Browsing by Author "Vehviläinen, Emma"

Some congenital temperament traits can already be observed in the behavior of infants. Many of them can be helpful in predicting future problems in both behavior and mental health, but some of them have been connected to learning difficulties. Some traits can also support the development of behaviors that benefit well-being. The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine the connection between temperament traits and behavior of toddlers in early childhood education, also taking into consideration learning difficulties in the family. The thesis was done as a part of a research program studying stress regulation in children carried out by the special education research group in University of Helsinki. In this study there were 218 participants. The average age of the children participating was 1 y 9 months (SD 5). The children’s parents filled out Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaires that measure different temperament traits. Early childhood educators filled out the Finnish translation of the Preschool Behavior and Emotional Rating Scale-questionnaire. The families were also asked about any known learning difficulties in the family. Hypotheses were made based on earlier research, which were then compared to each other by counting correlations between the questionnaire results and data of learning difficulties in the family. As expected, statistically significant connections were found between negative affectivity and social confidence, as well as effortful control and emotional regulation. The correlation between negative affectivity and social confidence was the largest in the thesis (-,658**) when only families with learning disabilities were taken into account. Earlier research has found temperament to be a very complex construct that cannot outright predict the conduct of a person. The complexity of temperament was also evident in the difficulty of finding corresponding features between the dimensions of temperament and the questions that measured behavior in the study. Despite the inaccuracies in the definition of learning difficulties in this thesis and a small sample, a strong correlation was found between negative affectivity and social confidence, when only cases with family history of learning difficulties were taken into account. Based on the results, it would be beneficial to further examine the relationship between negative affectivity, behavior and learning difficulties within a framework that also identifies the type of learning difficulty and the family member affected.