (Deal, Halverson, & Wampler, 1989). Thus, parental temperament resemblance may contribute to the proximal processes of child development (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000) through marital harmony and agreement on parenting. The advantage of using a couple-centred approach is that it provides insight into individuals’ resemblance on temperament as a whole, contrary to the variable-centred approach, which provides information per temperament variable for a total sample. Because temperament encompasses organized systems of emotional and attentional processes, rather than separate independent traits (Rothbart, 2001), measuring resemblance using the entire concept does more justice to the complexity of temperament. Therefore, the ability to assess the degree of similarity between two individuals on several components of a psychological construct is of great value for couple and family research.

The current study contains both advantages and limitations. Firstly, mothers and fathers were the sole informants of child behavior problems. The inclusion of teacher ratings could provide a view of child behavior problems in another context. Secondly, the current sample did not include clinically referred children and the links between temperament and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems on a clinical level may be different from those found in the present study. Nevertheless, studying the relation between temperament and behavior problems in a non-clinical sample provides valuable information because it offers the possibility to discern precursors of clinically significant problems in young children (Murray & Kochanska, 2002). Lastly, despite the strengths bestowed by using SEM analyses (the simultaneous testing of relations between child, parent, and sibling temperament and behavior problems), our data were concurrent and causal conclusions cannot be drawn.

The results of this study suggest that not only child temperament, but also parental temperament and the resemblance of parental temperament profiles are important predictors of behavior problems. Therefore, the inclusion of family members in studies concerning the development of behavior problems seems warranted, both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective.

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Chapter 4 Temperament and Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems:

A Longitudinal Sibling Study

Chapter 4: Temperament and Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems: A Longitudinal Sibling Study

Heesbeen, D. G. M., van den Boom, D. C., & Majdandžić, M. (submitted for publication) The present study explored the longitudinal relations between extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control on the one hand, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems on the other. Sibling pairs of 94 families participated in a research project consisting of four waves of data collection. Sibling temperament was assessed using standard observational measures and parental ratings. A cross-lagged panel model and a common factor model were compared, separately for the youngest and the eldest siblings. Results indicate that both temperament and behavior problems are rather stable constructs, given the better fit of the common factor models. Extraversion was negatively related to internalizing, and positively related to externalizing behavior problems. Negative affect was related to both types of problem behavior and effortful control was unrelated to internalizing and negatively related to externalizing behavior problems. Since the results for the eldest siblings were replicated in the models for the youngest siblings, the relations between temperament and behavior problems appear to be generalizable to more than one child per family. By investigating the broad traits of temperament and behavior problems in a longitudinal design, an effort was made to gain insight into developmental antecedents of later psychopathology.

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4.1 Introduction The understanding of developmental mechanisms and continuities and discontinuities

between normal development and psychopathology are considered to be key issues in developmental psychopathology (Rutter & Sroufe, 2000). Whereas socialization research has concentrated mainly on an array of environmental factors influencing adjustment, temperament research has focused in addition on the child’s own contribution to the development of behavior problems (Sanson et al., 2004). Although the relation between temperament and behavior problems has been the focus of a wealth of studies (e.g., Caspi et al., 1995; Guerin et al., 1997; Leve, Kim, & Pears, 2005), we are still in the early stages of comprehensive developmental analysis of this relation. To contribute to such process-oriented research, the present study explored the longitudinal relations between temperament and behavior problems. To meet the often made plea in developmental psychopathology that research concerning the predictive value of temperament or personality for later adjustment should proceed using a developmental framework, in the present study data was gathered prospectively at multiple time points (Hinshaw, 2002). Benefits of longitudinal designs are, firstly, that patterns of covariation among temperament and behavior problems can be discovered by studying their development over time; secondly, that both directions of potential causality can be tested; and thirdly, that cross-construct relations can be studied with within-construct correlation controlled for, thereby explaining variance beyond that explained by the stability of temperament and behavior problems (Burkholder & Harlow, 2003). Especially this latter point is of interest for the present study, since the research on the relation between temperament and behavior problems that has been conducted longitudinally, often failed to measure both constructs on all measurement occasions. In that case, a seemingly predictive relation between temperament measured at Time 1 and behavior problems measured at Time 2 may disappear when behavior problems at Time 1 are included. We included temperament and behavior problem measures on all measurement occasions to be able to control for within-construct stability. In the current study, Rothbart’s (1989) psychobiological perspective on temperament, defined as constitutionally based individual differences in emotional, motor, and attentional reactivity and self-regulation, was used as the theoretical framework for temperament. We included the three overarching temperament factors extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control (Rothbart et al., 2001). Problem behavior was classified in two broadband syndromes, that is, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems (Achenbach, Edelbrock, & Howell, 1987). Internalizing behavior problems comprise withdrawn behavior, anxious/depressed behavior and somatic complaints, whereas externalizing behavior problems are constituted by delinquent and aggressive behavior. The temperament literature tends to focus on narrowband traits, while there is a need for models that are more comprehensive and attend to the bigger picture by emphasizing broadband conceptualizations of temperament and psychopathology in childhood (Krueger & Tackett, 2003; Mervielde et al., 2005).

Inquiries focusing on extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control, or temperament dimensions included in these factors and their relations to internalizing or

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externalizing behavior problems will be discussed next, grouped around the broadband temperament factors. With respect to extraversion, the temperament dimension approach has been found to be negatively correlated with internalizing behavior problems, but only for boys and rather weakly (Caspi et al., 1995). Eisenberg et al. (2005) compared groups of internalizers, externalizers, comorbid, and control children. Mothers and fathers described externalizers and comorbid children as significantly higher in impulsivity than control group children and internalizers were viewed as slightly lower on impulsivity than control group children. In addition, in a study by Leve et al. (2005), higher age-5 impulsivity predicted higher age-17 externalizing but not internalizing behavior. In a study assessing positive emotionality, a positive association with teacher-reported aggressive and delinquent behavior was found, but only when positive emotionality was measured using parent reports, and not according to laboratory measures (Hayden, Klein, & Durbin, 2005). Thus, given the positive relation found between extraversion and externalizing behavior problems, we expected extraversion to be positively related to externalizing behavior problems, but unrelated to internalizing behavior problems. Many investigations on the relation between temperament and behavior problems have focused on difficult temperament. Although this concept is broader than negative emotionality, Bates (1989) considered difficult temperament to be mainly reflective of negative emotionality. Therefore, we will discuss studies including difficult temperament together with studies including specific dimensions of the broadband temperament factor negative affect. Difficultness in infancy has been reported to be positively related to both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems in late childhood (Guerin et al., 1997). This relation was stronger when parents rated behavior problems, than when teacher ratings were used. In another study, infants who were perceived as difficult at 6 months received relatively high maternal ratings of externalizing problem behavior at age 17. However, self-report measures of problem behavior did not show this relation to infant difficultness (Olson et al., 2000). Both parent ratings and observational measures of anger have been shown to be positively associated with teacher reported externalizing behavior problems (Hayden et al., 2005). Leve et al. (2005) found a composite measure of fear and shyness to predict internalizing behavior problems across a 12-year time span. In a study of Eisenberg et al. (2005) negative emotionality was found to be associated with both internalizing and externalizing behavior. In line with these findings, we expected negative affect to be positively related to both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Lastly, effortful control will be considered in relation to child behavior problems. Kochanska and colleagues (Kochanska & Knaack, 2003; Murray & Kochanska, 2002) have developed observational tasks to assess effortful control in childhood. They found that high levels of effortful control were associated with internalizing behavior problems, while children low in effortful control exhibited more externalizing behavior problems. Investigating only externalizing behavior problems, Rubin, Burgess, Dwyer, and Hastings (2003) found emotional undercontrol to contribute to this outcome measure. Observed and parent-rated effortful control was negatively related to externalizing, but not to internalizing behavior problems in a study by Eisenberg et al. (2005). The same pattern was found for lack of control in a study by Caspi et al. (1995), since it correlated more strongly to externalizing

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than to internalizing behavior problems. Hence, we anticipated effortful control to be negatively associated with externalizing behavior problems and, given the contradictory findings, to be unrelated to internalizing behavior problems.

In order to test the longitudinal relations between temperament and behavior problems simultaneously while controlling for within-construct stability, we used structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the data in the current study. Two alternative models were defined and compared. The first was a cross-lagged panel model (related to the autoregressive model; Collins, 2006, see Figure 4.1), in which the within-construct stability between Time 1 and Time 3 is mediated only through the intermediate Time 2 assessment. This model suggests progressive change, instead of the existence of a core trait for temperament and for behavior problems (Lemery, Goldsmith, Klinnert, & Mrazek, 1999). Using this model, both directions of potential causality between temperament and behavior problems can be tested with the so-called cross-lagged relations, whilst controlling for within-construct stability. For example, research focusing on temperamental effortful control or self-regulation has demonstrated that this system develops substantially between 2 and 7 years of age (Rothbart & Rueda, 2005), a finding consistent with progressive change. Furthermore, small to medium stability of behavior problems has been reported in a 14-year follow-up study (Hofstra, van der Ende, & Verhulst, 2000) and in a study following early preschool children into preadolescence (Mesman, Bongers, & Koot, 2001). Because of the use of a much smaller time-span in our study, in addition to the use of SEM, which accounts for measurement error (Pedlow, Sanson, Prior, & Oberklaid, 1993), we anticipated that the stability of temperament and behavior problems could turn out to be higher than has been reported in previous studies. This high level of stability might then account for most of the variance in temperament and behavior problems at following measurement occasions, at the expense of the cross-lagged paths, thus decreasing the fit of the cross-lagged panel models for temperament and behavior problems.

Temp 2Temp 1 Temp 3 Temp 4

BP 1 BP 2 BP 3 BP 4

Figure 4.1. Cross-lagged panel model. Temp: temperament factor, BP: behavior problem factor, on each of the four measurement occasions.

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BP 4 BP 3BP 2 BP 1

Temp 2 Temp 1

Latent Temp

Latent BP

Temp 3 Temp 4

Figure 4.2. Latent factor model. Temp: temperament factor, BP: behavior problem factor, on each of the four measurement occasions. Latent temp: common temperament factor, latent BP: common behavior problem factor.

To explore this possibility a second model was defined, which assumes that

temperament and behavior problems measured at different time points can be described by a single common factor (see Figure 2). This model does not allow other associations among the measurement occasions than through the common factor (Lemery et al., 1999). Because the relation between temperament and behavior problems is thus investigated at the latent factor level, no conclusions can be drawn concerning the direction of effect between these two constructs. Stability is traditionally viewed as an intrinsic characteristic of temperament, because most theoretical approaches assume temperament to have a biological basis (Goldsmith et al., 1987). Indeed, empirical studies addressing this issue have reported moderate stability (Goldsmith, Lemery, Aksan, & Buss, 2000) especially for dimensions such as fear, frustration/anger, and approach (Rothbart & Derryberry, 2002). Testing both an autoregressive and a common factor model, Lemery et al. (1999) found that a common factor model fitted toddler-preschool data on positive emotionality, distress-anger, fear, and activity level best. Given these results, we expected the common factor model to fit our data on temperament and behavior problems.

Research on nonshared environmental influences (for a review, see Plomin et al., 2001) has illustrated the need to study more than one child per family. Yet, studies on the relation between temperament and behavior problems have typically investigated one child per family, assuming that the same developmental processes found for one child influence all other children in a family equally. Therefore, we tested the aforementioned models in two

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groups of children in the current study; eldest siblings and youngest siblings. Testing the models separately for eldest and youngest siblings offered the possibility to determine the generalizability of the relations between temperament and behavior problems. Furthermore, by replicating these models the similarity of these relations could be investigated for children at partly different developmental stages (Brody, Kim, Murry, & Brown, 2004). Disregarding the interdependence of sibling measures was not likely to constitute a problem, since in a previous study little evidence was found for a relation between siblings’ temperament and the development of child behavior problems (Heesbeen, Majdandžić, & van den Boom, 2006). Thus, both the cross-lagged panel model and the common factor model were tested in both sibling groups in the present inquiry.

Most studies investigating the association of temperament with behavior problems relied on questionnaire data, obtained primarily from mothers. However, Mangelsdorf et al. (2000) suggest that information should be drawn from multiple sources, including observations. This is because the child’s behavior varies between contexts, and different information about the child’s behavior is obtained from each of these sources. Although observational measures are sometimes employed, especially when assessing effortful or regulatory control (Eisenberg et al., 2005; Kochanska & Knaack, 2003; Rubin et al., 2003), the whole range of temperament is scarcely assessed using both questionnaires and observations. Hence, in this study the three broadband temperament factors extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control were assessed using maternal and paternal ratings, as well as observations. In addition, both mothers and fathers provided information on child behavior problems.

In summary, the current study investigated the relation between temperament and behavior problems using robust measures consisting of parental ratings and observations. In view of the theoretical and empirical evidence for continuity in both temperament and behavior problems and because we used robust measures, probably resulting in higher stability coefficients than are usually found, we expected the latent factor model to fit the data better than the cross-lagged panel model. Concerning the relation between the latent factors extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control on the one hand, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems on the other, we expected extraversion to be positively related to externalizing behavior problems. Negative affect was hypothesized to be positively associated with both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, whereas effortful control was expected to be negatively related to externalizing behavior problems. With regard to differences between siblings, we did not expect to find different relations between temperament and behavior problems. 4.2 Method 4.2.1 Participants

Families with two children in the age of two and four years were asked to participate in a longitudinal study, consisting of four waves of data collection. They were drawn from the municipal health register of the city of Amsterdam and surroundings. The final sample

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consisted of 94 Caucasian families consisting of highly educated parents. The four waves of data collection of the study (henceforth T1, T2, T3 and T4) were scheduled so that on T3, the youngest children were of the same age as the eldest children on T1. Similarly, at T4 the youngest children were of the same age as the eldest children at T2. The interval between T1 and T2, and between T3 and T4 was about half a year. Children’s ages and the numbers of boys and girls on the four data waves are displayed in Table 4.1. Moving out of the area was the main reason for families to cease participating in the study. Table 4.1 Age and Numbers of Boys and Girls per Wave of Data Collection Age in months (SD) N Girls N Boys T1

Eldest 51.79 (3.38) 37 54 Youngest 30.78 (4.29) 44 46

T2 Eldest 59.33 (3.82) 35 43

Youngest 38.59 (4.27) 37 42 T3

Eldest 73.93 (6.80) 28 37 Youngest 53.33 (3.95) 33 35

T4 Eldest 82.26 (7.31) 26 36

Youngest 61.39 (4.33) 28 35 4.2.2 Procedure

The children visited our laboratory twice per wave of data collection, accompanied

once by their mother and once by their father. During these visits, scheduled one or two weeks apart, the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB; Goldsmith et al., 1995) was administered. Dutch translations of the following questionnaires were given to both parents once per data wave, to be filled out independently at home. Temperament was assessed using the Toddler Behavior Questionnaire (TBAQ; Goldsmith, 1996) for children younger than three years, and the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart et al., 2001). Behavior problems were assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist 2-3 (CBCL 2-3; Achenbach, 1992) for children younger than four years, and the Child Behavior Checklist 4-18 (CBCL 4-18; Achenbach, 1991). 4.2.3 Instruments CBCL The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991, 1992; Koot, van den Oord, Verhulst, & Boomsma, 1997; Verhulst et al., 1996) is designed to measure child internalizing

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and externalizing problem behavior. The CBCL 2-3 consists of 100 statements about child problem behavior; the CBCL 4-18 comprises 120 statements. Parents responded on a 3-point scale (0 = not applicable, 1 = sometimes applicable, 2 = very applicable). The internalizing scale assesses social withdrawal, anxiety/depression and somatic complaints (the latter is only included in CBCL 4-18). The externalizing scale includes statements about aggression (in both versions) and delinquency (CBCL 4-18) or destructive behavior (CBCL 2-3). Lab-TAB The Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Goldsmith et al., 1995) was used to obtain observations of child temperament in a standardized setting. It includes episodes measuring fearfulness, distress (anger/sadness), joy/pleasure, and interest/persistence. During the first measurement occasion, the original Lab-TAB was administered. Different versions of the episodes were developed for T2, T3, and T4 to avoid recognition effects (Majdandžić, et al., 2006). The episodes were divided into two sets. Set A consisted of Popping Bubbles, Exploring Object, Jumping Animal, Bead Sorting, Stranger Approach, Drawing Figures (youngest children T1-T4, eldest children T1 and T2) or Unfair Game (eldest children T3 and T4), and Empty Present. Set B consisted of Throwing Game (T3 and T4 only), Unreachable Toy, Scary Mask, Slides, No Present Left, Surprise Parent, and Toy Removal. Description of these episodes is organized around the three temperament factors extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control. Extraversion

The factor extraversion was measured with three episodes: Popping Bubbles, Throwing Game, and Surprise Parent. In Popping Bubbles, the experimenter showed the child a bubble-shooting toy and asked the child to pop the bubbles with his/her elbows, feet, and hands. Throwing Game consisted of overturning a pile of cans with beanbags (T3) or throwing rings around a moving toy seal (T4). The child and the experimenter were competing, but the experimenter let the child win. In the task Surprise Parent, the child was surprised with a pop-up toy (T1, T2, and T4) or a whoopee cushion (T3), and then he/she was asked to surprise his or her parent with it. Negative affect

Negative affect is an aggregated measure consisting of episodes assessing fear, sadness/disappointment, and anger/frustration. Jumping Animal, Stranger Approach, and Scary Mask were used to assess fear, and Empty Present, No Present Left, Drawing Figures or Unfair Game, Unreachable Toy, and Toy Removal elicited both anger and sadness. In the Jumping Animal episode the child was asked four times to pet a toy spider (T1, T3, and T4) or snake (T2) which the experimenter moved as the child touched it. During Stranger Approach, the child was left alone in the assessment room, and a male research accomplice entered the room. He talked to the child and asked for a book (T1 and T2) or was dressed up as a cleaner and asked for cleaning gear (T3 and T4). Scary Mask consisted of a female research accomplice entering the room, putting on a mask of a scary animal and asking the child to touch the mask and to put it on. With the youngest children and the eldest children at T1 and T2, she had a friendly conversation before putting on the mask. In Empty Present the child searched for a present in a wrapped box (T1), a grab bag (T2), a set of matrosjka dolls

46

(T3), or in four tins (T4), which were empty. After this episode, the experimenter called the emptiness a mistake, and gave the child a present. In No Present Left the child was shown a small present, but the experimenter left the room and returned without it, and told the child she had given the present to another child (not the sibling) or that it was broken by the other familiar research assistant. The child received the present afterwards. In Drawing Figures, the experimenter asked the child to draw circles or squares and subsequently criticized all drawings mildly. The child was encouraged to keep drawing for 3.5 minutes. In Unfair Game, the experimenter divided candies unfairly between herself and the child (T3), or the experimenter played a memory game with the child and cheated to win a box of raisins (T4). After both episodes, the experimenter explained that she had cheated and apologized. During Unreachable Toy, an attractive toy was placed in a transparent, impossible to open object, and the child was left alone and invited to get the toy out of the object so he or she could play with it. After 4 minutes the experimenter returned and opened the object. Toy Removal consisted of the parent taking away a game from the child while saying he or she did not want to play anymore, and after 1 minute returning the toy to the child. Effortful control

Effortful control was assessed with three episodes, Exploring Object, Bead Sorting, and Slides. In Exploring Object the child was invited to play with a coffeepot (T1), a salad spinner (T2), an icing syringe (T3), or an orange juicer (T4) and left alone in the room for three minutes. In Bead Sorting the experimenter asked the child to sort beads of different colors and left the room for three minutes. During Slides, a picture show of animals, plants, humans, and buildings was presented to the child on a computer monitor, with varying durations (7 s, 9 s, 11 s, 13 s, 15 s: three trials; 15 slides in total). We are aware that these episodes do not tap the whole range of effortful control dimensions. Nevertheless, attention is viewed as an important component of self-regulation (Calkins & Fox, 2002; Rueda, Posner, & Rothbart, 2004) and by aggregating these observations with questionnaire data a robust measure of effortful control was computed. TBAQ The Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire (Goldsmith, 1996; Majdandžić et al., 2006) consists of 108 items about the frequency of specific child behavior during the last month scored on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “never” to “always”. A “not applicable” category can be chosen if parents never saw their child in the situation described. The 108 items of the questionnaire are grouped into five scales: Activity Level, Pleasure, Social Fearfulness, Anger Proneness, and Interest/Persistence. We averaged these scales into the three temperament factors that emerged from factor analyses of other temperament measures (Rothbart et al., 2001) in order to create comparable measures (see below). Activity Level and Pleasure formed the extraversion factor, Social Fearfulness and Anger Proneness were averaged into negative affect, and Interest/Persistence was renamed effortful control. Internal consistency estimates based on coefficient α’s for the factors, based on the items, ranged from .76 to .93 (M = .83, SD = .04).

47

CBQ The Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart et al., 2001; Majdandžić & van den

Boom, in press) is a theory-driven instrument to identify central temperament dimensions. It consists of 195 items that describe everyday situations scored on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “extremely untrue of your child” to “extremely true of your child”. A “not applicable” category can be chosen if parents never saw their child in the situation described. One item of the Shyness scale (45; acts very friendly and outgoing with new children) was deleted because of a translation problem. The 195 items of the questionnaire are grouped into 15 scales, which formed the three temperament factors negative affect, extraversion, and effortful control when factor analyzed (Rothbart et al., 2001). Subsequent analyses were performed on these three temperament factors, which were formed by averaging the items of the corresponding scales. Negative affect was composed of anger, discomfort, fear, sadness, and the reversed items of soothability. Extraversion consisted of activity level, high intensity pleasure, impulsivity, and the reversed items of shyness. Finally, attentional focusing, inhibitory control, low intensity pleasure, perceptual sensitivity, and smiling and laughter formed the factor effortful control. The scale positive anticipation was omitted, because it loaded highly on all three factors. Internal consistency estimates for the factors, based on the items, ranged from .78 to .95 (M = .89, SD = .04) for the youngest child, and from .80 to .94 (M = .91, SD = .03) for the eldest child. 4.2.4 Measures CBCL Scores Statements on the CBCL were summed into two scores, one for externalizing and one for internalizing behavior. Coefficient α’s of these scales ranged from .70 to .91 (M = .84, SD = .06) for the youngest child, and from .73 to .89 (M = .81, SD = .06) for the eldest child. Five univariate outliers (z < -3.29 or z > 3.29) were truncated (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). We tested data normality with the Shapiro-Wilk test. The scales were not normally distributed; skewness and kurtosis were significant and ranged between .56 and 1.16 for the youngest child, and for the eldest between .69 and 1.24. Since maximum likelihood estimation in SEM requires the use of normally distributed data (Enders, 2001; Lei & Lomax, 2005) we normalized the CBCL data using the PRELIS procedure (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2002). After normalization, skewness and kurtosis were no longer significant (skewness: range .03 - .44 for the youngest and -.25 - .23 for the eldest and kurtosis: range -.64 - .27 for the youngest and -.50 - .04 for the eldest). Coding of the Lab-TAB

Coding proceeded according to Lab-TAB guidelines (Goldsmith et al., 1995). Episodes were divided into ‘epochs’ that lasted 10 or 20 seconds, or as long as a particular event lasted (e.g., the division of the candies in Unfair Game). Coded variables were peak-intensities of facial, bodily, and verbal expressions of the target emotions within an epoch. Furthermore, other relevant behaviors, such as latency to first response, were coded. Episodes that were ended because of severe distress were coded as if the distress continued. Training of

48

the 19 coders consisted of examining a coded videotape of three children per episode with low, average, and high levels of emotional response. Subsequently the training proceeded with coding and discussing ten pilot children. The first and third author coded 21% of the tapes in order to obtain interobserver reliability estimates. These were calculated on the lowest level of coding, using Cohen’s Kappa. Reliability of latencies was calculated within 2 seconds of difference. In Table 4.2 the mean reliabilities per measurement occasion and per child are presented. Aggregation of the Lab-TAB

First, all variables were averaged across epochs. Latencies of exuberance and fear episodes were transformed using the reverse of the square root, latencies of interest episodes were rescaled by division by episode duration. The mean variables and transformed latencies were standardized and averaged into episode scores. Popping Bubbles, Throwing Game, and Surprise Parent were averaged to create the extraversion factor, negative affect consisted of Jumping Animal, Stranger Approach, Scary Mask, Empty Present, No Present Left, Drawing Figures or Unfair Game, Unreachable Toy, and Toy Removal, and the effortful control factor was composed of Exploring Object, Bead Sorting, and Slides. Internal consistency estimates based on coefficient α’s for the factor scores of the eldest and the youngest child ranged from .14 to .80. Especially the interest episodes seemed to elicit different emotional responses. Nevertheless, we combined the episodes into measures for extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control, because temperament is not supposed to be equally well revealed in all contexts (Rothbart & Bates, 1998) and thus, different episodes are needed to create robust measures.

Aggregation of Lab-TAB and CBQ Lab-TAB and paternal and maternal TBAQ and CBQ factor scores were standardized and averaged. If only one of these three was available, a missing value was assigned to the particular case. Final temperament measures were therefore composed of behavior displayed in two or three different contexts, which contributed equally. Normality tests of these combined measures revealed no significant departure from normality and no univariate outliers were found (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001).

4.2.5 Data Analysis

Correlations between child temperament and behavior problems were computed before proceeding with the structural equation models. The AMOS 4.0 program (Arbuckle & Wothke, 1999) was used to specify and test the models. First, we tested path models with a cross-lagged panel design (see Figure 1). Because of our sample size, we started with a very restricted model in which both the regression weights between the measurement occasions within temperament or behavior problems and the measurement errors were set equal. Chi-square difference tests were performed to examine whether loosening these restrictions would improve model fit. First, measurement errors were freed, then factor loadings. Subsequently, the cross-lagged structural paths were added, and the significance of these paths was tested.

49

50

The next step was to analyze the latent factor models (see Figure 2). Again, we started with restricted models, in which factor loadings as well as measurement errors were set equal. We followed the same procedure as with the cross-lagged panel models. Lastly, these two alternative models were compared using the Akaike information criterion and RMSEA.

Raw data were analyzed using the full information maximum likelihood function (Enders & Bandalos, 2001; Schafer & Graham, 2002), because it allows for the inclusion of participants with partial data (Leve et al., 2005), which is inevitable in longitudinal studies (Collins, 2006). T-tests revealed only three out of 40 differences between cases with and without missing data to be significant. The percentage of missing values ranged from 3.2% to 34.0%. 4.3 Results 4.3.1 Gender and Age Differences

Gender differences and the influence of age within the groups of eldest and youngest children were investigated using t-tests and correlations. Boys and girls in the group of youngest children did not differ significantly on both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and the temperament measures on any measurement occasion. For the group of eldest children, however, girls were significantly higher on effortful control on all measurement occasions (T1: t (88) = 3.18, p < .01; T2: t (75) = 3.41, p < .01; T3: t (64) = 3.51, p < .01; T4: t (60) = 3.04, p < .01). This finding is consistent with the results from a recently published meta-analysis on gender differences in temperament (Else-Quest, Hyde, Goldsmith, & Van Hulle, 2006). Because of this finding, we investigated whether the relation between effortful control and behavior problems differed for boys and girls in multi-group analyses. To test whether age was related to the measures under investigation, we correlated age with all temperament and behavior problem measures. For the eldest children, age was not significantly correlated with temperament and internalizing or externalizing problem behavior. In the group of youngest children, age was significantly related to three out of 20 measures. Because the significant correlations found were not very high (range r = -.30 to .33), we did not control for age in subsequent analyses. 4.3.2 Longitudinal Models of Temperament and Behavior Problems

Assessing the within-construct stability of both temperament and behavior problems is important when investigating the relation between these constructs longitudinally. As is shown in Table 4.3, stability coefficients of subsequent measurement occasions ranged from .52 to .82 (eldest: M = .69, SD = .08; youngest: M = .65, SD = .08). In Table 4.4 the correlations of the three temperament factors extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control, with internalizing and externalizing behavior problems are shown. Both concurrent correlations and correlations across measurement occasions reached significance, indicating a contemporaneous, as well as a predictive relation between temperament and behavior

Tab

le 4

.2

Mea

n (S

D) I

nter

obse

rver

Rel

iabi

lity

Mea

sure

s per

Epi

sode

, per

Mea

sure

men

t Occ

asio

n an

d pe

r C

hild

T1T2

T3T4

Epis

ode

varia

bles

E

YE

YE

YE

Y P

oppi

ng B

ubbl

es

.79

(.05)

.7

7 (.0

5)

.75

(.07)

.7

5 (.0

6)

.94

(.07)

.8

8 (.0

7)

.78

(.06)

.7

9 (.0

8)

Sur

pris

e Pa

rent

.7

8 (.1

0)

.80

(.12)

.7

9 (.0

9)

.72

(.08)

.9

1 (.0

8)

.88

(.06)

.8

7 (.0

4)

.80

(.07)

T

hrow

ing

Gam

e

.9

3 (.0

4)

.92

(.06)

.8

3 (.1

3)

.81

(.08)

J

umpi

ng A

nim

al

.82

(.11)

.8

1 (.1

3)

.77

(.13)

.7

6 (.1

3)

.73

(.21)

.8

4 (.1

2)

.88

(.16)

.8

5 (.1

4)

Stra

nger

App

roac

h .7

1 (.0

8)

.63

(.28)

.7

1 (.1

3)

.70

(.11)

.7

7 (.1

8)

.78

(.16)

.7

8 (.2

0)

.83

(.19)

S

cary

Mas

k .8

1 (.0

7)

.80

(.06)

.7

5 (.0

6)

.75

(.10)

.8

0 (.1

1)

.79

(.12)

.8

6 (.1

2)

.79

(.16)

E

mpt

y Pr

esen

t .8

5 (.1

1)

.81

(.14)

.8

0 (.1

5)

.87

(.14)

.7

9 (.1

9)

.70

(.28)

.8

1 (.1

2)

.80

(.10)

N

o Pr

esen

t Lef

t .7

8 (.1

6)

.89

(.13)

.8

1 (.1

3)

.90

(.12)

.8

1 (.1

9)

.89

(.15)

.8

7 (.1

4)

.90

(.13)

D

raw

ing

Figu

res/

Unf

air G

ame

.71

(.08)

.7

6 (.1

1)

.73

(.11)

.7

3 (.1

0)

.89

(.09)

.9

0 (.0

9)

.80

(.14)

.8

1 (.0

9)

Unr

each

able

Toy

.7

6 (.0

9)

.78

(.08)

.7

2 (.1

0)

.71

(.08)

.8

4 (.1

0)

.85

(.10)

.8

3 (.0

9)

.85

(.09)

E

nd o

f the

Lin

e .8

6 (.1

1)

.84

(.12)

.7

3 (.1

2)

.85

(.14)

.8

7 (.1

1)

.86

(.11)

.8

3 (.1

3)

.79

(.13)

E

xplo

ring

Obj

ect

.81

(.07)

.8

3 (.0

9)

.79

(.07)

.8

5 (.0

6)

.81

(.18)

.9

0 (.0

8)

.82

(.14)

.8

7 (.0

8)

Bea

d So

rting

.7

8 (.1

2)

.78

(.13)

.7

9 (.1

6)

.78

(.12)

.9

3 (.1

4)

.92

(.12)

.8

3 (.2

3)

.80

(.25)

S

lides

.7

6 (.1

3)

.78

(.11)

.7

8 (.1

2)

.78

(.13)

.8

8 (.1

1)

.89

(.10)

.8

4 (.0

9)

.87

(.09)

La

tenc

ies

Pop

ping

Bub

bles

.9

8 (.0

5)

.97

(.06)

.9

2 (.1

0)

.94

(.13)

.9

3 (.0

8)

.97

(.06)

1.

00 (.

00)

.93

(.08)

S

urpr

ise

Pare

nt

1.00

(.00

) .9

6 (.0

7)

.92

(.10)

1.

00 (.

00)

1.00

(.00

) .9

7 (.0

6)

1.00

(.00

) 1.

00 (.

00)

Thr

owin

g G

ame

.85

(.02)

.8

6 (.0

4)

.94

(.08)

.9

2 (.1

2)

Jum

ping

Ani

mal

1.

00 (.

00)

.79

(.12)

.7

4 (.1

7)

.64

(.29)

.3

9 (.1

5)

.90

(.14)

.8

1 (.1

7)

.67

(.18)

S

trang

er A

ppro

ach

.84

(.05)

.7

8 (.0

4)

.81

(.27)

.8

0 (.0

5)

.70

(.19)

.7

0 (.1

4)

.89

(.19)

.9

0 (.1

6)

Sca

ry M

ask

.84

(.05)

1.

00 (.

00)

.85

(.01)

.7

5 (.3

5)

.69

(.03)

.7

0 (.1

4)

.78

(.25)

.7

1 (.0

4)

Exp

lorin

g O

bjec

t .9

8 (.0

5)

.92

(.09)

.8

7 (.0

7)

.98

(.06)

.7

6 (.2

3)

.90

(.20)

.9

3 (.1

3)

.92

(.15)

B

ead

Sorti

ng

.89

(.14)

.8

9 (.0

9)

.92

(.09)

.7

6 (.2

4)

.84

(.17)

.9

5 (.0

9)

.95

(.09)

.9

7 (.0

9)

Slid

es

.89

(.19)

.8

7 (.2

3)

.84

(.17)

1.

00 (.

00)

.77

(.16)

1.

00 (.

00)

.94

(.13)

.9

2 (.1

7)

Not

e. E

= e

ldes

t chi

ld. Y

= y

oung

est c

hild

. Rel

iabi

lity

mea

sure

s for

epi

sode

var

iabl

es a

re C

ohen

’s K

appa

, for

late

ncie

s per

cent

age

agre

emen

t.

52

problems. In order to test these relations simultaneously, the aforementioned cross-lagged panel path models and the latent factor models were tested. For each temperament factor in combination with either externalizing or internalizing problem behavior, and for both eldest and youngest children, the latent factor model fitted the data better than the cross-lagged panel models, according to the Akaike information criterion and RMSEA. Therefore, we will only present results of these common factor models.

Because we found significant gender differences for effortful control in the group of eldest children, we tested for invariance of the association between effortful control and behavior problems across gender in a multi-group design. Latent factor models with the covariance of effortful control and internalizing or externalizing problem behavior set equal across the groups of boys and girls did not fit the data significantly worse than models in which the covariances were estimated freely for boys and girls (internalizing: ∆χ2(1) = 1.80, p = .18; externalizing: ∆χ2(1) = 0.04, p = .84). Therefore, all subsequent models were analyzed with boys and girls in the same group. Table 4.3 Stability Correlations for Temperament and Behavior Problems T1 - T2 T1 - T3 T1 - T4 T2 - T3 T2 - T4 T3 - T4 Eldest

Extraversion .81 .67 .70 .79 .77 .74 Negative Affect .78 .64 .62 .68 .76 .58

Effortful Control .62 .70 .66 .61 .68 .71 Internalizing BP .65 .68 .66 .56 .54 .69

Externalizing BP .70 .68 .56 .74 .65 .75 Youngest

Extraversion .59 .37 .43 .64 .55 .76 Negative Affect .62 .54 .52 .67 .58 .66

Effortful Control .63 .50 .36 .61 .47 .63 Internalizing BP .52 .38 .48 .57 .58 .76

Externalizing BP .65 .72 .64 .69 .59 .82 Note. BP = behavior problems. All correlations are significant at p < .01. In Table 4.5 information on factor loadings, the correlations between the latent factors, and the fit of the models is presented. For the eldest children, all error variances and factor loadings could be set equal across measurement occasions within temperament or behavior problems, except for the model of extraversion and externalizing problems. Almost all factor loadings were above .80, indicating that the latent factor represented the data of the different measurement occasions well. Model fit was acceptable to good. Internalizing problem behavior was negatively associated with extraversion, and positively with negative affect. The covariance between internalizing problem behavior and effortful control was not significant and could be set to zero without a significant deterioration of model fit. Externalizing problem behavior was associated with all temperament factors; positively with extraversion and negative affect, and negatively with effortful control. Thus, eldest siblings low in extraversion

Tab

le 4

.4

Cor

rela

tions

Bet

wee

n T

empe

ram

ent a

nd B

ehav

ior

Prob

lem

s

INT

T1

EXT

T1

INT

T2

EXT

T2

INT

T3

EXT

T3

INT

T4

EXT

T4

EX T

1

-.22*

/ -.1

8 .

28**

/ -.0

7

-.24*

/ -.2

0

.32

** /

.03

-.0

9 / -

.24*

.3

5**

/ .00

-.17

/ -.1

4 .

31*

/ .15

N

A T

1 .2

8**

/ .35

**

.40

** /

.32*

*

.18

/ .36

**

.

38**

/ .2

9*

.19

/ .16

.21

/ .39

**

.14

/ .13

.2

1 / .

19

EC T

1 -.0

8 / -

.20

-.1

4 / -

.35*

* .0

1 / -

.07

-.0

9 / -

.25*

-.0

6 / -

.03

-.1

0 / -

.27*

.08

/ -.0

3 -.0

0 / -

.18

EX T

2 -.1

7 / -

.17

.2

3* /

.09

-.32

** /

-.23*

.33

** /

.20

-.18

/ -.2

2

.32*

/ .1

6

-.22

/ -.1

5

.26*

/ .1

0 N

A T

2 .

29*

/ .41

**

.33*

* / .

43**

.3

8**

/ .44

**

.36*

* / .

42**

.2

1 / .

20

.20

/ .3

2*

.20

/ .14

.1

4 / .

15

EC T

2 -.1

7 / -

.20

-.2

1 / -

.30*

* -.1

0 / -

.12

-.35

** /

-.37*

* -.0

7 / -

.03

-.1

7 / -

.27*

-.05

/ .0

6 -.1

5 / -

.19

EX T

3 -.1

3 / -

.13

.2

9* /

.15

-.2

3 / -

.35*

*

.35

** /

.16

-.

22 /

-.37*

* .3

5**

/ .16

-.22

/ -.4

0**

.39*

* / .

11

NA

T3

.42*

* / .

32**

.31*

/ .3

0*

.37

** /

.45*

* .3

8**

/ .33

**

.3

4**

/ .30

* .2

9* /

.37*

* .

26 /

.28*

.

26*

/ .24

EC

T3

-.2

8* /

-.14

-.40*

* / -

.25*

-.33*

/ -.0

3

-.48*

* / -

.24

-.

31*

/ .08

-.3

7**

/ -.1

7

-.12

/ .1

5 -.1

8 / -

.21

EX T

4 -.1

1 / -

.01

.2

9* /

.16

-.35

** /

-.32*

.2

5 / .

25

-.

18 /

-.36*

*

.30*

/ .0

8

-.19

/ -.3

7**

.26

* / .

17

NA

T4

.3

3* /

.13

.20

/ .14

.3

6**

/ .41

**

.33*

/ .3

2*

.19

/ .21

.2

3 / .

24

.2

8* /

.20

.19

/ .18

EC

T4

-.20

/ -.1

4 -.2

2 / -

.21

-.17

/ -.0

4 -.

31*

/ -.2

7*

-.06

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and high in negative affect were more likely to exhibit internalizing problem behavior, whereas eldest siblings high in extraversion and negative affect and low in effortful control were more likely to display externalizing behavior problems. For the youngest children, factor loadings of extraversion could not be set equal, nor could error variances and factor loadings of behavior problems. Furthermore, factor loadings were somewhat lower than for the eldest children, indicating that the common factor model was a slightly less appropriate description of temperament and behavior problems for the youngest children. Nevertheless, model fit was acceptable, although the RMSEA for the extraversion-externalizing behavior problem model (RMSEA = .09) exceeded the .08 boundary set by McDonald and Ho (2002). Thus, although the Tucker Lewis Index and the Comparative Fit Index indicated sufficient model fit, the results from this model should be interpreted with caution. Internalizing problem behavior was negatively associated with extraversion, and positively with negative affect. As was found for the eldest children, the relation between internalizing problem behavior and effortful control was not significant and therefore set to zero. Externalizing problem behavior was positively related to negative affect, and negatively to effortful control. The relation between extraversion and externalizing problem behavior did not reach significance for the youngest siblings. Hence, similar to the eldest siblings, youngest siblings low in extraversion and high in negative affect were more likely to exhibit internalizing problem behavior, whereas youngest siblings high in negative affect and low in effortful control were more likely to display externalizing behavior problems. Thus, all relations between temperament and behavior problems were in the same direction for the group of youngest children and the group of the eldest children. 4.4 Discussion

Previous longitudinal research has shown that temperament and behavior problems are related aspects of child development. However, the nature of this relation remained relatively uncertain because few studies measured both constructs longitudinally and thus, most studies were not able to control for within-construct stability. The present study investigated the association between robust measures of temperament and behavior problems assessed on all measurement occasions, using a preschool aged sibling sample, which was followed across 2.5 years.

With respect to the stability of temperament and behavior problems, we found substantial correlations within constructs measured at different points in time. Accordingly, the common factor model described the data better than the cross-lagged panel model. This is consistent with findings of Lemery et al. (1999), who also reported very stable patterns of temperament up to 4 years of age that could be described by a common factor model. In addition, Majdandžić and van den Boom (in press) and Pedlow et al. (1993) found higher stability using SEM than has generally been reported for temperament. The fairly short time lapse between the measurement occasions, in combination with the use of broadband measures consisting of both maternal and paternal ratings and observational data, may be another reason for the high level of stability in temperament found in the present inquiry. Similarly, for behavior problems, the use of SEM and the sole use of parental questionnaire

55

data might have contributed to a higher level of stability than is usually found (Campbell, 1995). However, some of the factor loadings of the youngest children, notably those of behavior problems, could not be set equal without a significant deterioration of model fit. The use of different questionnaires across measurement occasions to assess behavior problems in the case of the youngest children may have contributed to this result. In addition, children’s everyday lives change remarkably around their fourth year of life, since for most of them starting to attend school is the first structural encounter with peers. Perhaps school entry, and the different demands attending school imposes on children’s behavior (Campbell, 1995), influences the stability of behavior problems.

Because of the better fit of the common factor models, indicative of little developmental change within these constructs, a causal relation between temperament and behavior problems could not be examined in the current study. Still, our findings can contribute to the development of theories concerning temperamental characteristics and later adjustment. Clark et al. (1994) have described four possible models for the relation between adult personality and psychopathology: the predisposition or vulnerability model, the pathoplasty model, the complication or scar model, and the spectrum or continuity model. It would lead too far afield to explain the exact nature of these models here. Nevertheless, both the predisposition and the complication model imply causality, an assumption not substantiated by the findings of the present inquiry. The spectrum model, stating that temperament and behavior problems reflect the same underlying process, is a more plausible explanation for the relations we found between the relatively stable child characteristics of temperament and behavior problems. In this model, behavior problems are an extreme manifestation of individual differences in temperament, or temperament dimensions are subclinical manifestations of behavior problems. Since it has been shown that the removal of confounded items measuring both temperament and behavior problems does not alter their relation (Lemery, Essex, & Smider, 2002; Lengua, West, & Sandler, 1998), perhaps a common innate factor can explain stability of, as well as the association between, temperament and behavior problems. This seems to apply to all temperament factors, in combination with both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, except for effortful control and internalizing behavior problems.

In contrast to previous studies investigating the relation between extraversion and internalizing behavior problems, we found that these two constructs were negatively related, and rather strongly as well. The use of an aggregated, robust measure of extraversion instead of several lower-order dimensions might account for this contradictory result. In addition, a recent meta-analysis found that behavioral measures of extraversion were negatively related to neuroticism, whereas self-report measures were not (Riggio & Riggio, 2002). Since most studies rely on questionnaire data of extraversion, it is possible that the inclusion of observational measures was responsible for the difference in results.

Self-regulation is a central concept in developmental psychology and is assumed to be critically important for the development of psychopathology (Calkins & Fox, 2002; Rueda, Posner et al., 2004). Indeed, we found effortful control to be negatively related to externalizing behavior problems. However, the relation between effortful control and internalizing behavior problems did not reach significance. The distinction between passive

56

and active attentional processes (Derryberry & Rothbart, 1997) might be helpful in understanding this unexpected finding, since these two different attentional processes have been found to contribute uniquely to internalizing behavior problems. This distinction has also been labeled as voluntary (i.e., effortful control) versus less voluntary (i.e., fearful inhibition) regulation (Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2004; Rothbart, Ellis, & Posner, 2004). Indeed, Eisenberg et al. (2001) reported that children with internalizing behavior problems are low in effortful control and high in involuntary control. Since Rothbart’s concept of effortful control, that is the concept used in this study, is primarily reflective of the voluntary, attentional part of regulation, this might explain the non-significant relation between effortful control and internalizing behavior problems in the present study.

Because we tested the models of the relation between temperament and behavior problems separately for eldest and youngest siblings, the generalizability of these models could be investigated. The results for the eldest siblings were replicated in the models for the youngest siblings. Hence, the relations between extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control on the one hand, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems on the other hand, appear to be generalizable to more than one child per family. Only the relation between extraversion and externalizing behavior problems differed for eldest and youngest children. For the youngest children, this relation did not reach significance, whereas in the model of the eldest children, a significant positive relation was found. Although birth-order effects have been reported for extraversion (Beck, Burnet, & Vosper, 2006; Sulloway, 2001), siblings in this sample did not differ in level of extraversion. Moreover, why this effect would influence the association with externalizing, but not internalizing behavior problems awaits further investigation. Despite the strengths of the current study, which include the use of maternal and paternal ratings of child behavior in addition to observational measures of temperament, the use of two children per family, and broadband measures of temperament and behavior problems, some limitations must be noted. Firstly, a research design covering a larger time-span might yield a more thorough view on the relation between temperament and behavior problems than was possible in the current study. Since we found considerable within-construct stability, no evidence was obtained regarding the direction of potential causality. Secondly, in the present study all temperament factors were studied separately, because sample size limited the complexity of the models that could be tested. It would be informative to include all three temperament factors in one model, in order to test additive and transactional effects of multiple temperament traits (Rothbart & Bates, 1998). For example, effortful control may be related to externalizing and internalizing behavior problems indirectly by controlling for extraversion and negative affect (Derryberry & Rothbart, 1997). In addition, Oldehinkel, Hartman, de Winter, Veenstra, and Ormel (2004) investigated the relation of temperament profiles and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, and found that different profiles were predictive of both types of behavior problems. Thirdly, behavior problems were assessed using parental ratings. Including information from teachers would result in a more complete picture of children’s functioning, because behavior problems may vary from one situation to another (Achenbach, McConaughy, & Howell, 1987). Still, because maternal and paternal ratings have been found to explain unique variance in behavior

57

problems (van der Valk, van den Oord, Verhulst, & Boomsma, 2003), information about child behavior problems was gathered in two different contexts. Lastly, a non-clinical sample was studied in the current study, showing behavior problems in the normal range. The generalizability of our findings to clinical populations remains to be investigated. A recommendation for future research is the investigation of mean level stability in temperament and behavior problems. Although temperament and behavior problems seem very consistent according to rank-order stability, mean levels of these constructs might change over time. Therefore, investigating the relation between temperament and behavior problems using a multivariate latent growth curve model would be an interesting option for future research. Developmental psychopathology research has enriched our understanding of both normal development and developmental disorders. The broad traits of temperament and behavior problems used in the present study seem to be good candidates to elucidate the relation between early child behavior and later adjustment. In particular, negative affect may predispose children to both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, whereas extraversion seems to be a buffer against internalizing behavior problems.

58

Chapter 5

Summary and Conclusions

Chapter 5: Summary and Conclusions In the present thesis the intergenerational transmission of temperament, the relation between family temperament and child behavior problems, and the longitudinal relations between child temperament and behavior problems were investigated. The three temperament factors negative affect, extraversion, and effortful control, as well as internalizing and externalizing behavior problems were the central concepts. In this final chapter, main findings and conclusions of the three studies will be presented. Furthermore, strengths and limitations of the studies conducted will be outlined, and recommendations for future research are considered. 5.1 Findings and Conclusions

In the first study intergenerational transmission was found for the temperament factor negative affect, especially for maternal negative affect. Father’s negative affect was only related to the eldest child. Differences in childrearing between mothers and fathers might account for this stronger relation between maternal and children’s negative affect. In general, mothers are more involved in socializing negative emotions than fathers (Bayrakdar Garside & Klimes-Dougan, 2002) and talk more about emotions with their children (Fivush et al., 2000). Furthermore, women express more negative affect than men (Brody & Hall, 2000). These differences between mothers and fathers might create a mechanism of children learning more about negative emotionality from their mothers, who display more negative emotions themselves as well. This may cause children to resemble their mothers more than they resemble their fathers on negative affect.

However, the shifting roles of fathers in families (Parke, 2002), consisting of taking greater responsibility in the education and care for their children, might change the aforementioned proposed processes in the future. If fathers are more available to their children when they are upset and need comforting, children might learn about regulating their negative emotions from their fathers as well.

No evidence was found for the intergenerational transmission of extraversion and effortful control, in spite of the assumed biological basis of temperament and the reported evidence for genetic influence on temperamental traits in behavior genetic research. Possible explanations for these seemingly contradictory findings are the influence of environmental factors and the increase of genetic influences across the lifespan (Plomin, 2004), which may cause relatives to differ on a heritable trait. Parental temperament has been influenced by maturity and experience (Putnam, Ellis, & Rothbart, 2001), whereas child temperament has been subject to these influences much shorter. Furthermore, the actual experiences that shaped temperament in parents and their children are different. These processes may have caused the non-significant findings for extraversion and effortful control in the first study. For now, children resemble their parents, and especially their mothers, on how they ventilate feelings of anger, frustration, sadness, and fear. Possibly, negative affect is modified through socialization earlier in life than effortful control and extraversion.

61

The influence of temperament characteristics of family members and the temperamental resemblance of family members on child behavior problems was assessed in the second study. Effortful control of the father was inversely related to externalizing behavior problems in both the youngest and the eldest child, even when simultaneously investigating the relation of the child’s own temperament with behavior problems. Furthermore, fathers with higher levels of negative affect had children with more externalizing behavior problems. Fathers are more tactile and physical in contact with their children, whereas mothers are more verbal and didactic (Parke, 2002). Therefore, fathers low in behavioral control and also high in negative emotionality may provide an especially rough play context. Such a context, and thus the temperamental characteristics of fathers, and not mothers, might contribute to the development of behavior problems.

In light of the results from the first study, namely the intergenerational transmission of maternal negative affect, these findings are unexpected. Since the child’s own negative affect is strongly related to behavior problems, a relation between maternal negative affect and behavior problems would be a more obvious finding. However, maternal characteristics do not account for additional variance in behavior problems above the influence of the child’s own temperament. Apparently, the influence of paternal characteristics in the development of behavior problems has been underestimated. In addition, the different results for mothers and fathers in this study underscore the need to include both parents in developmental research, instead of relying on maternal data and characteristics alone.

With regard to the similarity of temperament profiles, we found partial evidence that parents who resembled each other more had children with less internalizing behavior problems. Parents who have a similar temperament profile might have less marital conflicts (Luo & Klohnen, 2005) and provide a more consistent child-rearing environment. Children growing up in families with less marital conflict and more consistent parenting might develop less internalizing behavior problems. Sibling resemblance and temperamental characteristics of the sibling are less important when predicting child behavior problems. Stoneman and Brody (1993) reported that not just similarity or dissimilarity predicted relationship quality, but that specific combinations of temperament characteristics in both siblings seem to be important. Positive temperamental characteristics in one sibling might buffer the negative effects on relationship quality (or the development of behavior problems) of a difficult temperament in the other sibling. Our measure of profile similarity concerned the whole range of temperament dimensions, and therefore the effects of specific combinations of temperament dimensions could not be examined in this study.

The third empirical investigation focused on the longitudinal relations between temperament and behavior problems. The stability of both temperament and behavior problems was considerable, evidenced by the better fit of a common factor model in contrast to a cross-lagged panel model. This finding was attributed to the use of a fairly short time lapse, in combination with the use of broadband temperament and behavior problem measures. Because of the use of common factor models, no conclusions could be drawn with regard to the causal relation between temperament and behavior problems, despite the employment of a longitudinal design that included both constructs at all measurement occasions. Nevertheless, considerable relations between extraversion, negative affect, and

62

effortful control on the one hand, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems on the other hand, were found.

Children high in extraversion were found to have less internalizing but more externalizing behavior problems. Negative affectivity contributed positively to both types of behavior problems. And lastly, effortful control was found to be unrelated to internalizing behavior problems and negatively related to externalizing behavior problems. The unrelatedness of effortful control and internalizing behavior problems was rather surprising, since effortful control is reflective of self-regulation, a concept assumed to be critically important for the development of psychopathology (Calkins & Fox, 2002; Rueda, Posner et al., 2004). We argued that the distinction between voluntary (i.e., effortful control) and involuntary (i.e., fearful inhibition) regulation (Rothbart et al., 2004) might be helpful in understanding this result. Especially involuntary regulation could be related to internalizing behavior problems (Eisenberg et al., 2001). The concept of effortful control used in this study is more representative of the voluntary, attentional part of behavioral regulation, thus explaining the unrelatedness of effortful control and internalizing behavior problems.

We tested the models of the relation between temperament and behavior problems separately for eldest and youngest siblings. Therefore, the generalizability of the results to more than one child per family could be investigated. Indeed, the results for the eldest siblings were replicated in the models of the youngest siblings, except for the relation between extraversion and externalizing behavior problems. Although birth order effects seem a plausible explanation for this different finding, further investigation is needed to substantiate this. 5.2 Limitations and Strengths Before discussing some of the strengths of the empirical studies in the present thesis, we would like to stress some of its limitations. The most important limitation of the present studies is the sample size. Because of the fairly small sample size, we were not able to test complicated models, which included extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control in one single model. This should be a next step in this line of inquiry, since Rothbart and Bates (1998) already pointed out that interactions between temperament dimensions might also predict later adjustment. Especially self-regulatory aspects of temperament seem to play an important role in these processes. Another consequence of our fairly small sample size is that the power to detect significant findings is limited. A second limitation of the current investigations is the homogeneity of the sample. All families included were Caucasian, lived in Amsterdam or its surroundings, and most of the parents were highly educated. The willingness to participate in a longitudinal study is greater in highly educated parents. The eight visits to our laboratory required families to live near Amsterdam. Therefore, the generalizability of the present findings is limited. However, the investigation of the issues raised in the current thesis in a highly educated, Caucasian sample provides insights that are valuable for future studies in more diverse samples.

Nevertheless, despite these apparent limitations of the studies conducted, some assets deserve mention as well. Firstly, the inclusion of two siblings per family, as well as gathering

63

information from both mothers and fathers, has resulted in a more complete view of family processes than in most studies on child temperament. The different results found for mothers and fathers and for eldest and youngest siblings emphasize the need to study more than one child per family and mothers as well as fathers in future research, as was done in the present studies. Using the data gathered from these family members, we examined temperamental profile similarity. Temperamental profiles are thought to describe disorders better than specific dimensions because they provide a fuller view of one’s personality. Secondly, although the use of both questionnaire and observational data is valued in temperament research, studies doing so are still exceptional. By combining observational measures with parent ratings, information on child temperament was gathered in different contexts, thus creating robust temperament factors of negative affect, effortful control, and extraversion. Thirdly, the longitudinal design of the research project enabled us to examine some of the issues raised in the present thesis from a developmental perspective. Lastly, gathering data from (non-twin) siblings at the same age is almost unprecedented. 5.3 Recommendations The measurement of temperament has been subject to debate ever since the renascence of child temperament research through the Thomas and Chess studies. Nowadays, researchers acknowledge that its measurement should comprise multiple levels: the behavioral, psychological, neural, physiological, and genetic level (Nigg, 2006). This goes beyond collecting information from different sources, like combining parent ratings and observational measures on the behavioral level. Recently, temperament research has made links to affective and cognitive neuroscience. Two advances in the neurosciences are particularly important for research on temperamental differences, namely the possibility to image the functioning of the brain, and the mapping of the human genome (Rothbart, 2004). The application of brain images in combination with executive attentional tasks and the study of specific genes has already yielded exciting results (see e.g., Fossella, Sommer, Fan, Pfaff, & Posner, 2003; Rueda, Fan et al., 2004). Although the behavioral line of inquiry of temperament is still very important to understand the interplay between children’s characteristics and their environment, a multiple-level approach seems necessary to fully understand temperament and its developmental consequences. Furthermore, the distinction between temperament and personality is questioned more and more. The pathways between child temperament and adult personality are complex, but strong conceptual links have been reported (McCrae et al., 2000). A coherent framework of individual differences across the life span is a possible way to pursue understanding of the relation between child temperament and adult personality (Rothbart, 2004). Indeed, Clark (2005) has proposed an integrative framework to explain personality-psychopathology relations. In her view, “three broad, innate temperament dimensions - negative affectivity, positive affectivity, and disinhibition - differentiate through both biologically and environmentally based developmental processes into a hierarchical personality trait structure and, at their extremes, are risk factors (diatheses) for psychopathology” (p. 505). Temperament research should perhaps focus more on these three broadband measures instead

64

of distinguishing between several smallband dimensions, especially when relations between later personality and psychopathology are investigated (Mervielde et al., 2005). In addition, the use of temperament profiles instead of the focus on particular temperament dimensions might be important for the relation between temperament and psychopathology. Different levels of several temperament dimensions are thought to predict disorders better than the one-to-one relations (i.e., the relation between one temperament dimension and one type of problem behavior) investigated in the current temperament literature (Rettew & McKee, 2005). When the objective of temperament research is to provide relevant information for clinical practice, the use of temperament profiles is preferable.

Knowledge of the temperamental role in the development of psyhopathology is important for clinical practice concerned with treating or preventing child psychopathology. Treatment programs aimed at redressing negative emotionality should involve training both the parents’ and their child’s way of dealing with negative emotions. In contrast, when addressing the child’s attention regulation, or effortful control, parental treatment seems not necessary, but parents can be instructed to encourage the child and are able to function as a well-regulated model. Most child-directed treatment programs already contain elements of emotion regulation (Muris & Ollendick, 2005). Although no direct linkage between effortful control and internalizing behavior problems was found, effortful control could influence the development of behavior problems indirectly through regulating negative affect and extraversion. However, further research is necessary to study this promising contribution of the training of effortful control as an intervention to reduce the development of psychopathology (Muris & Ollendick, 2005).

65

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Samenvatting en Conclusies (Summary and Conclusions in Dutch)

Samenvatting en Conclusies (Summary and Conclusions in Dutch) In het voorliggende proefschrift zijn de intergenerationele overdracht van temperament, de relatie tussen gezinstemperament en gedragsproblemen van het kind en de longitudinale relatie tussen temperament en gedragsproblemen van het kind onderzocht. De onderzoeksgroep die deelnam aan het onderzoek bestond uit gezinnen met twee kinderen van ongeveer 2 en 4 jaar. Het onderzoek besloeg vier meetmomenten, die zo gepland waren dat tijdens het derde meetmoment het jongste kind even oud was als het oudste kind tijdens het eerste meetmoment. Het vierde meetmoment vond plaats op het moment dat het jongste kind even oud was als het oudste kind tijdens het tweede meetmoment. Het temperament van de kinderen is gemeten met vragenlijsten, ingevuld door vaders en moeders, alsook met gestandaardiseerde laboratoriumobservaties. Informatie over het probleemgedrag van de kinderen is ook bij vaders en moeders verzameld. Ten slotte vulden de ouders vragenlijsten in over hun eigen temperament. De drie temperamentsfactoren negatieve emotionaliteit, extraversie en bewuste controle zijn de concepten die centraal staan, evenals internaliserend en externaliserend probleemgedrag. In dit samenvattend hoofdstuk worden de belangrijkste bevindingen en conclusies van de drie empirische studies besproken. Vervolgens worden enkele kritische kanttekeningen geplaatst, maar wordt ook ingegaan op enkele sterke punten van het onderzoek. Ten slotte worden aanbevelingen voor verder onderzoek op het gebied van temperament en gedragsproblemen geformuleerd. Conclusies In de eerste studie is intergenerationele overdracht gevonden voor de temperamentsfactor negatieve emotionaliteit, met name tussen moeders en hun kinderen. De negatieve emotionaliteit van de vader bleek alleen gerelateerd aan negatieve emotionaliteit van het oudste kind. Verschillen in opvoedingsgedrag van vaders en moeders kunnen een verklaring zijn voor de sterkere relatie tussen de negatieve emotionaliteit van moeders en kinderen. Moeders zijn meer dan vaders betrokken bij het leren omgaan met negatieve emoties (Bayrakdar Garside & Klimes-Dougan, 2002) en ze praten meer met hun kinderen over emoties (Fivush et al., 2000). Bovendien laten vrouwen meer negatieve emoties zien dan mannen (Brody & Hall, 2000). Al deze verschillen tussen vaders en moeders zouden een mechanisme kunnen creëren waarin kinderen meer leren over negatieve emotionaliteit van hun moeders, die zelf ook meer negatieve emoties laten zien. Dit mechanisme zou ervoor kunnen zorgen dat kinderen meer op hun moeders lijken dan op hun vaders wat betreft negatieve emotionaliteit. Niettemin, de veranderende rol van vaders in gezinnen (Parke, 2002), zoals het nemen van meer verantwoordelijkheid in de opvoeding en verzorging van hun kinderen, kan de bovenstaande processen beïnvloeden. Als vaders vaker aanwezig zijn wanneer kinderen van streek zijn en troost zoeken, leren kinderen misschien van zowel vaders als moeders hoe ze hun emoties moeten reguleren.

We hebben geen bewijs gevonden voor de intergenerationele overdracht van

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extraversie en bewuste controle, ondanks de veronderstelde biologische basis van temperament en de in gedragsgenetisch onderzoek gerapporteerde empirische gegevens van een genetische invloed op temperamentskenmerken. Mogelijke verklaringen voor deze ogenschijnlijk tegenstrijdige bevindingen zijn de invloed van omgevingsfactoren en de toenemende genetische invloed gedurende de levensloop (Plomin, 2004), die ervoor zouden kunnen zorgen dat familieleden verschillen op een erfelijk overdraagbaar kenmerk. Het temperament van de ouders is beïnvloed door rijping en ervaring (Putnam et al., 2001), terwijl het temperament van het kind veel korter heeft blootgestaan aan die ontwikkelingen. Bovendien zijn de feitelijke ervaringen die het temperament vormgeven voor ouders en de kinderen anders. Deze processen kunnen een rol hebben gespeeld in de afwezigheid van een relatie tussen extraversie van ouders en kinderen en bewuste controle van ouders en kinderen. Vooralsnog lijken kinderen op hun ouders en in het bijzonder op hun moeder, wat betreft het uiten van gevoelens van woede, frustratie, verdriet en angst. Mogelijkerwijs wordt negatieve emotionaliteit door socialisatieprocessen eerder in de ontwikkeling beïnvloed dan bewuste controle en extraversie. De invloed van temperamentskenmerken van gezinsleden en de gelijkenis in temperament op gedragsproblemen van kinderen is onderzocht in de tweede studie. Bewuste controle van vaders blijkt negatief gerelateerd aan externaliserend probleemgedrag van zowel het oudste als het jongste kind, zelfs wanneer de invloed van het temperament van het kind zelf gelijktijdig werd onderzocht. Ook hebben vaders die meer negatieve emotionaliteit vertonen kinderen met meer externaliserend probleemgedrag. Vaders zijn in hun omgang met de kinderen meer gericht op fysiek contact, terwijl moeders meer verbaal en didactisch gedrag laten zien (Parke, 2002). Dit zou ervoor kunnen zorgen dat vaders die weinig controle over hun gedrag hebben en veel negatieve emoties uiten, ruiger zijn in hun spel met de kinderen. Dit ruigere spel en daarmee ook de temperamentskenmerken van de vaders, zou kunnen bijdragen aan de ontwikkeling van gedragsproblemen. Gezien de resultaten van de eerste studie, namelijk de grotere intergenerationele overdracht van negatieve emotionaliteit van moeders dan vaders, zijn de bevindingen van de tweede studie opmerkelijk. Omdat de negatieve emotionaliteit van de kinderen zelf sterk gerelateerd is aan gedragsproblemen, zou een relatie tussen negatieve emotionaliteit van de moeders en gedragsproblemen meer voor de hand liggen. Toch dragen de karaktereigenschappen van moeders niet bij aan de verklaarde variantie van gedragsproblemen naast de invloed van temperament van het kind zelf. Waarschijnlijk werd in eerdere studies de bijdrage van karaktereigenschappen van vaders aan het ontstaan van gedragsproblemen onderschat. De verschillende resultaten voor vaders en moeders in dit onderzoek benadrukken juist dat vaders ook onderzocht moeten worden in ontwikkelingspsychologisch onderzoek, in plaats van het verzamelen van alleen gegevens van moeders. Met betrekking tot de gelijkenis van temperamentsprofielen vonden we enige onderbouwing voor minder internaliserende gedragsproblemen bij kinderen waarvan de ouders meer op elkaar lijken in temperament. Ouders met een meer op elkaar lijkend temperamentsprofiel hebben wellicht minder conflicten in hun relatie (Luo & Klohnen, 2005), waardoor ze consistenter opvoeden. Kinderen die opgroeien in gezinnen met minder

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conflicten en een consistenter opvoedingsklimaat zouden mogelijk minder internaliserend probleemgedrag ontwikkelen. De gelijkenis van het temperamentsprofiel van broertjes en zusjes is van minder belang voor het voorspellen van gedragsproblemen. Stoneman en Brody (1993) rapporteren dat niet zozeer gelijkenis van belang is voor de kwaliteit van de relatie met broertjes en zusjes, maar dat ook vooral specifieke combinaties van temperamentskenmerken in broertjes en zusjes belangrijk zijn. Positieve temperamentskenmerken in het ene kind zouden de gevolgen van een hoge score op bijvoorbeeld negatieve emotionaliteit van het andere kind voor de kwaliteit van hun relatie (of voor de ontwikkeling van gedragsproblemen) kunnen tegengaan. Omdat onze maat voor profielgelijkenis het hele spectrum van temperamentsdimensies betrof, konden de effecten van specifieke combinaties tussen temperamentdimensies van de kinderen niet onderzocht worden in deze studie. Het derde empirische onderzoek in dit proefschrift richtte zich op de longitudinale relaties tussen temperament en gedragsproblemen van kinderen. De gevonden stabiliteit van zowel temperament als gedragsproblemen was aanzienlijk, blijkend uit het feit dat een éénfactor model de data beter beschreef dan een zogenaamd cross-lagged panel model. Deze stabiliteit kan worden toegeschreven aan het gebruik van een tamelijk kort tijdsinterval, in combinatie met het gebruik van robuuste maten voor temperament en gedragsproblemen. Omdat de éénfactor modellen beter bij de gegevens passen, zijn er geen conclusies getrokken met betrekking tot de oorzakelijke verbanden tussen temperament en gedragsproblemen, ondanks de toepassing van een longitudinale onderzoeksopzet waarin beide constructen op alle meetmomenten werden meegenomen. Toch zijn aanzienlijke samenhangen gevonden tussen extraversie, negatieve emotionaliteit en bewuste controle aan de ene kant, en aan de andere kant internaliserend en externaliserend probleemgedrag. De resultaten van deze studie wijzen erop dat extraverte kinderen minder internaliserende, maar juist meer externaliserende gedragsproblemen vertonen. Beide typen probleemgedrag worden versterkt door negatieve emotionaliteit. Bewuste controle ten slotte, is ongerelateerd aan internaliserend probleemgedrag, maar hangt wel negatief samen met externaliserend probleemgedrag. Het ontbreken van een relatie tussen bewuste controle en internaliserend probleemgedrag is onverwacht, omdat bewuste controle een onderdeel is van zelfregulatie. Zelfregulatie wordt doorgaans verondersteld zeer belangrijk te zijn voor de ontwikkeling van psychopathologische problemen (Calkins & Fox, 2002; Rueda, Posner et al., 2004). Wij voeren het onderscheid tussen vrijwillige (bewuste controle) en onvrijwillige (angstige inhibitie) regulatie (Rothbart et al., 2004) aan om deze resultaten te begrijpen. Met name onvrijwillige regulatie zou kunnen samenhangen met internaliserend gedragsproblemen (Eisenberg et al., 2001). Het door ons gemeten concept bewuste controle heeft wellicht meer te maken met vrijwillige, op aandachtsprocessen gerichte gedragscontrole, zodat het ontbreken van een samenhang tussen bewuste controle en internaliserende gedragsproblemen kan worden verklaard. We hebben de relatie tussen temperament en gedragsproblemen apart bekeken voor de oudste en de jongste kinderen in het gezin. Zo kon de generaliseerbaarheid van de resultaten naar meer dan één kind per gezin vastgesteld worden. De resultaten voor de oudste kinderen konden inderdaad gerepliceerd worden bij de jongste kinderen, behalve de relatie tussen extraversie en externaliserend probleemgedrag. Hoewel een effect van de positie in de

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kinderrij een verklaring zou kunnen zijn voor dit verschil, is meer onderzoek nodig om deze redenering te onderbouwen. Kanttekeningen bij het Onderzoek Voordat de sterke kanten van het onderzoek in dit proefschrift belicht worden, willen we aandacht vragen voor enkele beperkingen. De belangrijkste beperking van de beschreven studies is de relatief kleine onderzoeksgroep. Zodoende was het niet mogelijk om gecompliceerde modellen te toetsen die de drie temperamentsfactoren extraversie, negatieve emotionaliteit en bewuste controle gelijktijdig onderzochten. Dit zou een volgende stap moeten zijn in het onderzoek naar de relatie tussen temperament en gedragsproblemen, aangezien Rothbart en Bates (1998) al aangaven dat interacties van temperamentsdimensies onderling gerelateerd kunnen zijn aan gedragsproblemen. Vooral aspecten van zelfregulatie lijken een belangrijke rol te spelen in deze interactieprocessen. Een ander gevolg van een relatief kleine onderzoeksgroep is dat de power om significante resultaten vast te stellen beperkt is. Een tweede beperking van de studies in dit proefschrift is de homogeniteit van de onderzoeksgroep. Alle deelnemende gezinnen zijn autochtoon, woonden ten tijde van het onderzoek in Amsterdam of in de directe omgeving ervan en de ouders hebben over het algemeen een hoog opleidingsniveau. De bereidheid om deel te nemen aan een longitudinaal onderzoek is groter onder deze hoog opgeleide ouders. Dat de ouders met hun kinderen in totaal acht keer naar ons laboratorium op de universiteit moesten komen, zorgde ervoor dat de gezinnen in of in de buurt van Amsterdam moesten wonen. Door de homogeniteit van de onderzoeksgroep is de generaliseerbaarheid van de resultaten naar andere groepen in de samenleving beperkt. Toch levert het onderzoeken van deze onderwerpen in een selecte steekproef waardevolle informatie op voor toekomstige onderzoeken in diversere steekproeven. Ondanks de beperkingen van de studies in dit proefschrift verdienen een aantal sterke punten ook de aandacht. Ten eerste heeft het onderzoeken van twee kinderen per gezin, alsook het verzamelen van informatie bij zowel vaders als moeders, een completer beeld van het gezin opgeleverd dan in de meeste onderzoeken naar het temperament van kinderen. De verschillende resultaten voor vaders en moeders en voor het oudste en jongste kind benadrukken het belang van het bestuderen van zowel vaders als moeders en meer dan één kind per gezin in toekomstig onderzoek, zoals dat in deze studies ook gedaan is. Gebruik makend van de gegevens van alle gezinsleden hebben we de profielgelijkenis van temperament onderzocht. Temperamentsprofielen zouden gedragsstoornissen beter kunnen beschrijven dan de afzonderlijke temperamentsdimensies. Ten tweede zijn er nog steeds weinig studies die zowel vragenlijst- als observatiegegevens van het temperament van het kind verzamelen. Door de observatiedata te combineren met gegevens verzameld bij de ouders is informatie over het temperament van het kind in verschillende contexten verzameld. Tevens is zo een robuust beeld van de temperamentsfactoren negatieve emotionaliteit, bewuste controle en extraversie verkregen. Ten derde waren we door de longitudinale onderzoeksopzet in staat enkele onderwerpen in dit proefschrift vanuit een ontwikkelingsperspectief te bekijken. Ten slotte komt het zelden voor dat er gegevens van

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broertjes en zusjes op dezelfde leeftijd, terwijl ze geen tweeling zijn, worden verzameld. Hierdoor kunnen verschillen binnen gezinnen onderzocht worden. Aanbevelingen Hoe temperament het beste gemeten kan worden is sinds de opleving van het temperamentsonderzoek naar aanleiding van het onderzoek van Thomas en Chess een onderwerp van debat. Tegenwoordig wordt erkend dat het meten van temperament op verschillende niveaus zou moeten plaatsvinden: op het gedrags-, psychologische, neurale, physiologische en genetische niveau (Nigg, 2006). Dit gaat verder dan het verzamelen van informatie bij verschillende bronnen, zoals het combineren van gegevens van ouders en van observaties op het gedragsniveau. Recentelijk heeft het temperamentsonderzoek toenadering gezocht tot de affectieve en cognitieve neurowetenschappen. Twee ontwikkelingen in de neurowetenschappen zijn bijzonder van belang voor onderzoek naar temperamentsverschillen, namelijk de toenemende mogelijkheid om de werking van het brein vast te leggen en de ontrafeling van het menselijk genoom (Rothbart, 2004). Het toepassen van hersenscans in combinatie met aandachtstaakjes en onderzoek naar specifieke genen heeft al interessante resultaten opgeleverd (zie bijvoorbeeld Fossella et al., 2003; Rueda, Fan et al., 2004). Hoewel de onderzoekslijn die zich richt op het gedragsaspect van temperament nog steeds erg belangrijk is om de wisselwerking tussen kenmerken van het kind en hun omgeving te begrijpen, lijkt een aanpak op de hiervoor genoemde verschillende niveaus uitermate belangrijk om temperament en de gevolgen ervan voor de ontwikkeling van het kind te bevatten. Een ander aandachtspunt is het onderscheid tussen persoonlijkheid en temperament, een onderscheid dat steeds minder wordt gemaakt. De ontwikkelingspaden van temperament naar persoonlijkheid zijn complex, maar er zijn sterke conceptuele verbanden gevonden (McCrae et al., 2000). Een coherent raamwerk voor individuele verschillen over de gehele levensloop is een mogelijkheid om de relatie tussen temperament en persoonlijkheid te begrijpen (Rothbart, 2004). Clark (2005) heeft een integratie van temperaments-, persoonlijkheids-, en psychopathologisch onderzoek voorgesteld om de relatie tussen persoonlijkheid en psychopathologie te kunnen verklaren. In haar visie zijn drie brede, aangeboren temperamentsdimensies, namelijk negatieve emotionaliteit, positieve emotionaliteit en disinhibitie, de basis voor ontwikkelingsprocessen die leiden tot een hiërarchische persoonlijkheidsstructuur. Deze dimensies vormen in hun extreme uitingen risicofactoren voor psychopathologie. Het temperamentsonderzoek zou zich misschien meer moeten richten op deze brede temperamentsstructuren in plaats van onderscheid te maken tussen verschillende specifiekere dimensies, met name wanneer de relatie met psychopathologie onderzocht wordt (Mervielde et al., 2005). Ook zou het gebruik van temperamentsprofielen in plaats van de verschillende temperamentskenmerken apart van belang kunnen zijn voor de relatie tussen temperament en psychopathologie. De niveaus van verschillende temperamentsdimensies ten opzichte van elkaar voorspellen stoornissen waarschijnlijk beter dan de één-op-één relaties die vooral onderzocht worden in het huidige temperamentsonderzoek (Rettew & McKee, 2005). Als het doel van temperamentsonderzoek

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is om de klinische praktijk van relevante informatie te voorzien, is het aan te raden met temperamentsprofielen te werken. Kennis van de rol die temperament speelt in de ontwikkeling van psychopathologie is van belang voor de klinische praktijk die psychopathologie in kinderen behandelt of probeert te voorkomen. Programma’s gericht op het verminderen van negatieve emotionaliteit zouden zowel de ouders als het kind moeten leren hoe ze op een andere manier met negatieve emoties om kunnen gaan. Wanneer programma’s echter gericht zijn op het verbeteren van de bewuste controle, is de behandeling van ouders niet nodig en kunnen ouders het kind juist ondersteunen en als voorbeeld dienen. De meeste behandelingen die op het kind gericht zijn, bevatten al onderdelen die gericht zijn op de emotieregulatie (Muris & Ollendick, 2005). Hoewel er geen rechtstreeks verband is aangetoond tussen bewuste controle en internaliserende gedragsproblemen, zou bewuste controle de ontwikkeling van gedragsproblemen indirect kunnen beïnvloeden, namelijk door de negatieve emotionaliteit en extraversie te reguleren. Om deze veelbelovende interventie van het trainen van bewuste controle als preventief middel tegen de ontwikkeling van psychopathologie te onderbouwen (Muris & Ollendick, 2005), is echter verder onderzoek geboden.

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Dankwoord (Acknowledgements)

Dankwoord (Acknowledgements)

Ten eerste wil ik op deze plek alle gezinnen bedanken die aan het onderzoek hebben meegewerkt. Het getuigt van veel enthousiasme en betrokkenheid bij het onderzoek dat de ouders bereid waren acht keer naar ons laboratorium te komen en daar hun kinderen bloot te stellen aan alle spelletjes die we voor ze bedacht hadden. Ook werden we tijdens de huisbezoeken hartelijk ontvangen, en stond de thee altijd klaar. Ik vond het heel fijn om de kinderen te zien en te horen dat zij er ook naar uitkeken om weer naar de “spelletjesjuffen” te gaan. Dit deel van het onderzoek is heel belangrijk voor mij geweest. Door nauw betrokken te zijn geweest bij de gezinnen werden de gegevens van de kinderen levendig, en kon ik de studenten die me hebben geholpen leuke anekdotes vertellen over de bezoeken van de kinderen. De studenten die bij ons project een onderzoeksstage of -scriptie hebben gedaan, zijn onmisbaar geweest, zonder jullie hadden we niet zoveel gezinnen kunnen bezoeken en observeren. Bij naam wil ik noemen: Sara, Marieke, Bianca, Hadassa, Marjolein, Florine, Rachel, Suzanne, Ina, Esther, Fieke, Marjoleine, Anne-Pauline, Bertha en Mascha. Ook mijn directe collega’s zijn onmisbaar geweest voor het onderzoek, onder andere door ‘masker’ en ‘vreemde’ te willen spelen. Hiervoor wil ik met name Frank, Michaël, Jan, Roel, IJsbrand en Sofie, Sanne, Jessica en Ellen bedanken. Frank, jij verdient nog meer hulde, aangezien we van je kantoor gebruik hebben gemaakt voor de observaties en je ons met raad en daad hebt bijgestaan wat betreft alle audio-visuele aspecten van het onderzoek. Verder heb ik altijd veel steun gekregen van de collega’s van de leerstoelgroep OOS en van onze methodoloog Reinoud Stoel, die voor mijn tijd ook nog wel eens een ‘vreemde’ is geweest. Mirjana wil ik apart noemen, omdat zij een heel bijzondere collega is geweest. Zij heeft dit project opgebouwd, ik heb het stokje halverwege overgenomen. Ik ben haar heel dankbaar voor haar grondige werkwijze, haar creatieve geest en kritische blik. Hoewel er altijd voor- en nadelen kleven aan een hechte samenwerking in een onderzoeksproject, denk ik dat we het tot een heel goed einde hebben gebracht. Zij is jarenlang mijn kamergenoot geweest, we hebben heel wat potten thee gedronken en konden ook al onze persoonlijke troubles bij elkaar kwijt. Mijn promotor, Dymph van den Boom, ben ik echter de meeste dank verschuldigd. Ik ben blij dat ze mij ondanks mijn gebrek aan ervaring in de omgang met kinderen en met het schrijven van wetenschappelijk Engels (“daar zijn cursussen voor”) toch het vertrouwen heeft geschonken om dit project tot een goed einde te kunnen brengen. Ik ben er trots op dat ik de kans heb gekregen om bij haar te promoveren en te leren van haar kennis van zaken, inzicht in de onderzoekswereld, schrijfstijl en vooral haar directheid. Na de besprekingen met haar zakte me soms de moed in de schoenen, zoveel moest er weer veranderd en verbeterd worden. Maar als ik bijna de deur uit was, uitte ze iedere keer weer haar vertrouwen met de uitspraak: “Het wordt een heel mooi artikel!”. Dit is het eindresultaat van dit vertrouwen en haar vakkundige begeleiding. Mijn echte moeder, die toevalligerwijs ook Dymph heet, heeft mij altijd onvoorwaardelijk gesteund tijdens mijn promotietraject. Ik kon altijd bellen om ergens over te klagen, goed nieuws te vertellen of gewoon, om even afleiding te vinden. En als ik niet belde, belde zij wel, of ik gebeld had, er stond namelijk weer ‘nummer onbekend’ op de

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nummermelder. Ik ben blij dat ze mij heeft geleerd met beide benen op de grond te staan, te vertrouwen in mijn kennis en capaciteiten, het bijltje er niet bij neer te gooien en op te komen voor mijn principes. Nico, mijn broer(!), wil ik bedanken voor zijn bezoekjes aan Amsterdam en voor het feit dat hij op mijn promotie naast mij wil staan als paranimf. We hebben het allebei heel goed gedaan, die ouders van ons kunnen trots zijn! Het paranimfschap deelt hij met IJsbrand, mijn lief. Als collega’s hebben we elkaar leren kennen en het is een heel fijne relatie geworden. Hij heeft mij altijd aangespoord om te promoveren, met een ultieme beloning in het vooruitzicht. Ook heeft hij de inhoud van dit proefschrift meerdere malen gelezen en gecorrigeerd en ook al was ik het niet altijd meteen met zijn kritiek eens, na een nacht slapen had hij toch wel een punt. De voorwaarden voor dit resultaat zijn mede tot stand gekomen door drie ooms van mij. Oom Jos heeft mij gesteund tijdens mijn studie in Nijmegen, oom Jan heeft mijn ouders geholpen in moeilijke tijden en samen met tante Marianne uitstapjes verzorgd voor alle neven en nichten, en oom Loet heeft ervoor gezorgd dat mijn proefschrift gedrukt kon worden bij de drukkerij die van mijn opa was. Ellen heeft het manuscript helemaal nagekeken op taal- en typefouten. Ook heb ik veel aan haar steun gehad bij mijn eerste dagen in Utrecht, steun waarvan het ‘pimpen’ van mijn vouwfiets de kroon spant! Vera ken ik sinds onze studie in Nijmegen en het klikte vanaf de eerste introductiedag. Haar wil ik bedanken voor de fijne jaren in Nijmegen en voor onze vriendschap! Rest mij nog één persoon, mijn vader, Guus. Zijn betrokkenheid bij de opleiding van zijn kinderen was altijd heel groot, zo groot dat hij een openbare basisschool oprichtte in het katholieke Hoensbroek, niet kon slapen omdat we samen die huiswerkopdracht voor wiskunde niet konden oplossen (bleek het om 3 uur ’s nachts gewoon een stelling van Pythagoras te zijn!) en ongelofelijk trots was tijdens de diploma-uitreikingen die hij heeft mogen meemaken. Niet alleen de voltooiing van mijn opleiding had ik met je willen delen, ook de inhoud van mijn onderzoek. Ik heb het nooit met je kunnen hebben over je werk en de ongetwijfeld temperamentvolle kinderen die jij al die jaren als gezinsvoogd bij de Jeugdzorg hebt begeleid. Dat is een groot gemis. Ik weet zeker dat je op dit proefschrift weer zo trots als een pauw zou zijn geweest.

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Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae Daniëlle Heesbeen is geboren in 1977, in Heerlen. In 1996 rondde zij het gymnasium af aan scholengemeenschap St. Jan te Hoensbroek. Daarna studeerde zij pedagogische wetenschappen, met als specialisatie gezinspedagogiek, aan de Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (de huidige Radboud Universiteit), waar ze in 2000 haar doctoraalexamen haalde. Haar scriptieonderzoek betrof de inzet van extern diagnostisch onderzoek bij de Raad voor de Kinderbescherming, in opdracht van de Directie Oost van de Raad. Tijdens haar studie is ze vrijwilliger geweest bij de Kindertelefoon. Na haar studie was ze betrokken bij een internationaal onderzoek naar begrijpend lezen (Progress in Reading Literacy Study- PIRLS). Van januari 2001 tot december 2005 was ze werkzaam als assistent in opleiding aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam, bij de afdeling pedagogiek. Daar heeft ze statistiekonderwijs verzorgd en onderzoekspractica, onderzoeksstages en scripties begeleid. Sinds 1 april 2006 is zij aangesteld als onderzoeker aan de Universiteit Utrecht, bij de afdeling ontwikkelingspsychologie, waar zij onderzoek doet naar de relaties tussen jonge kinderen in de kinderopvang. Naast deze werkzaamheden is ze vrijwilliger bij de Stichting AGO, die voorzieningen voor dagbesteding verzorgt voor volwassen verstandelijk gehandicapten.

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temperament and behaviour problems in childhood · another approach to link childhood temperament...

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