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Temperament   261

 ● Slow-to-warm-up babies , 15% of the sample, were slow to adapt to new environments and exhibited low activity and intensity, a moderate level of negative emotions, and a tendency to withdraw from new situations (Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1970). CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING 7.9 1. Describe “easy babies,” “difficult babies,” and “slow-to-warm-up babies” as identified by Thomas and Chess. Contemporary Models of Temperament LEARNING OBJECTIVE 7.10  Summarize how the research of Rothbart and Bates contributed to the current conceptualization of temperament. Thework of Thomas andChess sparkedmuch subsequent research, including that of developmentalistsMary Rothbart and Jack Bates (Rothbart &Bates, 2006). Roth- bart and Bates measured temperament by asking parents to report on their infants’ behaviors across a variety of situations. They asked questions such as, “When being dressed or undressed, how often does your baby cry, sit quietly, watch, etc.?”and “When having a toy taken away, howoften does your baby____?” Based on parents’ responses, Rothbart identified six dimensions of temperament:  ● Activity : The infant’s level of gross motor activity, including moving the arms, legs, torso, squirming, and so forth  ● Positive affect : The infant’s expressions of happiness through smiling and laughter  ● Fear : The infant’s intensity of reaction to novel stimuli (including distress), time it takes the baby to approach new situations and people, and inhibition —withdrawal from unfamiliar situations and people  ● Distress to limitations : The infant’s distress in relation to desired goals, such as waiting for food, being confined, being dressed, being prevented from accessing an object  ● Soothability : The infant’s reduction of fussing, crying, or distress when soothed by a caregiver or the self  ● Attention : The infant’s vocalizing, looking at and/or engagement with an object for an extended period of time When Rothbart and colleagues analyzed these six dimensions together, they identified three components of temperament: surgency, negative reactivity, and orienting regulation ( FIGURE 7.13 ) (e.g., Putnam, Gartstein, & Rothbart, 2006). Infants and toddlers ranged from low to high in their scores on these components. ✓ inhibition  A dimension of tempera- ment that reflects an infant’s with- drawal from and intense reaction to unfamiliar situations and people PROPERTY OF OXFORD

FIGURE 7.13  Rothbart and Bates’s temperament dimensions.  Temperament refers to a person’s intensity of reactivity and regulation of emotions, activity, and attention. Rothbart and colleagues identified six dimensions of temperament that combined into three overall compo- nents of temperament—negative reactivity, surgency, and orienting regulation. Marked differences exist among infants in these compo- nents of temperament. (After M. K. Rothbart and J. E. Bates. 2006. In Handbook of Child Psychology: Social, Emotional, and Personality Development . N. Eisenberg et al. [Eds.], pp. 99–166. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ.)

Temperament dimensions 1. Activity 2. Positive effect 3. Fear 4. Distress to limitations 5. Soothability 6. Attention

Negative reactivity indexes infant fear, frustration, sadness, and low soothability. UNIVERSITY PRESS Surgency measures an infant’s activity level and intensity of pleasure. Orienting regulation refers to an infant’s ability to regulate attention toward goals and away from distressing situations.