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The assessment of infant temperament: A critique of the Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire
Infant Behavior & Development 25 (2002) 98–112
The assessment of infant temperament: A critique of the Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire夽 Brian E. Vaughn, Bonnie J. Taraldson, Leslie Cuchton, Byron Egeland∗ University of Minnesota, N-548 Elliott Hall, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Abstract A large group of infants from a longitudinal study of mother–infant interaction was assessed using the Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire (ITQ) at 6 months of life. Temperament diagnoses of “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” and “difficult” were derived from the ITQ dimension scores, and were related to a variety of maternal characteristics and attitudes measured at the infant’s third postnatal month as well as to behaviors observed during feeding and play interactions at the infant’s sixth postnatal month. The only significant relationships were between the ITQ diagnostic categories and maternal variables measured at 3 months. Maternal characteristics and attitudes were related more frequently to maternal behavior at 6 months than to infant behavior. It is concluded that, for this sample, the Carey ITQ is an assessment of maternal characteristics as well as of maternal perceptions of infant temperament. © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc. Keywords: Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire; Maternal characteristics; Mother–infant interaction
1. Introduction The notion that individual differences in behavioral style or temperament account for significant proportions of individual differences in responsiveness to day-to-day life events has been commonplace for centuries (see, for example, Allport’s review of Hippocrates’ impressions, 1937). Though a variety of explanations for the origins of temperament has been proposed (e.g., Sheldon, 1942), the most influential and widely disseminated research has been done by Thomas and coworkers (e.g., Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig, & Korn, 1963; Thomas & Chess, 1977). In their view, temperament accounts for the “how” rather than the “what” (content) or the “why” (motivation) of behavior. Their work, especially concerning the development and consistency of temperamental dimensions, is considered the standard for the field. 夽 ∗
This paper was originally published in Infant Behavior and Development, 4, 1–17 (1981). Corresponding author.
0163-6383/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc. PII: S 0 1 6 3 - 6 3 8 3 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 9 2 - 9
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Unfortunately, the assessment technique used by Thomas et al. (1963) to identify temperamental dimensions, the clinical interview with the parents, is lengthy and cumbersome to administer and score. It is also the case that the temperamental dimensions assessed by the interview show only modest, through significant stability over the first 5 years of life (Thomas & Chess, 1977, p. 161). A number of investigators have made attempts to shorten the procedure used by Thomas and associates to gather the information relevant to temperament dimensions (e.g., Bates, Freeland, & Lounsbury, 1979; Carey, 1970; Carey & McDevitt, 1978; Rothbart, Furby, Kelly, & Hamilton, 1977). These investigators have typically devised questionnaires that are filled out by parents in 15–30 min and can be scored in 10–20 min by the researcher or clinician at a later time. While the particular dimensions of temperament assessed by these instruments vary, all except Rothbart et al. are supposed to identify the temperamentally “difficult” infant (see Carey, 1973; Thomas & Chess, 1977). Carey’s (1970, 1973) original questionnaire has had the widest usage, both in the pediatric (e.g., Carey, 1972a, 1972b) and in the child development literatures (e.g., Milliones, 1978; Sostek & Anders, 1977). This questionnaire is modeled directly from the interview of Thomas and associates and has scores for all of the dimensions suggested by Thomas et al. (1963), as well as providing an algorithm for the identification of infants with “difficult” temperaments (Carey, 1973). Carey (1970, 1973) has made some attempt to provide validity data for his original questionnaire (ITQ) by comparing the scores on the temperament dimensions with scores derived from the clinical interviews done by Thomas and associates (see Carey, 1973). While there are similarities in the scores derived from the two techniques, the means are not identical. Nonetheless, Carey (1973) did not treat the differences arising from the two techniques as significant. Despite the findings of congruence between maternal report measures of temperament, very few researchers have reported behavioral observation data which would validate either the temperamental dimensions or the diagnostic categories (i.e., “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” and “difficult”). That is, observers who watch infants for only short periods of time have not found behavioral complexes to validate these diagnostic categories (though see Bates et al., 1979, for some progress in this direction). While some attempts have been made to relate behavior assessed during the neonatal period to later temperament diagnoses (e.g., Bakow, Sameroff, Kelly, & Zax, 1973; Sostek & Anders, 1977), consistent relationships have not been reported. Because the ITQ was not intended as an assessment of neonatal behavior, it is not clear how to interpret these results.1 Other investigators (e.g., Taraldson, 1977) have attempted to relate temperament assessments derived from the ITQ to concurrently observed behavior at ages when the ITQ assessments are more appropriate (6 months in Taraldson’s study). Taraldson (1977) reported only modest correlations between infant behavior and infant temperament dimensions from the ITQ. However, Taraldson did not specifically test relationships between her behavioral assessments and the diagnostic categories (i.e., “easy,” vs. “difficult” temperament). It may be that her behavioral observations would discriminate among those diagnostic categories of temperament even though they were not strongly related to the specific temperamental dimensions (e.g., activity, mood, etc.). The failure to achieve convergence between maternal report measures of infant temperament and behavioral observations of those infants has led several investigators to interpret the
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questionnaire data as maternal perceptions of infant temperament rather than as accurate descriptions of temperamental characteristics of the infants themselves (e.g., Bates et al., 1979; Pederson, Anderson, & Cain, 1976). While most investigators and clinicians assume that these perceptions of infant temperament are primarily determined by infant behavior (Thomas & Chess, 1977), it is clearly of considerable importance to determine what other variables are influencing maternal responses to the questionnaires. In a recent study, Vaughn, Deinard, and Egeland (1980a) have shown that maternal perceptions of infant temperament, as reflected in their responses to the ITQ, are significantly related to psychological and attitudinal variables that can be measured prior to the birth of the infant. While Vaughn, Taraldson, Crichton, and Egeland (1980b) found significant relationships between maternal variables and mothers’ perceptions of infant temperament, they did not explicitly examine the behaviors of infants with various temperament diagnoses. The possibility that actual behavioral differences exist among infants with different temperament diagnoses is directly tested here. It must be recognized, however, that infant behaviors are multidetermined, and that differences in behavior among infants will be related to factors other than temperament characteristics. It may be, for example, that mothers with differing beliefs and expectations concerning infants will interact differently with their own babies. These individual differences in interactional styles may well lead to variations in infant behavior consistent with the temperament diagnoses derived from the ITQ. It is also possible that mothers who are relatively unskilled with respect to infant caretaking techniques may attribute difficulties they have with their babies to infant temperament rather than to their own lack of skill, regardless of the actual behavior of the infants. Alternatively, the perception of infant temperament may be primarily related to individual differences in the psychological characteristics of the mothers and only remotely related to the actual behavior of either the infant or the mother. Finally, it is possible that both the infant’s temperamentally determined behavior and the mother’s previously existing psychological characteristics are determining the responses to the ITQ, regardless of the nature and quality of the interactions between the mother and her infant. Data collected on the sample of subjects in the Vaughn et al. (1980a) report were available to address these questions.
2. Methods 2.1. Subjects The subjects in this study were 187 mothers and their firstborn infants, who were participating in a longitudinal study of parent–infant interaction (Egeland, Deinard, & Sroufe, 1977). The mothers had been recruited from prenatal clinics sponsored by the Maternal and Child Health Clinic, Minneapolis Health Department. The average age of the mothers at the time of the infant’s birth was 20.52 years (SD 3.65 years); 62% of the mothers were single, 40% had not completed high school, 80.5% were White, and 86% of the pregnancies were not planned. The average birth weight of the infants was 3,261 g (SD 540.6 g), the average gestational age was 39.7 weeks (SD 1.6 weeks), the average Apgar scores were 7.5 and 8.8 at 1 and 5 min, respectively, and 55% were males.
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2.2. Assessments 2.2.1. Three-month psychological test battery At 3 months post-partum, the mothers were visited in their homes by a staff member. All of the home visitors were female, Caucasian, and between the ages of 22 and 35. At the 3-month visit, the mothers completed a battery of questionnaires assessing their expectations and perceptions concerning infants (Broussard & Harmer, 1971) as well as their own personality characteristics and attitudes (Cattell & Scheier, 1963; Cohler, Weiss, & Grunebaum, 1970; Jackson, 1967; Shaefer & Manhemner, 1960). These measures had been chosen primarily because they had been shown to be valid, reliable assessments of the traits and attitudes measured in previous research studies. They were also selected because it was expected that these characteristics and attitudes would be helpful in explaining individual differences in mother–infant interactions which, in turn, might be related to outcome criteria (such as abuse and neglect of infants) later in the first year of the infants’ lives (see Egeland & Brunnquell, 1979). These questionnaires yielded 19 different scores for each mother.2 2.2.2. Six-month assessment At 6 months the mothers were again visited by members of the research staff (usually the same person as at 3 months). They completed the Carey ITQ at that time. Scores for the nine temperamental dimensions were derived from the mothers’ responses to the ITQ for each infant.3 Five of these temperament dimensions were used to make temperamental “diagnoses” of “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” or “difficult.” Each child was assigned to one of these categories, using the algorithm suggested by Carey (1970, 1973). An infant was considered to be “difficult” if four or five of the scores on the critical dimensions were above the mean of the group and if at least two of those scores were greater than one standard deviation above the mean of the group as a whole. Infants were diagnosed as temperamentally “easy” if no more than two of these critical dimensions were scored in the “difficult” direction and neither of those scores were greater than one standard deviation away from the mean of the group as a whole (in the direction of “difficult”). 2.2.3. Observational data At 6 months, each mother–infant pair was visited in the home and observed in two feedings on two different days. The mothers and infants were rated on 33 variables, which included such items as frequency and quality of verbalizations, timing and synchronization of feeding, quality of handling the baby, facility in caretaking, and expression of positive and negative regard (Egeland, Deinard, Taraldson, & Brunnquell, 1975). All observers had been trained in the use of the 33-item list using video tapes. After becoming familiar with the behaviors assessed by the items, the observers rated other video taped feedings for the purpose of obtaining estimates of rater agreement. The agreement of the ratings for the entire item list was shown to be significantly greater than chance by the Lawlis–Lu test (Lawlis & Lu, 1972). Using the Tinsley–Weiss method of calculating rater agreement for ordinal scales (Tinsley & Weiss, 1975), agreements among the raters ranged from .53 to 1.00 over the entire item list, with a median value of .80. The actual feedings in the home were not video taped. The ratings of the two feedings were averaged for each mother. These composite scores were factor analyzed
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using the principal factor solution available on the SPSS programs, and were rotated using the varimax procedure (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Stembrenner, & Bent, 1975).4 The complete item list and the factor structure are described in detail elsewhere and are not presented here (see Vaughn et al., 1980b). The three factors emerging from this analysis accounted for 57.5% of the total variance in the matrix generated from the feeding observations. The first two factors, identified by maternal variables, were labeled I, Mother Caretaking Skills, and II, Mother’s Affective Behavior. They accounted for 49 and 33%, respectively, of the common variance of the variables. The third factor, described by infant variables, accounted for 18% of the common variance and was labeled III, Infant Social Responsiveness. The mothers and babies were also observed at 6 months in a standardized play situation. These play situations lasted about 15 min. The interactions between the mother and her infant during play were rated using a 12-item list developed by Egeland et al. (1975), and included such items as mother’s inventiveness during play, support, patience, and amount of reciprocal play. As with the feeding ratings, observers were initially trained and obtained reliability using video taped play sessions (observer agreements ranged from .56 to 1.00, median = .73, using the Tinsley–Weiss method of calculating rater agreement for ordinal scales), but actual data collection was done live rather than with video tape. The ratings from the play situation were also factored using the principal factor solution, and rotated using the varimax procedure (see Vaughn et al., 1980b, for detailed descriptions of the items and factor structure of these data). The factor analysis of the play data accounted for 48.4% of the total variance. As with the feeding data, a three-factor solution emerged as the best description of the data. Two factors contained only mother variables and they were labeled I, Maternal Play Skills, and III, Maternal Attitude Toward Play. These factors accounted for 52 and 18% of the common variance, respectively. The factor identified by infant behaviors emerged second in this factor analysis and was labeled II, Baby’s Involvement in Play. The infant factor accounted for 30% of the common variance of the variables. After completing the observations of the mother–infant pairs at 6 months, the observers rated the mothers using Ainsworth’s scales of Sensitivity and Cooperation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). These ratings were intended to be summary scores derived from all of the observations made by the observer from all of the interactions between the mother and infant. The Tinsley–Weiss indices of rater agreement were .66 and .80 for Sensitivity and Cooperation, respectively.
3. Results 3.1. Six-month Carey ITQ ratings The responses to the ITQ were coded and scores were assigned to each infant on each of the nine temperament dimensions, and a diagnosis of “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” or “difficult” was made using Carey’s (1970, 1973) algorithm. Table 1 presents the mean scores on all of the temperament dimensions for this sample, along with the means from Carey’s original standardization sample (presented for reference). The maximum difference between the two populations on any of the temperament dimensions is .19 scale points and, even though
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Table 1 Comparisons of means and standard deviations between present sample and Carey’s standardization sample for the nine temperament dimensions Dimension
X¯
SD
t(286)
−1.93
Activity Present sample Carey’s sample
.45 .52
.28 .32
Rhythmicity Present sample Carey’s sample
.72 .53
.46 .46
3.31∗
Adaptability Present sample Carey’s sample
.42 .35
.25 .26
2.22
Approach Present sample Carey’s sample
.58 .48
.32 .35
2.42
Threshold Present sample Carey’s sample
1.24 1.08
.36 .39
3.49∗
Intensity Present sample Carey’s sample
.99 1.05
.26 .32
Mood Present sample Carey’s sample
.51 .40
.20 .25
4.15∗
Distractibility Present sample Carey’s sample
.72 .57
.26 .32
4.34∗
Persistence Present sample Carey’s sample
.72 .69
.33 .38
.67
∗
−1.73
p < .01.
four of the dimensions differ significantly (at the .01 alpha level or less), we are not inclined to treat these differences as meaningful, given the power of the t-test with such large samples. The numbers of infants falling into the various diagnostic categories were 64 (34%), 67 (36%), 33 (18%), and 23 (12%) for the “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” and “difficult” categories, respectively. This compares to approximately 40.6% easy, 10.9% difficult and 48.5% in the two intermediate categories in Carey’s standardization sample (see Carey, 1973). 3.2. Relationships among the assessments 3.2.1. Temperament and behavioral factors Assessment of the relationships between the ITQ data and the observational data from the feeding and play factors was done in two steps. First, infants were grouped according to
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their temperament “diagnoses” and one-way analyses of variance were computed for all the behavioral factors. Second, for those factors found to discriminate significantly among the four diagnostic groups, correlations were computed with all nine temperament dimensions measured by the ITQ. The initial tests served the purpose of reducing the overall number of tests conducted. No significant differences were found on any of the factor scores derived from the feeding and play observations. Only one factor even approached significance (Maternal Play Skills, F = 2.34, p < .07) and, in this case, means for the mothers of the “easy” and the “difficult” infants were adjacent rather than maximally separated as might have been expected if infant temperament was a factor contributing to maternal caretaking skills. One-way ANOVAs using the scores on Ainsworth’s Sensitivity and Cooperation scales as dependent variables were also not significant, Neither was found to discriminate significantly among the temperament diagnostic categories, and the scores for mothers of “easy” and “difficult” infants were adjacent. Infant temperamental difficulty, then, was not found to be related to the behavior of either the mother or the infant during our feeding and play observations. 3.2.2. Temperament and mothers’ psychological variables Relationships among the ITQ data and the psychological test battery measures were assessed similarly to the behavioral data. Results from the initial ANOVA are presented in Table 2. These data show that there are numerous significant differences among the groups on the variables from the mother psychological test battery. Nine of these variables are significant (p < .05) and two additional variables reach the .10 level of probability. Mothers describing their babies as “difficult” (on the basis of their responses to the ITQ) received significantly higher scores on the Aggression, Defendence and Succorance scales of the Personality Research Form (Jackson, 1967), and received significantly lower scores on the Social Desirability Scale from the same instrument. (People scoring low on the Social Desirability Scale tend to present an unfavorable picture of themselves in response to personality statements.) In addition, they had higher anxiety scale scores (Cattell & Scheier, 1963), lower scores on the Broussard measure (scored both for “average” baby and for “my” baby), lower scores on a measure of maternal knowledge of the reciprocal nature of mother–infant interactions, and higher on a scale assessing low maternal feelings. Mothers of “easy” babies were generally on the opposite end of each of these measures (see Table 2). In general, mothers describing their infants as difficult could be characterized as more anxious, hostile and suspicious than mothers who described their infants as “easy.” To test further the relationships between the temperament assessment and the psychological variables, correlations were computed relating the nine dimensions of temperament measured by the ITQ and the nine variables shown to be related to the diagnosis of temperament in the initial analyses. These results are presented in Table 3. Twenty-four of the 81 possible correlations are significant. Not surprisingly, 22 of these 24 significant relationships are found between the five dimensions which serve as criteria for the identification of “difficult” temperament. The temperament dimensions “adaptability” and “mood” are strongly related to maternal variables, while “rhythmicity” and “approach” show a moderate number of relationships, and the “intensity” dimension is not significantly related to the psychological variables. While the magnitude of these correlations is modest (even the largest
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Table 2 Means and standard deviations for psychological variables across the ITQ diagnostic categories Variable
Intermediate Easy
PRF Aggression PRF Defendence PRF Impulsive PRF Succorance PRF Infrequency PRF Social desirable IPAT Anxiety Locus of control Broussard average baby Broussard my baby Cohler Scale 1 Cohler Scale 2 Cohler Scale 3 PRQ Fear for self PRQ Desire for pregnancy PRQ Dependency PRQ Fears for baby PRQ Low maternal feelings PRQ Tension
Low
High
F-ratio (3, 183)
Difficult
X¯
SD
X¯
SD
X¯
SD
X¯
SD
6.75 5.78 5.50 7.59 .22 11.53 28.55 5.44 20.30 21.92 32.25 40.14 39.36 5.41 14.30 9.26 14.21 12.15 24.44
3.02 2.94 2.78 3.37 .49 2.86 10.48 2.58 2.22 2.91 5.99 6.68 9.29 1.30 4.74 2.05 2.98 2.54 4.68
7.58 6.94 5.78 8.42 .15 9.83 34.32 5.19 19.99 21.91 31.74 37.86 37.51 6.15 14.12 9.36 15.15 12.65 25.18
3.18 2.91 3.03 3.43 .37 3.27 10.94 2.56 2.43 2.83 6.65 7.82 6.70 1.85 5.11 1.79 3.00 2.96 3.34
7.19 6.32 6.97 8.00 .20 9.71 36.74 5.58 19.32 20.90 32.00 37.13 37.06 5.79 15.00 9.17 15.07 11.79 25.70
2.82 3.59 3.60 3.74 .53 3.28 10.76 3.35 3.15 3.31 7.04 8.39 6.85 1.93 5.13 1.73 3.46 2.34. 3.37
9.45 8.45 6.86 10.05 .91 9.09 41.55 5.18 18.59 19.91 29.82 35.09 35.18 6.19 14.14 10.24 15.57 14.05 26.53
3.70 3.49 2.75 2.85 1.50 2.81 9.91 2.22 3.22 3.12 7.56 8.26 9.18 1.89 4.09 1.64 2.84 3.09 3.82
4.17∗∗ 4.44∗∗∗ 2.36 2.96∗ .89 5.45∗∗∗ 9.92∗∗∗ .21 2.84∗ 3.39∗ .76 2.87∗ 1.71 2.35 .23 1.69 1.54 3.28∗ 1.53
∗
p < .05. p < .01. ∗∗∗ p < .005. ∗∗
values do not exceed .30), they indicate that mothers’ perceptions of infant behavior are influenced by their (i.e., the mothers’) psychological characteristics. This proves to be especially true for those temperamental dimensions which are used to define temperamental “difficulty.” 3.2.3. Relationships among psychological variables and behavioral factors Because we were also interested in the possible effects of the psychological attributes and attitudes of the mother on the nature of the mother–infant interaction, we computed the correlations between the behavioral factors derived from the feeding and play observations and the 19 scores from the maternal psychological battery. These data are presented in Table 4. For the feeding data, 16 of the 38 (42%) possible relationships between maternal behavior factors and the psychological variables reached the .05 level of significance, while only 2 of 19 (11%) possible relationships were found with the infant factor. When only those psychological variables already found to be related to perception of temperament are examined, 11 (of 18 possible) significant correlations are seen with mother factor, versus one (of nine possible) for the infant factor. For the play data, 7 (of 38 possible), or 18%, of the correlations between the psychological variables and mother factors are significant, while only one (5%) significant correlation was found between the psychological variables and the infant behavior factor.
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Table 4 Intercorrelations of the behavioral factors from feeding and play with the valuables from the psychological test battery Psychological variable
PRF Aggression PRF Defendence PRF Impulsive PRF Succorance PRF Infrequency PRF Social Desirable IPAT Anxiety Locus of Control Broussard Average Baby Broussard My Baby Cohler 1 Cohler 2 Cohler3 PRQ Fear for Self PRQ Desire for Pregnancy PRQ Dependency PRQ Fear for Baby PRQ Low Maternal Feeling PRQ Tension ∗
Feeding factors
Play factors
M Caretaking
M Affect
B Social
−.14 −.18∗ −.10 .11 −.01 .21∗∗ −.14 .07 .23∗∗ .18∗ .13 .27∗∗ .18∗ .04 −.17∗ .10 −.14 −.06 .18∗
−.09 −.15∗ .03 −.12 −.06 .25∗∗ −.22∗∗ .01 .17∗ .11 .22∗∗ .26∗∗ .13 −.16∗ −.02 −.13 −.12 −.19∗ −.12
.09 .08 .09 .09 .17∗ −.13 .12 .11 .15∗ .11 .00 .11 −.12 .12 .01 −.02 −.01 .00 .08
M Play skill −.04 −.72 −.01 −.01 −.06 .18 −.11 .18∗ .14 .12 .14 .24∗∗ .18∗ .00 −.09 .13 −.15∗ −.02 −.09
B Responsive
M Attitude
.11 .16∗ .02 .03 .02 −.09 .09 .01 .13 .08 .03 .12 .03 .08 .06 .02 −.08 −.01 .11
−.10 −.11 .00 −.14 .01 .10 −.05 .04 .18∗ .09 .02 .21∗∗ .08 −.05 −.19∗ −.14 −.05 .14 −.14
p < .05. p < .01.
∗∗
Again, it is important to note that the correlation values are modest; however, the interpretation of these data is clear. Mothers whose psychological test scores indicate that they are more suspicious, tense and anxious, and who have a relative lack of understanding of the reciprocal nature of infant–mother interactions, are rated as being less skilled in routine caretaking (feeding) and as showing less positive affect during feeding and play. Maternal behavior, then, is showing some relationship to the psychological characteristics of the mothers measured 3 months earlier. These psychological characteristics were only marginally related to infant behavior during the 6 month feeding and play observations. Taken together, the data presented in Tables 3 and 4 suggest that maternal psychological characteristics and attitudes influence both maternal perceptions of temperament and maternal behavior during interaction. However, these same characteristics appear to have only minimal impact upon infant behavior, and infant behavior in these situations seems to be unrelated to the mother’s perception of her infant’s temperament.
4. Discussion These results are provocative. They indicate that the ITQ is reflecting maternal characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors much more than infant temperament, at least insofar as temperament influences the behaviors under observation in our 6-month assessments. Several
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of the psychological variables assessed at 3 months were found to discriminate significantly among mothers whose ITQ responses yielded diagnoses of “difficult” temperament versus those mothers whose responses yielded diagnoses of “easy” temperament. Maternal behavior during feeding and play interactions with the infant did not so discriminate the mothers rating their infants as easy or difficult and, perhaps most significantly, the infant behavior assessed during feeding and play did not discriminate “easy” from “difficult” infants. Finally, maternal psychological characteristics had a number of relationships with maternal behavior during feeding and play but had few significant relationships to infant behaviors in the same situations. Consequently, we found no evidence from these data to support the notion that mothers with differing attitudes, expectations, and personality traits are eliciting different behavior from their infants during feeding and play. Neither did we find evidence that mothers with relatively low levels of sensitivity and caretaking skills were perceiving their infants as more difficult. For example, the results of the analyses of the Ainsworth scales of Sensitivity and Cooperation did not discriminate between the mothers of infants in the various diagnostic categories. There are a number of possible explanations for these rather disappointing results, including the nature of the sample (young, low SES, high risk, etc.), parity of the mothers (all firstborn infants), or the possibility that the infant behaviors observed during feeding and play were inappropriate to discern temperamental differences. While none of these alternatives may be entirely ruled out, tests of age, years of education, and number of stressful life events occurring to these mothers during the first year of life failed to discriminate mothers of “easy” infants from mothers of “difficult” infants (using one-way ANOVA). We are convinced that the nature of the sample is not determining the observed results. The issue of the nature of the behaviors observed is less tractable. One of the original reasons for using the mother as an informant in this type of research is that she is more likely, given her long-standing opportunity to observe the infant, to have an integrative understanding of the infant’s behavior. It is possible that one or two observations of the infant will not yield sufficient data to make inferences about temperamental characteristics. Without extensive observations of the infant, it will not be possible to determine the extent to which maternal reports of behavior will be consistent with the observations of experimenters. However, until such observations are made and reported, there is no reason to believe that maternal report data provide a closer representation of infant temperament than short-term observations. A second problem with the behavioral data which we have collected concerns the nature of the situations in which the behaviors were observed. All of the observations were of interactions between the mother and the child; no observations were made out of an interactional context. It may be that, in feeding and play situations, even an infant who might otherwise be perceived as difficult would not have opportunities to fuss. Possibly, such opportunities for fussiness or negative mood associated with temperamental difficulty would be greater in less intensely interactive situations (e.g., when the infant demands attention). Alternatively, it may be that temperament can only be ascertained in non-social contexts. If this is true, however, then many of the general situations to which mothers are asked to respond concerning their infants’ behavior are also not appropriate to the study of temperament. On the Carey ITQ, for example, several items specifically ask about responses to people, visits to the doctor, feeding, bathing, diapering, and dressing, all of which imply an interactive context.
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Even if interaction is not the appropriate context from which to infer temperamental characteristics, it is not unreasonable to assume that variations in temperamental characteristics will influence the interactions between mothers and their infants. While it is possible that the interactive data collected at 6 months were not reliable or not representative of the interactions typical of the infant–mother pairs (if, for example, mothers were making special efforts to behave like “good mothers” in front of the observers), data from this same sample, which have been presented elsewhere (e.g., Vaughn et al., 1980a, 1980b; Egeland & Brunnquell, 1979) suggest that these behaviors have relationships to assessments of the infant during the neonatal period and are related to important outcome criteria during the first year of the infant’s life (Egeland, 1980). We believe, therefore, that the failure to find any relationships between the temperament diagnoses derived from the ITQ and our observational data reflects a problem of the ITQ instrument and not of our observational measures. While it was not our intention to test the predictive validity of the temperament diagnoses here, there were several outcome criteria which were assessed later during the first year of the infant’s life which could, perhaps, be used as validation data. Data available from the Bayley tests, the Infant Behavior Record (Bayley, 1969) and from an assessment of infant–mother attachment (Ainsworth et al., 1978) were each tested for possible relationships with the four temperament diagnostic categories. None of the statistical tests reached the conventional levels for significance. Thus, the diagnoses of “difficult” and “easy” temperaments afforded by maternal responses to the Carey ITQ were found to have neither concurrent behavioral validity, nor predictive validity to other significant criteria assessed during the first year of life. In this sample, the significant relationships were found with maternal attitudes and characteristics. It is important to note here that these relationships were not predicted a priori. Indeed, the Carey ITQ was chosen as a data collection instrument because it was hoped that it would be relatively free of such influences. For this sample, then, we have no evidence that the Carey ITQ assesses infant temperament. Rather, it appears to be an assessment of the mother. The mothers whose responses to the ITQ yield diagnoses of “difficult” are extremely anxious, show less interest in their maternal role, and lack (relative to other mothers) an understanding of the reciprocal nature of the infant–mother relationship. Reviewing Tables 2 and 3, one can see that the outstanding characteristic of these mothers is their high level of anxiety. Indeed, mothers of “difficult” infants have anxiety levels above the 90th percentile, compared to the standardization population (Cattell & Scheier, 1963). While it is arguable that a “difficult” infant might lead to maternal anxiety, data from the Vaughn et al. (1980) report suggest that the high anxiety levels existed prior to the birth of the baby. Further, the IPAT anxiety score is not significantly correlated with the infant behavior factors at 6 months. Our own interpretation of these data is that our high-anxious mothers are not perceiving their infants’ behaviors similarly to the way others would perceive the same behaviors. The high score on the Aggression and Defendence scale for mothers of “difficult” infants would further indicate that their needs and feelings interfere with their ability to perceive and interpret their infant’s behavior accurately. While we wholeheartedly subscribe to the notion that the infant is an active participant in its own development (e.g., Vaughn et al., 1980b), and that infant characteristics can be important determinants of the outcomes of mother–infant interaction (Waters, Vaughn, &
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Egeland, 1980), we question whether the Carey ITQ reflects that participation in samples such as this one.
Notes 1. While we recognize that the ITQ was not developed as an instrument for the assessment of neonatal behavior, we were curious as to possible relationships between our neonatal assessments and the ITQ diagnoses. The infants had been assessed during the neonatal period with two types of measurement technique. The Brazelton Neonatal Scales (Brazelton, 1973) had been administered to the infants during the second week of life. Additionally, the neonates had been rated on a 19-item scale by the nurses in the newborn nursery. Data reduction from both instruments yielded scores on a common underlying dimension of “alertness/activity/orientation” and other less obviously related dimensions. As it happened, both of these dimensions were significantly related to the ITQ diagnostic categories at 6 months, but in opposite directions. That is, one of the factors indicated that alert/active infants were less likely to be considered “difficult” by their mothers, while the other dimension suggested that alert infants were more likely to be considered difficult than less alert babies. Such results suggest that extreme care must be taken when interpreting the relevance of behavioral data to questionnaire data such as the ITQ. 2. The same battery of tests was administered to these mothers prior to the birth of their infants. These measures are described in more detail by Vaughn et al. (1980a) and by Egeland and Brunnquell (1979). A factor analysis of these variables and significant correlates of those factors is described by Egeland and Brunnquell (1979). A summary of the factor structures from both administrations of the test battery is available from Egeland. The Carey ITQ was also completed at 3 months. Similar analyses to those reported in this paper were run using the Carey data from 3 months, with no substantive differences. Since the ITQ was designed for infants 4 months and older, we decided not to report the 3 month data. 3. The Carey ITQ has been recently revised (Carey & McDevitt, 1978). Carey (personal communication, 1977) made available a copy of the revised ITQ at a point about halfway through our data collection for this sample. However, after pilot testing the revised ITQ on a sample similar in demographic characteristics to our own longitudinal sample (pilot sample N = 25), we were forced to conclude that the new instrument was too lengthy and complicated for our relatively under-educated women. A majority of the pilot sample complained about not understanding many of the items, and none were able to complete the instrument without help from a staff member to interpret some of the items. In addition, the instrument could not be completed within 30 min by the majority of the pilot mothers. Consequently, we did not use the revised ITQ, and we suspect that it will be inappropriate for other low SES populations as well. 4. The factor structure for each data set reported here was determined by separately rotating two, three, and four factor solutions and examining each solution for psychological meaning and interpretability. The final three factor solution proved to be the most psychologically meaningful.
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Acknowledgments This research was supported by grant no. 90-C-424 from the Office of Human Development, Administration for Children, Youth and Families, National Center of Child Abuse and Neglect, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
References Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Allport, G. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt. Bakow, H., Sameroff, A., Kelly, P., & Zax, M. (March 1973). Relation between newborn and mother–child interaction at 4 months. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in child Development, Philadelphia. Bates, J. E., Freeland, C. A. B., & Lounsbury, M. L. (1979). Measurement of infant difficulties. Child Development, 50, 794–803. Bayley, N. (1969). Manual for the Bayley scales of infant development. New York: Psychological Corporation. Brazelton, T. B. (1973). Neonatal behavioral assessment scale. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. Broussard, E., & Harmer, M. (1971). Further consideration regarding maternal perception of the firstborn. In I. Hellmuth (Ed.), Exceptional infant (Vol. 2). New York: Brunner-Maxel. Carey, W. B. (1970). A simplified method for measuring infant temperament. Journal of Pediatrics, 77, 188–194. Carey, W. B. (1972a). Clinical applications of infant temperament measurements. Journal of Pediatrics, 81, 823–828. Carey, W. B. (1972b). Measuring infant temperament. Journal of Pediatrics, 81, 414. Carey, W. B. (1973). Measuring infant temperament in pediatric practice. In J. C. Westrnan (Ed.), Individual differences in children. New York: Wiley. Carey, W. B., & McDevitt, S. D. (1978). Revision of the Infant Temperament Questionnaire. Pediatrics, 61, 735–739. Cattell, R. B., & Scheier, I. H. (1963). IPAT anxiety scale questionnaire. Champaign, IL: Institute for Personality and Ability Testing. Cohler, B., Weiss, J., & Grunebaum, H. (1970). Child-care attitudes and emotional disturbance among mothers of young children. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 82, 3–47. Egeland, B. (April 1980). Predictability of continuity and change in the organization of infant behavior. Paper presented at the International Conference for Infant Studies, New Haven. Egeland, B., & Brunnquell, D. (1979). An at-risk approach to the study of child abuse: Some preliminary findings. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 18, 219–235. Egeland, B., Deinard, A., Taraldson, B., & Brunnquell, D. (1975). Manual for feeding and play observation scales. University of Minnesota (manuscript available from the authors). Egeland, B., Demand, A., & Sroufe, L. A. (1977). Early maladaptation: A prospective transactional study. Project proposal submitted to the Office of Maternal and Child Health. Jackson, D. N. (1967). Personality research form manual. New York: Research Psychologist Press. Lawlis, G. F., & Lu, E. (1972). Judgment of counseling process: Reliability, agreement and error. Psychological Bulletin, 78, 17–20. Milliones, J. (1978). Relationship between perceived child temperament and maternal behaviors. Child Development, 49, 1255–1256. Nie, N. H., Hull, C. H., Jenkins, J. G., Steinbrenner, K., & Bent, D. H. (1975). Statistical package for the social sciences (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Pederson, F. A., Anderson, B. J., & Cain, R. L., Jr. (1976). A methodology for assessing parental perception of infant temperament. Paper presented at the Southeastern Conference on Human Development. Rothbart, M. K., Furby, L., Kelly, S. R., & Hamilton, J. S. (March 1977). Development of a caretaker report temperament scale for use with 3-, 6, 9-, and 12-month-old infants. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans.
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Sheldon, W. (1942). The varieties of temperament: A psychology of constitutional differences. New York: Harper & Row. Shaefer, E., & Manhemner, H. (1960). Dimensions of parental adjustment. Paper presented at Eastern Psychological Association, New York. Sostek, A. M., & Anders, T. F. (1977). Relationships among the Brazelton neonatal scale, Bayley infant scale, and early temperament. Child Development, 48, 320–328. Taraldson, B. J. (1977). Infant temperament: Psychometric and theoretical considerations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota. Thomas, A., & Chess, S. (1977). Temperament and development. New York: Brunner-Mazel. Thomas, A., Chess, S., Birch, H., Hertzig, M., & Korn, S. (1963). Behavioral individuality in early childhood. NY: New York University Press. Tinsley, H. E., & Weiss, D. J. (1975). Inter-rater reliability and agreement of subjective judgments. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 22, 358–376. Vaughn, B., Deinard, A., & Egeland, B. (1980a). Measuring temperament in pediatric practice. Journal of Pediatrics, 96, 510–518. Vaughn, B., Taraldson, B., Crichton, L., & Egeland, B. (1980b). Neonatal behavioral organization and infant behavior during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 3, 46–61. Waters, E., Vaughn, B., & Egeland, B. (1980). Individual differences in infant–mother attachment relationships at age one: Antecedents in neonatal behavior in an urban, economically disadvantaged sample. Child Development, 51, 208–216.
The assessment of infant temperament: A critique of the Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire夽 Brian E. Vaughn, Bonnie J. Taraldson, Leslie Cuchton, Byron Egeland∗ University of Minnesota, N-548 Elliott Hall, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Abstract A large group of infants from a longitudinal study of mother–infant interaction was assessed using the Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire (ITQ) at 6 months of life. Temperament diagnoses of “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” and “difficult” were derived from the ITQ dimension scores, and were related to a variety of maternal characteristics and attitudes measured at the infant’s third postnatal month as well as to behaviors observed during feeding and play interactions at the infant’s sixth postnatal month. The only significant relationships were between the ITQ diagnostic categories and maternal variables measured at 3 months. Maternal characteristics and attitudes were related more frequently to maternal behavior at 6 months than to infant behavior. It is concluded that, for this sample, the Carey ITQ is an assessment of maternal characteristics as well as of maternal perceptions of infant temperament. © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc. Keywords: Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire; Maternal characteristics; Mother–infant interaction
1. Introduction The notion that individual differences in behavioral style or temperament account for significant proportions of individual differences in responsiveness to day-to-day life events has been commonplace for centuries (see, for example, Allport’s review of Hippocrates’ impressions, 1937). Though a variety of explanations for the origins of temperament has been proposed (e.g., Sheldon, 1942), the most influential and widely disseminated research has been done by Thomas and coworkers (e.g., Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig, & Korn, 1963; Thomas & Chess, 1977). In their view, temperament accounts for the “how” rather than the “what” (content) or the “why” (motivation) of behavior. Their work, especially concerning the development and consistency of temperamental dimensions, is considered the standard for the field. 夽 ∗
This paper was originally published in Infant Behavior and Development, 4, 1–17 (1981). Corresponding author.
0163-6383/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc. PII: S 0 1 6 3 - 6 3 8 3 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 9 2 - 9
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Unfortunately, the assessment technique used by Thomas et al. (1963) to identify temperamental dimensions, the clinical interview with the parents, is lengthy and cumbersome to administer and score. It is also the case that the temperamental dimensions assessed by the interview show only modest, through significant stability over the first 5 years of life (Thomas & Chess, 1977, p. 161). A number of investigators have made attempts to shorten the procedure used by Thomas and associates to gather the information relevant to temperament dimensions (e.g., Bates, Freeland, & Lounsbury, 1979; Carey, 1970; Carey & McDevitt, 1978; Rothbart, Furby, Kelly, & Hamilton, 1977). These investigators have typically devised questionnaires that are filled out by parents in 15–30 min and can be scored in 10–20 min by the researcher or clinician at a later time. While the particular dimensions of temperament assessed by these instruments vary, all except Rothbart et al. are supposed to identify the temperamentally “difficult” infant (see Carey, 1973; Thomas & Chess, 1977). Carey’s (1970, 1973) original questionnaire has had the widest usage, both in the pediatric (e.g., Carey, 1972a, 1972b) and in the child development literatures (e.g., Milliones, 1978; Sostek & Anders, 1977). This questionnaire is modeled directly from the interview of Thomas and associates and has scores for all of the dimensions suggested by Thomas et al. (1963), as well as providing an algorithm for the identification of infants with “difficult” temperaments (Carey, 1973). Carey (1970, 1973) has made some attempt to provide validity data for his original questionnaire (ITQ) by comparing the scores on the temperament dimensions with scores derived from the clinical interviews done by Thomas and associates (see Carey, 1973). While there are similarities in the scores derived from the two techniques, the means are not identical. Nonetheless, Carey (1973) did not treat the differences arising from the two techniques as significant. Despite the findings of congruence between maternal report measures of temperament, very few researchers have reported behavioral observation data which would validate either the temperamental dimensions or the diagnostic categories (i.e., “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” and “difficult”). That is, observers who watch infants for only short periods of time have not found behavioral complexes to validate these diagnostic categories (though see Bates et al., 1979, for some progress in this direction). While some attempts have been made to relate behavior assessed during the neonatal period to later temperament diagnoses (e.g., Bakow, Sameroff, Kelly, & Zax, 1973; Sostek & Anders, 1977), consistent relationships have not been reported. Because the ITQ was not intended as an assessment of neonatal behavior, it is not clear how to interpret these results.1 Other investigators (e.g., Taraldson, 1977) have attempted to relate temperament assessments derived from the ITQ to concurrently observed behavior at ages when the ITQ assessments are more appropriate (6 months in Taraldson’s study). Taraldson (1977) reported only modest correlations between infant behavior and infant temperament dimensions from the ITQ. However, Taraldson did not specifically test relationships between her behavioral assessments and the diagnostic categories (i.e., “easy,” vs. “difficult” temperament). It may be that her behavioral observations would discriminate among those diagnostic categories of temperament even though they were not strongly related to the specific temperamental dimensions (e.g., activity, mood, etc.). The failure to achieve convergence between maternal report measures of infant temperament and behavioral observations of those infants has led several investigators to interpret the
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questionnaire data as maternal perceptions of infant temperament rather than as accurate descriptions of temperamental characteristics of the infants themselves (e.g., Bates et al., 1979; Pederson, Anderson, & Cain, 1976). While most investigators and clinicians assume that these perceptions of infant temperament are primarily determined by infant behavior (Thomas & Chess, 1977), it is clearly of considerable importance to determine what other variables are influencing maternal responses to the questionnaires. In a recent study, Vaughn, Deinard, and Egeland (1980a) have shown that maternal perceptions of infant temperament, as reflected in their responses to the ITQ, are significantly related to psychological and attitudinal variables that can be measured prior to the birth of the infant. While Vaughn, Taraldson, Crichton, and Egeland (1980b) found significant relationships between maternal variables and mothers’ perceptions of infant temperament, they did not explicitly examine the behaviors of infants with various temperament diagnoses. The possibility that actual behavioral differences exist among infants with different temperament diagnoses is directly tested here. It must be recognized, however, that infant behaviors are multidetermined, and that differences in behavior among infants will be related to factors other than temperament characteristics. It may be, for example, that mothers with differing beliefs and expectations concerning infants will interact differently with their own babies. These individual differences in interactional styles may well lead to variations in infant behavior consistent with the temperament diagnoses derived from the ITQ. It is also possible that mothers who are relatively unskilled with respect to infant caretaking techniques may attribute difficulties they have with their babies to infant temperament rather than to their own lack of skill, regardless of the actual behavior of the infants. Alternatively, the perception of infant temperament may be primarily related to individual differences in the psychological characteristics of the mothers and only remotely related to the actual behavior of either the infant or the mother. Finally, it is possible that both the infant’s temperamentally determined behavior and the mother’s previously existing psychological characteristics are determining the responses to the ITQ, regardless of the nature and quality of the interactions between the mother and her infant. Data collected on the sample of subjects in the Vaughn et al. (1980a) report were available to address these questions.
2. Methods 2.1. Subjects The subjects in this study were 187 mothers and their firstborn infants, who were participating in a longitudinal study of parent–infant interaction (Egeland, Deinard, & Sroufe, 1977). The mothers had been recruited from prenatal clinics sponsored by the Maternal and Child Health Clinic, Minneapolis Health Department. The average age of the mothers at the time of the infant’s birth was 20.52 years (SD 3.65 years); 62% of the mothers were single, 40% had not completed high school, 80.5% were White, and 86% of the pregnancies were not planned. The average birth weight of the infants was 3,261 g (SD 540.6 g), the average gestational age was 39.7 weeks (SD 1.6 weeks), the average Apgar scores were 7.5 and 8.8 at 1 and 5 min, respectively, and 55% were males.
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2.2. Assessments 2.2.1. Three-month psychological test battery At 3 months post-partum, the mothers were visited in their homes by a staff member. All of the home visitors were female, Caucasian, and between the ages of 22 and 35. At the 3-month visit, the mothers completed a battery of questionnaires assessing their expectations and perceptions concerning infants (Broussard & Harmer, 1971) as well as their own personality characteristics and attitudes (Cattell & Scheier, 1963; Cohler, Weiss, & Grunebaum, 1970; Jackson, 1967; Shaefer & Manhemner, 1960). These measures had been chosen primarily because they had been shown to be valid, reliable assessments of the traits and attitudes measured in previous research studies. They were also selected because it was expected that these characteristics and attitudes would be helpful in explaining individual differences in mother–infant interactions which, in turn, might be related to outcome criteria (such as abuse and neglect of infants) later in the first year of the infants’ lives (see Egeland & Brunnquell, 1979). These questionnaires yielded 19 different scores for each mother.2 2.2.2. Six-month assessment At 6 months the mothers were again visited by members of the research staff (usually the same person as at 3 months). They completed the Carey ITQ at that time. Scores for the nine temperamental dimensions were derived from the mothers’ responses to the ITQ for each infant.3 Five of these temperament dimensions were used to make temperamental “diagnoses” of “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” or “difficult.” Each child was assigned to one of these categories, using the algorithm suggested by Carey (1970, 1973). An infant was considered to be “difficult” if four or five of the scores on the critical dimensions were above the mean of the group and if at least two of those scores were greater than one standard deviation above the mean of the group as a whole. Infants were diagnosed as temperamentally “easy” if no more than two of these critical dimensions were scored in the “difficult” direction and neither of those scores were greater than one standard deviation away from the mean of the group as a whole (in the direction of “difficult”). 2.2.3. Observational data At 6 months, each mother–infant pair was visited in the home and observed in two feedings on two different days. The mothers and infants were rated on 33 variables, which included such items as frequency and quality of verbalizations, timing and synchronization of feeding, quality of handling the baby, facility in caretaking, and expression of positive and negative regard (Egeland, Deinard, Taraldson, & Brunnquell, 1975). All observers had been trained in the use of the 33-item list using video tapes. After becoming familiar with the behaviors assessed by the items, the observers rated other video taped feedings for the purpose of obtaining estimates of rater agreement. The agreement of the ratings for the entire item list was shown to be significantly greater than chance by the Lawlis–Lu test (Lawlis & Lu, 1972). Using the Tinsley–Weiss method of calculating rater agreement for ordinal scales (Tinsley & Weiss, 1975), agreements among the raters ranged from .53 to 1.00 over the entire item list, with a median value of .80. The actual feedings in the home were not video taped. The ratings of the two feedings were averaged for each mother. These composite scores were factor analyzed
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using the principal factor solution available on the SPSS programs, and were rotated using the varimax procedure (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Stembrenner, & Bent, 1975).4 The complete item list and the factor structure are described in detail elsewhere and are not presented here (see Vaughn et al., 1980b). The three factors emerging from this analysis accounted for 57.5% of the total variance in the matrix generated from the feeding observations. The first two factors, identified by maternal variables, were labeled I, Mother Caretaking Skills, and II, Mother’s Affective Behavior. They accounted for 49 and 33%, respectively, of the common variance of the variables. The third factor, described by infant variables, accounted for 18% of the common variance and was labeled III, Infant Social Responsiveness. The mothers and babies were also observed at 6 months in a standardized play situation. These play situations lasted about 15 min. The interactions between the mother and her infant during play were rated using a 12-item list developed by Egeland et al. (1975), and included such items as mother’s inventiveness during play, support, patience, and amount of reciprocal play. As with the feeding ratings, observers were initially trained and obtained reliability using video taped play sessions (observer agreements ranged from .56 to 1.00, median = .73, using the Tinsley–Weiss method of calculating rater agreement for ordinal scales), but actual data collection was done live rather than with video tape. The ratings from the play situation were also factored using the principal factor solution, and rotated using the varimax procedure (see Vaughn et al., 1980b, for detailed descriptions of the items and factor structure of these data). The factor analysis of the play data accounted for 48.4% of the total variance. As with the feeding data, a three-factor solution emerged as the best description of the data. Two factors contained only mother variables and they were labeled I, Maternal Play Skills, and III, Maternal Attitude Toward Play. These factors accounted for 52 and 18% of the common variance, respectively. The factor identified by infant behaviors emerged second in this factor analysis and was labeled II, Baby’s Involvement in Play. The infant factor accounted for 30% of the common variance of the variables. After completing the observations of the mother–infant pairs at 6 months, the observers rated the mothers using Ainsworth’s scales of Sensitivity and Cooperation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). These ratings were intended to be summary scores derived from all of the observations made by the observer from all of the interactions between the mother and infant. The Tinsley–Weiss indices of rater agreement were .66 and .80 for Sensitivity and Cooperation, respectively.
3. Results 3.1. Six-month Carey ITQ ratings The responses to the ITQ were coded and scores were assigned to each infant on each of the nine temperament dimensions, and a diagnosis of “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” or “difficult” was made using Carey’s (1970, 1973) algorithm. Table 1 presents the mean scores on all of the temperament dimensions for this sample, along with the means from Carey’s original standardization sample (presented for reference). The maximum difference between the two populations on any of the temperament dimensions is .19 scale points and, even though
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Table 1 Comparisons of means and standard deviations between present sample and Carey’s standardization sample for the nine temperament dimensions Dimension
X¯
SD
t(286)
−1.93
Activity Present sample Carey’s sample
.45 .52
.28 .32
Rhythmicity Present sample Carey’s sample
.72 .53
.46 .46
3.31∗
Adaptability Present sample Carey’s sample
.42 .35
.25 .26
2.22
Approach Present sample Carey’s sample
.58 .48
.32 .35
2.42
Threshold Present sample Carey’s sample
1.24 1.08
.36 .39
3.49∗
Intensity Present sample Carey’s sample
.99 1.05
.26 .32
Mood Present sample Carey’s sample
.51 .40
.20 .25
4.15∗
Distractibility Present sample Carey’s sample
.72 .57
.26 .32
4.34∗
Persistence Present sample Carey’s sample
.72 .69
.33 .38
.67
∗
−1.73
p < .01.
four of the dimensions differ significantly (at the .01 alpha level or less), we are not inclined to treat these differences as meaningful, given the power of the t-test with such large samples. The numbers of infants falling into the various diagnostic categories were 64 (34%), 67 (36%), 33 (18%), and 23 (12%) for the “easy,” “intermediate low,” “intermediate high,” and “difficult” categories, respectively. This compares to approximately 40.6% easy, 10.9% difficult and 48.5% in the two intermediate categories in Carey’s standardization sample (see Carey, 1973). 3.2. Relationships among the assessments 3.2.1. Temperament and behavioral factors Assessment of the relationships between the ITQ data and the observational data from the feeding and play factors was done in two steps. First, infants were grouped according to
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their temperament “diagnoses” and one-way analyses of variance were computed for all the behavioral factors. Second, for those factors found to discriminate significantly among the four diagnostic groups, correlations were computed with all nine temperament dimensions measured by the ITQ. The initial tests served the purpose of reducing the overall number of tests conducted. No significant differences were found on any of the factor scores derived from the feeding and play observations. Only one factor even approached significance (Maternal Play Skills, F = 2.34, p < .07) and, in this case, means for the mothers of the “easy” and the “difficult” infants were adjacent rather than maximally separated as might have been expected if infant temperament was a factor contributing to maternal caretaking skills. One-way ANOVAs using the scores on Ainsworth’s Sensitivity and Cooperation scales as dependent variables were also not significant, Neither was found to discriminate significantly among the temperament diagnostic categories, and the scores for mothers of “easy” and “difficult” infants were adjacent. Infant temperamental difficulty, then, was not found to be related to the behavior of either the mother or the infant during our feeding and play observations. 3.2.2. Temperament and mothers’ psychological variables Relationships among the ITQ data and the psychological test battery measures were assessed similarly to the behavioral data. Results from the initial ANOVA are presented in Table 2. These data show that there are numerous significant differences among the groups on the variables from the mother psychological test battery. Nine of these variables are significant (p < .05) and two additional variables reach the .10 level of probability. Mothers describing their babies as “difficult” (on the basis of their responses to the ITQ) received significantly higher scores on the Aggression, Defendence and Succorance scales of the Personality Research Form (Jackson, 1967), and received significantly lower scores on the Social Desirability Scale from the same instrument. (People scoring low on the Social Desirability Scale tend to present an unfavorable picture of themselves in response to personality statements.) In addition, they had higher anxiety scale scores (Cattell & Scheier, 1963), lower scores on the Broussard measure (scored both for “average” baby and for “my” baby), lower scores on a measure of maternal knowledge of the reciprocal nature of mother–infant interactions, and higher on a scale assessing low maternal feelings. Mothers of “easy” babies were generally on the opposite end of each of these measures (see Table 2). In general, mothers describing their infants as difficult could be characterized as more anxious, hostile and suspicious than mothers who described their infants as “easy.” To test further the relationships between the temperament assessment and the psychological variables, correlations were computed relating the nine dimensions of temperament measured by the ITQ and the nine variables shown to be related to the diagnosis of temperament in the initial analyses. These results are presented in Table 3. Twenty-four of the 81 possible correlations are significant. Not surprisingly, 22 of these 24 significant relationships are found between the five dimensions which serve as criteria for the identification of “difficult” temperament. The temperament dimensions “adaptability” and “mood” are strongly related to maternal variables, while “rhythmicity” and “approach” show a moderate number of relationships, and the “intensity” dimension is not significantly related to the psychological variables. While the magnitude of these correlations is modest (even the largest
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Table 2 Means and standard deviations for psychological variables across the ITQ diagnostic categories Variable
Intermediate Easy
PRF Aggression PRF Defendence PRF Impulsive PRF Succorance PRF Infrequency PRF Social desirable IPAT Anxiety Locus of control Broussard average baby Broussard my baby Cohler Scale 1 Cohler Scale 2 Cohler Scale 3 PRQ Fear for self PRQ Desire for pregnancy PRQ Dependency PRQ Fears for baby PRQ Low maternal feelings PRQ Tension
Low
High
F-ratio (3, 183)
Difficult
X¯
SD
X¯
SD
X¯
SD
X¯
SD
6.75 5.78 5.50 7.59 .22 11.53 28.55 5.44 20.30 21.92 32.25 40.14 39.36 5.41 14.30 9.26 14.21 12.15 24.44
3.02 2.94 2.78 3.37 .49 2.86 10.48 2.58 2.22 2.91 5.99 6.68 9.29 1.30 4.74 2.05 2.98 2.54 4.68
7.58 6.94 5.78 8.42 .15 9.83 34.32 5.19 19.99 21.91 31.74 37.86 37.51 6.15 14.12 9.36 15.15 12.65 25.18
3.18 2.91 3.03 3.43 .37 3.27 10.94 2.56 2.43 2.83 6.65 7.82 6.70 1.85 5.11 1.79 3.00 2.96 3.34
7.19 6.32 6.97 8.00 .20 9.71 36.74 5.58 19.32 20.90 32.00 37.13 37.06 5.79 15.00 9.17 15.07 11.79 25.70
2.82 3.59 3.60 3.74 .53 3.28 10.76 3.35 3.15 3.31 7.04 8.39 6.85 1.93 5.13 1.73 3.46 2.34. 3.37
9.45 8.45 6.86 10.05 .91 9.09 41.55 5.18 18.59 19.91 29.82 35.09 35.18 6.19 14.14 10.24 15.57 14.05 26.53
3.70 3.49 2.75 2.85 1.50 2.81 9.91 2.22 3.22 3.12 7.56 8.26 9.18 1.89 4.09 1.64 2.84 3.09 3.82
4.17∗∗ 4.44∗∗∗ 2.36 2.96∗ .89 5.45∗∗∗ 9.92∗∗∗ .21 2.84∗ 3.39∗ .76 2.87∗ 1.71 2.35 .23 1.69 1.54 3.28∗ 1.53
∗
p < .05. p < .01. ∗∗∗ p < .005. ∗∗
values do not exceed .30), they indicate that mothers’ perceptions of infant behavior are influenced by their (i.e., the mothers’) psychological characteristics. This proves to be especially true for those temperamental dimensions which are used to define temperamental “difficulty.” 3.2.3. Relationships among psychological variables and behavioral factors Because we were also interested in the possible effects of the psychological attributes and attitudes of the mother on the nature of the mother–infant interaction, we computed the correlations between the behavioral factors derived from the feeding and play observations and the 19 scores from the maternal psychological battery. These data are presented in Table 4. For the feeding data, 16 of the 38 (42%) possible relationships between maternal behavior factors and the psychological variables reached the .05 level of significance, while only 2 of 19 (11%) possible relationships were found with the infant factor. When only those psychological variables already found to be related to perception of temperament are examined, 11 (of 18 possible) significant correlations are seen with mother factor, versus one (of nine possible) for the infant factor. For the play data, 7 (of 38 possible), or 18%, of the correlations between the psychological variables and mother factors are significant, while only one (5%) significant correlation was found between the psychological variables and the infant behavior factor.
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Table 4 Intercorrelations of the behavioral factors from feeding and play with the valuables from the psychological test battery Psychological variable
PRF Aggression PRF Defendence PRF Impulsive PRF Succorance PRF Infrequency PRF Social Desirable IPAT Anxiety Locus of Control Broussard Average Baby Broussard My Baby Cohler 1 Cohler 2 Cohler3 PRQ Fear for Self PRQ Desire for Pregnancy PRQ Dependency PRQ Fear for Baby PRQ Low Maternal Feeling PRQ Tension ∗
Feeding factors
Play factors
M Caretaking
M Affect
B Social
−.14 −.18∗ −.10 .11 −.01 .21∗∗ −.14 .07 .23∗∗ .18∗ .13 .27∗∗ .18∗ .04 −.17∗ .10 −.14 −.06 .18∗
−.09 −.15∗ .03 −.12 −.06 .25∗∗ −.22∗∗ .01 .17∗ .11 .22∗∗ .26∗∗ .13 −.16∗ −.02 −.13 −.12 −.19∗ −.12
.09 .08 .09 .09 .17∗ −.13 .12 .11 .15∗ .11 .00 .11 −.12 .12 .01 −.02 −.01 .00 .08
M Play skill −.04 −.72 −.01 −.01 −.06 .18 −.11 .18∗ .14 .12 .14 .24∗∗ .18∗ .00 −.09 .13 −.15∗ −.02 −.09
B Responsive
M Attitude
.11 .16∗ .02 .03 .02 −.09 .09 .01 .13 .08 .03 .12 .03 .08 .06 .02 −.08 −.01 .11
−.10 −.11 .00 −.14 .01 .10 −.05 .04 .18∗ .09 .02 .21∗∗ .08 −.05 −.19∗ −.14 −.05 .14 −.14
p < .05. p < .01.
∗∗
Again, it is important to note that the correlation values are modest; however, the interpretation of these data is clear. Mothers whose psychological test scores indicate that they are more suspicious, tense and anxious, and who have a relative lack of understanding of the reciprocal nature of infant–mother interactions, are rated as being less skilled in routine caretaking (feeding) and as showing less positive affect during feeding and play. Maternal behavior, then, is showing some relationship to the psychological characteristics of the mothers measured 3 months earlier. These psychological characteristics were only marginally related to infant behavior during the 6 month feeding and play observations. Taken together, the data presented in Tables 3 and 4 suggest that maternal psychological characteristics and attitudes influence both maternal perceptions of temperament and maternal behavior during interaction. However, these same characteristics appear to have only minimal impact upon infant behavior, and infant behavior in these situations seems to be unrelated to the mother’s perception of her infant’s temperament.
4. Discussion These results are provocative. They indicate that the ITQ is reflecting maternal characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors much more than infant temperament, at least insofar as temperament influences the behaviors under observation in our 6-month assessments. Several
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of the psychological variables assessed at 3 months were found to discriminate significantly among mothers whose ITQ responses yielded diagnoses of “difficult” temperament versus those mothers whose responses yielded diagnoses of “easy” temperament. Maternal behavior during feeding and play interactions with the infant did not so discriminate the mothers rating their infants as easy or difficult and, perhaps most significantly, the infant behavior assessed during feeding and play did not discriminate “easy” from “difficult” infants. Finally, maternal psychological characteristics had a number of relationships with maternal behavior during feeding and play but had few significant relationships to infant behaviors in the same situations. Consequently, we found no evidence from these data to support the notion that mothers with differing attitudes, expectations, and personality traits are eliciting different behavior from their infants during feeding and play. Neither did we find evidence that mothers with relatively low levels of sensitivity and caretaking skills were perceiving their infants as more difficult. For example, the results of the analyses of the Ainsworth scales of Sensitivity and Cooperation did not discriminate between the mothers of infants in the various diagnostic categories. There are a number of possible explanations for these rather disappointing results, including the nature of the sample (young, low SES, high risk, etc.), parity of the mothers (all firstborn infants), or the possibility that the infant behaviors observed during feeding and play were inappropriate to discern temperamental differences. While none of these alternatives may be entirely ruled out, tests of age, years of education, and number of stressful life events occurring to these mothers during the first year of life failed to discriminate mothers of “easy” infants from mothers of “difficult” infants (using one-way ANOVA). We are convinced that the nature of the sample is not determining the observed results. The issue of the nature of the behaviors observed is less tractable. One of the original reasons for using the mother as an informant in this type of research is that she is more likely, given her long-standing opportunity to observe the infant, to have an integrative understanding of the infant’s behavior. It is possible that one or two observations of the infant will not yield sufficient data to make inferences about temperamental characteristics. Without extensive observations of the infant, it will not be possible to determine the extent to which maternal reports of behavior will be consistent with the observations of experimenters. However, until such observations are made and reported, there is no reason to believe that maternal report data provide a closer representation of infant temperament than short-term observations. A second problem with the behavioral data which we have collected concerns the nature of the situations in which the behaviors were observed. All of the observations were of interactions between the mother and the child; no observations were made out of an interactional context. It may be that, in feeding and play situations, even an infant who might otherwise be perceived as difficult would not have opportunities to fuss. Possibly, such opportunities for fussiness or negative mood associated with temperamental difficulty would be greater in less intensely interactive situations (e.g., when the infant demands attention). Alternatively, it may be that temperament can only be ascertained in non-social contexts. If this is true, however, then many of the general situations to which mothers are asked to respond concerning their infants’ behavior are also not appropriate to the study of temperament. On the Carey ITQ, for example, several items specifically ask about responses to people, visits to the doctor, feeding, bathing, diapering, and dressing, all of which imply an interactive context.
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Even if interaction is not the appropriate context from which to infer temperamental characteristics, it is not unreasonable to assume that variations in temperamental characteristics will influence the interactions between mothers and their infants. While it is possible that the interactive data collected at 6 months were not reliable or not representative of the interactions typical of the infant–mother pairs (if, for example, mothers were making special efforts to behave like “good mothers” in front of the observers), data from this same sample, which have been presented elsewhere (e.g., Vaughn et al., 1980a, 1980b; Egeland & Brunnquell, 1979) suggest that these behaviors have relationships to assessments of the infant during the neonatal period and are related to important outcome criteria during the first year of the infant’s life (Egeland, 1980). We believe, therefore, that the failure to find any relationships between the temperament diagnoses derived from the ITQ and our observational data reflects a problem of the ITQ instrument and not of our observational measures. While it was not our intention to test the predictive validity of the temperament diagnoses here, there were several outcome criteria which were assessed later during the first year of the infant’s life which could, perhaps, be used as validation data. Data available from the Bayley tests, the Infant Behavior Record (Bayley, 1969) and from an assessment of infant–mother attachment (Ainsworth et al., 1978) were each tested for possible relationships with the four temperament diagnostic categories. None of the statistical tests reached the conventional levels for significance. Thus, the diagnoses of “difficult” and “easy” temperaments afforded by maternal responses to the Carey ITQ were found to have neither concurrent behavioral validity, nor predictive validity to other significant criteria assessed during the first year of life. In this sample, the significant relationships were found with maternal attitudes and characteristics. It is important to note here that these relationships were not predicted a priori. Indeed, the Carey ITQ was chosen as a data collection instrument because it was hoped that it would be relatively free of such influences. For this sample, then, we have no evidence that the Carey ITQ assesses infant temperament. Rather, it appears to be an assessment of the mother. The mothers whose responses to the ITQ yield diagnoses of “difficult” are extremely anxious, show less interest in their maternal role, and lack (relative to other mothers) an understanding of the reciprocal nature of the infant–mother relationship. Reviewing Tables 2 and 3, one can see that the outstanding characteristic of these mothers is their high level of anxiety. Indeed, mothers of “difficult” infants have anxiety levels above the 90th percentile, compared to the standardization population (Cattell & Scheier, 1963). While it is arguable that a “difficult” infant might lead to maternal anxiety, data from the Vaughn et al. (1980) report suggest that the high anxiety levels existed prior to the birth of the baby. Further, the IPAT anxiety score is not significantly correlated with the infant behavior factors at 6 months. Our own interpretation of these data is that our high-anxious mothers are not perceiving their infants’ behaviors similarly to the way others would perceive the same behaviors. The high score on the Aggression and Defendence scale for mothers of “difficult” infants would further indicate that their needs and feelings interfere with their ability to perceive and interpret their infant’s behavior accurately. While we wholeheartedly subscribe to the notion that the infant is an active participant in its own development (e.g., Vaughn et al., 1980b), and that infant characteristics can be important determinants of the outcomes of mother–infant interaction (Waters, Vaughn, &
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Egeland, 1980), we question whether the Carey ITQ reflects that participation in samples such as this one.
Notes 1. While we recognize that the ITQ was not developed as an instrument for the assessment of neonatal behavior, we were curious as to possible relationships between our neonatal assessments and the ITQ diagnoses. The infants had been assessed during the neonatal period with two types of measurement technique. The Brazelton Neonatal Scales (Brazelton, 1973) had been administered to the infants during the second week of life. Additionally, the neonates had been rated on a 19-item scale by the nurses in the newborn nursery. Data reduction from both instruments yielded scores on a common underlying dimension of “alertness/activity/orientation” and other less obviously related dimensions. As it happened, both of these dimensions were significantly related to the ITQ diagnostic categories at 6 months, but in opposite directions. That is, one of the factors indicated that alert/active infants were less likely to be considered “difficult” by their mothers, while the other dimension suggested that alert infants were more likely to be considered difficult than less alert babies. Such results suggest that extreme care must be taken when interpreting the relevance of behavioral data to questionnaire data such as the ITQ. 2. The same battery of tests was administered to these mothers prior to the birth of their infants. These measures are described in more detail by Vaughn et al. (1980a) and by Egeland and Brunnquell (1979). A factor analysis of these variables and significant correlates of those factors is described by Egeland and Brunnquell (1979). A summary of the factor structures from both administrations of the test battery is available from Egeland. The Carey ITQ was also completed at 3 months. Similar analyses to those reported in this paper were run using the Carey data from 3 months, with no substantive differences. Since the ITQ was designed for infants 4 months and older, we decided not to report the 3 month data. 3. The Carey ITQ has been recently revised (Carey & McDevitt, 1978). Carey (personal communication, 1977) made available a copy of the revised ITQ at a point about halfway through our data collection for this sample. However, after pilot testing the revised ITQ on a sample similar in demographic characteristics to our own longitudinal sample (pilot sample N = 25), we were forced to conclude that the new instrument was too lengthy and complicated for our relatively under-educated women. A majority of the pilot sample complained about not understanding many of the items, and none were able to complete the instrument without help from a staff member to interpret some of the items. In addition, the instrument could not be completed within 30 min by the majority of the pilot mothers. Consequently, we did not use the revised ITQ, and we suspect that it will be inappropriate for other low SES populations as well. 4. The factor structure for each data set reported here was determined by separately rotating two, three, and four factor solutions and examining each solution for psychological meaning and interpretability. The final three factor solution proved to be the most psychologically meaningful.
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Acknowledgments This research was supported by grant no. 90-C-424 from the Office of Human Development, Administration for Children, Youth and Families, National Center of Child Abuse and Neglect, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
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