Early Individual Differences Research Articles

A longitudinal examination of early communicative development: Evidence from a parent‐report questionnaire

The present research employed a longitudinal design to assess the verbal and non-verbal communicative abilities of a sample of 104 children, using two different parent-report instruments: the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language (QCEL) development at 12, 16, and 20 months, and the Italian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: Words and Gestures at 23 months. The results supported and extended previous data about the validity of the QCEL, by showing that: (1) both verbal and non-verbal variables predicted the level of language development at 23 months; (2) children classified as at-risk with the QCEL had reduced vocabulary size and a lower number of sentences at 23 months; (3) early individual differences in the use of words and gestures were associated with later differences in linguistic abilities. It is concluded that the longitudinal use of the QCEL questionnaire can provide useful information about language development.

Individual differences in growth in executive function across the transition to school predict externalizing and internalizing behaviors and self-perceived academic success at 6 years of age

Building on an existing latent variable analysis of executive function (EF) in children ( N = 191, 57% boys and 43% girls) making the transition to school ( Hughes et al. (2010), Developmental Neuropsychology, vol. 35, pp. 20–36), the current study both documented average developmental improvements from 4 to 6 years of age and examined individual differences in EF growth in relation to latent factors for two sets of child outcome measures at 6 years: (a) first-grade teachers’ ratings of emotional symptoms, hyperactivity, and conduct/peer problems and (b) children’s self-perceived academic and social competencies. With effects of concurrent verbal ability and EF controlled, variation in EF slopes across the transition to school predicted variation in latent constructs for (a) all four problem behavior subscales and (b) children’s self-reported academic (but not social) competence. These findings underscore the clinical and educational significance of early individual differences in EF and highlight the value of adopting a developmental perspective.

The development of emotion.

Given that they are responsible for much of the meaning that we attribute to our existence, emotions could be said to have a central role in the psychological life of humans. But given this fundamental level of significance, the construct of emotion remains poorly understood, with the field of emotion research being full of conflicting definitions and opposing theoretical perspectives. In this review, one particular aspect of research into emotion is considered: the development of emotion in infancy and early childhood. The development of the emotional life of the child has been the focus of a vast amount of research and theorizing, so in a brief review it is only possible to scratch the surface of this topic. Rather than any attempt at a comprehensive account, three perennial questions in theorizing and research on early emotional development will be considered. First, what develops in emotional development? Second, what is the relation of cognitive development to emotional development? Third, how has the study of early individual differences in emotion expression typically been approached? In relation to the first question, four theoretical approaches to emotional development are described. For the second question, the focus is on the relation of self-awareness to the development of emotion. Finally, for the third question, the use of temperament theory as a framework for understanding individual differences in emotion expression is examined. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Patterns of sustained attention in infancy shape the developmental trajectory of social behavior from toddlerhood through adolescence.

The current study examined the relations between individual differences in sustained attention in infancy, the temperamental trait behavioral inhibition in childhood, and social behavior in adolescence. The authors assessed 9-month-old infants using an interrupted-stimulus attention paradigm. Behavioral inhibition was subsequently assessed in the laboratory at 14 months, 24 months, 4 years, and 7 years. At age 14 years, adolescents acted out social scenarios in the presence of an unfamiliar peer as observers rated levels of social discomfort. Relative to infants with high levels of sustained attention, infants with low levels of sustained attention showed increasing behavioral inhibition throughout early childhood. Sustained attention also moderated the relation between childhood behavioral inhibition and adolescent social discomfort, such that initial levels of inhibition at 14 months predicted later adolescent social difficulties only for participants with low levels of sustained attention in infancy. These findings suggest that early individual differences in attention shape how children respond to their social environments, potentially via attention's gate-keeping role in framing a child's environment for processing.

Low Inhibitory Control and Restrictive Feeding Practices Predict Weight Outcomes

A priority for research is to identify individuals early in development who are particularly susceptible to weight gain in the current, obesogenic environment. This longitudinal study investigated whether early individual differences in inhibitory control, an aspect of temperament, predicted weight outcomes and whether parents' restrictive feeding practices moderated this relation. Participants included 197 non-Hispanic white girls and their parents; families were assessed when girls were 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 years old. Measures included mothers' reports of girls' inhibitory control levels, girls' reports of parental restriction in feeding, girls' body mass indexes (BMIs), and parents' BMIs, education, and income. Girls with lower inhibitory control at age 7 had higher concurrent BMIs, greater weight gain, higher BMIs at all subsequent time points, and were 1.95 times more likely to be overweight at age 15. Girls who perceived higher parental restriction exhibited the strongest inverse relation between inhibitory control and weight status. Variability in inhibitory control could help identify individuals who are predisposed to obesity risk; the current findings also highlight the importance of parenting practices as potentially modifiable factors that exacerbate or attenuate this risk.

Early individual differences in temperamental reactivity and regulation: Implications for effortful control in early childhood

This longitudinal study tested the hypothesis that early temperament is associated with later effortful control. Fear reactivity and object orientation was assessed in a sample of 53 children at 8, 12, and 16 months during a stranger-approach paradigm and at 4.5 or 5.5 years on a battery of effortful control tasks. A latent growth curve analysis was used to model change in reactivity and object orientation across infancy and the prediction of each on later effortful control. Infants who increased in fear reactivity were significantly more likely to show poor performance on effortful control tasks in early childhood. Findings are discussed with respect to the importance of examining early temperamental precursors that contribute to the development of regulation.

Genetic influences on early word recognition abilities and disabilities: a study of 7‐year‐old twins

A fundamental issue for child psychology concerns the origins of individual differences in early reading development. A measure of word recognition, the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE), was administered by telephone to a representative population sample of 3,909 same-sex and opposite-sex pairs of 7-year-old twins. Analyses allowing for sex differences in aetiology were used to estimate the extent to which genetic and environmental influences contribute to normal variation in word recognition and word recognition difficulties, defined by scores below the 5th and 10th percentiles of the unselected sample. Both normal variation in word recognition and impaired word recognition abilities were substantially heritable (h2 = .65-.67; h(g)2 = .37-.72). Environmental influences were primarily shared between twins, rather than specific to each individual, and small to moderate in magnitude. There was evidence for qualitative sex differences. Quantitative sex differences were also suggested at the extremes, with genetic influences being more important as a cause of reading difficulties in boys than in girls. These findings indicate that early individual differences and impairments in word recognition are principally influenced by genetic factors and may involve partly distinct genetic or environmental effects in boys and girls. Crucially, they also provide evidence that reading impairments are linked genetically to the normal distribution. Genetic risk for early impairments in word recognition is continuous rather than discrete.

Rigidity and flexibility of gender stereotypes in childhood: developmental or differential?

Previous research has shown that the early learning of male–female categories is characterized by rigid beliefs about stereotypic differences, but that once gender knowledge is well established, the beliefs become more flexible. Because most studies are cross-sectional, it is not known if the early rigidity represents a normative transitional developmental stage that passes, or if early individual differences in rigidity continue into later childhood. To answer that question, analyses were performed on longitudinal data of 64 children who had been questioned about their gender concepts yearly from ages 5 to 10 years. Supporting a cognitive-developmental approach, the findings showed that the period of rigidity was short-lived whether rigidity began early or late or whether the level of peak rigidity was high or low. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Early Peer Interaction: A Research Agenda

We propose and discuss several hypotheses concerning the unique developmental status of peer relations in the first three years of life. We then suggest how these developmental differences might translate into hypotheses regarding early individual differences. The integrating questions revolve around whether individual differences in toddler and early preschool peer relations mean the same thing to young children as they do to older children, and whether they carry the same weight and serve the same functions in toddler peer groups as in peer groups among older children. Specifically, we suggest three ways that peer relations in the first three years are fundamentally different from later childhood peer relations: 1) they are likely to be more directly linked to and determined by temperament and attachment relationships; 2) limits in self and other understanding in the early years we likely to constrain both individual interaction skills and the formation of relationships with peers; 3) because emotion regulation in very young children is different from childhood emotion regulation, its role in governing peer relations will likely be different as well. Together, these proposals lead to the conclusion that individual differences in toddler peer relations must carry different meaning than in later childhood. A developmental perspective on individual differences suggests both continuities and discontinuities between toddler peer relations and childhood peer relations, and we offer several predictions.

Attention and reaction to distress in infancy: a longitudinal study.

The primary aim of this study was to verify whether early individual differences in look duration are related to general mechanisms of the infant nervous system that draw together attention and emotion. Thirty-one infants were observed at 3, 5, and 11 months of age. Facial expressions of pain and distress were observed by means of C. Izard's (1979) Maximally Discriminative Facial Movement Coding System 90 s after routine pediatric vaccinations. Several measures of visual attention were taken experimentally in a separate testing session. Significant correlations between measures of attention and duration of facial expressions of pain and distress were found at each age level. Infants who showed pain or distress for a shorter time period also paid attention for a shorter time period and vice versa. The main conclusion is that individual differences combining control of both pain and attention can be identified from early infancy.

Long-Term Stability of Individual Differences in Sustained Attention in the Early Years

The goal of this longitudinal study was to explore whether early measures of attention and inattention would be predictive of later attentiveness and whether there was any evidence of stable individual differences in attentiveness. Both full-term and preterm children were observed at 1, 2, and 3.5 years in free play and in more structured situations. For the group as a whole, and for full-terms separately, quantitative measures of inattention at 2 years were predictive of comparable measures at 3.5 years. For preterms separately, quantitative measures of inattention at 1 year were predictive of both behavior and the mothers' rating on the Conners Hyperactivity subscale at 3.5 years. Global, qualitative ratings of attentiveness at 1 and 2 years were predictive of mothers' ratings on the Conners at 3.5 years for the group as a whole and for full-terms separately. For full-terms only, the global ratings of attentiveness at 1 and 2 years were also predictive of 3.5-year quantitative measures of behavior. These data provide an encouraging base for further investigation of early individual differences in attentiveness and of possible early precursors of later attention deficits.

Facteurs en jeu dans la construction de la personnalité chez les jumeaux

Summary : Major factors of twins' personality development. One of the major issues that has emerged from a broader research project on early mother-twin relationships, is the role played by the specific interactive features of this situation on the development of twins' personalities. Recent research on the infant makes it possible to reformulate this issue — which touches on the classic nature/nurture debate — differently. Three types of data are compared and contrasted in this theoretical overview : recent findings on early individual differences and the temperament of twins, an historical recapitulation of Zazzo's work on the « couple effect », and work on the family environment : parental attitudes towards education/ upbringing of twins as related to the physical/psychic makeup of each child, parental coping wilh the stress created by twin births, and the author's own findings on early mother-twin relationships. The discussion focuses on the usefulness of orienting studies on twins' personalities on maternal representations of differences between twins, notably from the angle of comparative language behaviour by which the mother introduces her subjectively. Key-words : twins, infant, personality, temperament, family relationships.

Neonatal imitation of tongue protrusion and mouth opening: methodological aspects and evidence of early individual differences.

The present work examines imitation of mouth opening and tongue protrusion in 32 full-term infants at three different occasions: When the infants are two to three days, three weeks, and three months old. The analysis focuses (1) on individual differences in imitative behaviour and (2) on how to operationalize the infants' responses. The overall group analysis revealed that imitation of tongue protrusion was statistically significant for both two- to three-day-old and three-week-old infants but not when the children had become three months old. No statistically significant effect was observed for imitation of mouth opening. Two different imitation indexes were constructed in order to assess individual differences in early imitative behaviour. Results show that short-term stability in imitative tendencies exists between the first and second observation. The results further reveal that methodological factors must be seriously considered when studying neonatal imitation: the overall imitation found for tongue protrusion is demonstrated to be dependent on how the infants' responses are coded.

The emergence and maintenance of interdyad differences in the mother-infant relationships of rhesus macaques: A correlational study

The role of the mother in promoting infant independence, reflected in the time spent out of contact with her by the infant, was addressed with a simple correlational approach to scores of time out of contact (Off) and frequencies of acts of maternal rejection and restriction through the infants’ first 16 weeks of life. Correlations of the extents of age changes from week to week were also examined. Infants differed consistently in the times they spent off from their fourth through their eighth weeks, while rates of maternal restriction and rejection were consistent from week 4 until at least week 8 in both sexes and from week 2 in females. The correlations were consistent with the view that time off was set at its week-4 and possibly later levels by maternal rejection, while some further changes in time off, resulting in a loss of consistency from week to week, reflected the extents to which mothers of daughters decreased their restrictive behavior. Weeks in which individual differences in maternal restriction and rejection were correlated with differences in time spent off were generally weeks in which changes in group means of these mean measures were correlated. In daughters, age changes of individual dyad’s scores of time off and maternal rejection were correlated between week 2 and week 4, supporting the view that in these early weeks age changes and individual differences were produced by the same processes. Findings from comparative and experimental studies, and the limitations of correlational approaches now available, are discussed.

Early Individual Differences in Visual and Motor Behavior Patterns: A Comparative Study of Two Normal Infants by the Method of Cinemanalysis

Early Individual Differences in Visual and Motor Behavior Patterns: A Comparative Study of Two Normal Infants by the Method of Cinemanalysis