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Early Temperament as a Predictor of Child Mental Health

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Abstract

The present follow-up study examined the contribution of early temperament to mental health in preschool and school years. Participants represent a community sample of 96 children (54% female) from urban and rural areas of Russia. Temperament was measured by the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised and the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire; mental health was assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Effortful control and negative affectivity accounted for 17% of the variance in internalizing problems and 6% in externalizing problems, and results also highlighted the contribution of lower-order traits. Our findings emphasize the importance of broadband and fine-grained early temperamental traits for later mental health in the Russian context and support the predominant role of effortful control and negative affectivity.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participating parents and their children who participated in the study and colleagues who collected parts of the data.

Funding

This study was funded by the Russian Scientific Foundation (grant number 16-18-00003; data analyses) and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant number 19-013-00034; manuscript preparation).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physiology and Basic Medicine, Novosibirsk, Russia

    Elena A. Kozlova & Helena R. Slobodskaya

  2. Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia

    Elena A. Kozlova & Helena R. Slobodskaya

  3. Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    Maria A. Gartstein

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  1. Elena A. Kozlova
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  2. Helena R. Slobodskaya
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  3. Maria A. Gartstein
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Correspondence to Elena A. Kozlova.

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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institute of Physiology and Basic Medicine ethics committee and with the 1975 Helsinki Declaration.

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Written informed consent was obtained from all participating parents included in the study and they received both written and verbal information about study aims and procedures.

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Kozlova, E.A., Slobodskaya, H.R. & Gartstein, M.A. Early Temperament as a Predictor of Child Mental Health. Int J Ment Health Addiction 18, 1493–1506 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-019-00181-3

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