Browsing by Author "Sammallahti, Joel"

Goals Intelligence and temperament are two essential concepts in the study of interpersonal psychological variation. The connections between these two domains of variation have, however, been the subject of only limited research. With the exception of a well-replicated association between intelligence and effortful control, a trait comprising attention, focus, restraint, and goal-oriented behavior, results have been highly varied. The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between intelligence and temperament at ages 8 to 12 and whether temperament is associated with cognitive development during the years in question. Methods This study utilizes data collected as part of the Glaku longitudinal research project, on 468 child-parent pairs. The parents filled in questionnaires concerning their child's temperament at ages 8 and 12, and the children were concurrently administered four subtests of the WISC-III, two of which represented verbal and two nonverbal cognitive ability. At each age, three higher-order temperament traits and their constituent lower-order dimensions were estimated from the questionnaire data. The associations between these intelligence and temperament measures were subjected to a series of linear regression analyses. Results and Conclusions As predicted from prior research, effortful control is strongly associated with intelligence at ages 8 and 12. In addition, higher effortful control at age 8 is associated with greater improvement in vocabulary from age 8 to age 12. Of the other temperament traits assessed, shyness is associated with poorer verbal performance at age 12, and a tendency to negative emotionality is associated with better cognitive performance at age 12. The latter result is surprising in the light of prior research.