Temperament

They were the first researchers to develop a systematic theory, and they used a nine-dimensional framework for describing children’s temperament across a wide age range, from infancy to adolescence. These dimensions represented behavioural aspects such as activity level, adaptability, distractibility (how easily distracted a child is) and attention span. One of the major difficulties with this framework is that it has not been possible to confirm that these nine dimensions are independent aspects of temperament. Such independence is important, because if any two factors are highly correlated, this implies that a single factor could be used instead. In fact, it is likely that there are fewer than nine independent influences on children’s behaviour. For example, a child who is very distractible is also likely to have a short attention span.