TEMPERAMENTAL AND FAMILIAL CORRELATES OF ADJUSTMENT IN FOUR-YEAR-OLDS FROM A NORMAL POPULATION

The purpose of the study was to investigate longitudinally the interaction between young children's temperaments, their parent's temperaments, and home/family environment in the determination of adjustment in children from a normal population. The major hypothesis was that the "goodness of fit," or degree and type of match/mismatch between young children and their environments, affects the attainment of adjustment in children. Ninety four-year-old subjects participated, including 56 adopted and 34 nonadopted children who are part of an ongoing research project (the Colorado Adoption Project). Instruments administered over a four-year period included the Child Behavior Check List, the EASI III Temperament Survey, the Colordo Childhood Temperament Survey, Caldwell's Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Inventory, and the Moos Family Environment Scale. Four sets of analyses were performed: (a) descriptive statistics for each variable, (b) longitudinal stability of repeated measures instruments, (c) comparisons between the temperaments of mothers and fathers, and (d) hierarchical multiple regressions of child's temperaments, parents' temperaments, and home environment on adjustment of the child at age four. The results indicated that the temperament measures were not stable across time, but rather reflected expected developmental fluctuations within broad inherited tendencies. Longitudinal variations in the family environment scales also were consistent with developmental expectation. The main findings of this study confirmed in some, but not all, respects the general hypothesis that behavioral disturbances as well as adjustment is the result of the interaction between the child with a given patterning of temperament and significant features of the developmental environment. Adjustment of the four-year-old was not related to the interaction between child's temperament and parents' temperaments, nor was it related to the interaction between temperament and HOME score. However, it was demonstrated that adjustment or maladjustment of the child at age four emerged from the interaction between temperament of the child and the particular characteristics of the family environment in which the child was raised. The study tended to corroborate the results of previous research: The attainment of adjustment in children results from the environment being responsive to their particular temperamental characteristics.