Children Observation: Different Temperaments Assessment



Children Observation: Different Temperaments Assessment

Introduction

Temperament has been defined as constitutionally based individual differences in emotional, motor, and attention reactivity, and self-regulation. Reactivity refers to the excitability, responsiveness, and arousability of behavioral and physiological systems. It can be measured in the latency, intensity, and duration of children's emotional, motor, and attention reactions to arousing events (Berk, 2008). Self-regulation refers to processes that modulate reactivity, such as attention control and motor inhibition. Temperamental characteristics demonstrate consistency across situations and relative stability over time. They undergo developmental change, and their measurement is basic to identifying trajectories of social-emotional and personality development (Bee & Boyd, 2006).

This paper presents an analysis of observe differences between children of different temperament types as they react to complex, exciting, unfamiliar, or stressful events. Main objective of this report is to present the assessment and interpretation of children behavior observation that they displayed in the situation.

Location of the Observation

General location for the observation of children behavior and temperament was a local amusement park located near my home in California. Children came with their family members that include mother, father, sister/brothers, and grandparents for outing on Sunday. The general characteristics of the group of children observed in terms of ages were 3 to 8 years old, six boys and two girls. All of them belonged to White American family except one child who belonged to Asian family. That family migrated from India to America due to placement of his father in a U.S. branch office of the company. All children were playing together on rotating shafts and sliders placed in the park. Two children were about three years old; three of them were about six years old; and three of them were about eight years old. Both girls were of relative age near to six.

Profile Description of Children and Temperament

Child who displayed all the three different types of temperaments in the setting was the one, family of whom migrated from India to Untied States. He was an about six years old boy. He belonged to Asian race community who are living as foreign community in U.S. Personality characteristics that he displayed showed an assortment of behavioral traits that made the observation a bit complex to assess. First of all, when he came to play with other kids, he was quite shy (displaying the fearful behavior). He was quite shy in interacting with other kids in order to mingle with them. There is suggestive evidence that temperament may have different implications for boys' and girls' peer relations, perhaps due to cultural expectations about gender roles, although no clear-cut picture has yet emerged (Meggitt, 2006). Shyness appears more strongly associated with peer exclusion and rejection for boys than for girls. However, when other boy older than him, belonging to White American family, asked him to play with them he started distracting his shyness behavior. This shows the component of flexibility that dominated the personality component traits of the child in the ...