Browsing by Author "Elo, Heini"

Temperament is child's individual characteristic, and it serves as a core to personality development. Still we do not have a clear understanding how stable temperament traits are from infancy onward. A strong attachment bond to caregivers is important to child's development. Attachment bond is known to form also in secondary relationships as with professional caregivers. Temperament is associated with attachment security in primary attachment relationship. Nevertheless, studies on associations with child temperament and quality of secondary attachment are few and far between. This study will focus on the questions about (1) stability of child temperament, (2) association between child temperament and security of attachment with professional caregiver, and (3) how security of attachment will mediate the stability of child temperament, diminishing or strengthening temperament traits. This study is part of Kenguru-project in which professional caregiving was examined in day care centers concerning children under three years old during 2005 - 2006. In day care centers we were running an intervention to boost interaction and development of attachment bond between children and caregivers. This study examined those 126 children (girls 54) who were 8 - 34 months (mean age 23 months) old in the beginning of the study. Temperament was assessed as emotionality, activity and shyness, and we used EAS - temperament questionnaire (parental ratings), at two time points. Security of attachment was observed using Attachment Q-sort. Among other research questions, the factor structure of EAS-temperament questionnaire was observed. The stability of temperament was studied with correlations coefficients and all research questions were analysed using the linear regression modelling. According to this study, there were some changes in child temperament in the short term. Most changes occurred in emotionality. This result support the earlier finding that temperamental traits will be more stable when child get older than in infancy or in toddlerhood. There were no association between emotionality, activity or shyness with the security of attachment. Findings are in line with earlier research, that parental ratings about child temperament are not associated with observed attachment security with professional caregiver.