ANDREA JIMENEZ: Welcome
to our webinar, Becoming
who we are: The importance
of individual differences
in infant temperament.
My name is Andrea Jimenez.
I am the program coordinator
at Global Connections.
Our presenter tonight
is Dr. Maria--
or Masha-- Gartstein.
She is the professor
from the Department
of Psychology at WSU.
And so, the presentation will
be around 45 minutes long.
We will have time for question
and answers at the end.
But you are free to
write your questions
at any point in the chat box.
Again, if you have any technical
difficulties, let me know.
And thank you so
much for coming on.
I will now pass it on to Maria.
MARIA GARTSTEIN: Great.
Thank you.
Ordinarily, I would be
doing this from my office,
and you could see
me a lot clearer.
But it is what it is.
I'm in my home office.
And it's a little
bit less conducive
to these kinds of meetings.
So the title of my
talk is Becoming
who we are: The importance
of individual differences
in infant temperament.
And I have been
studying temperament,
and I have been an infancy
researcher for a little
over 20 years now, which
seems just unfathomable.
I would have never
guessed that I would have
stuck with it for this long.
But the reason why
I have is that it's
such a multifaceted construct.
And its etiology of where
it comes from is so complex.
It's related with
brain activity.
It's certainly
related with parenting
and parent-child interactions,
in a bi-directional, reciprocal
sort of way.
It is itself a predictor of a
variety of important outcomes
for us to study.
So it's kept me busy all
this time for those reasons.
So what I want to
do today is, I want
to run through some
slides with you.
I'm going to talk about
definitions of temperament.
I'm going to talk about
how we measure it.
I'm also going to talk
about some findings related
to how temperament develops, how
parenting is involved in that.
I'll present some of
my cross-cultural work
on differences in temperament
development around the world.
And my current
work, actually, has
to do with looking at
underlying brain activity,
also bringing parenting
into that picture.
So we'll probably finish
off our chat with that.
And I'll keep an
eye on the time,
so that I do leave some time
for you to ask me questions.
So in terms of defining
temperament and understanding
what it is, at
least conceptually,
the construct has been around
for a really long time.
You're not seeing
it full screen.
I'm not sure if that's
something I can fix.
But I will--
I need to go into my
presentation mode, I think.
Hold on a second.
Let's see if I can do this.
Slide show.
There we go.
That should do it.
So it's been around for a
long time as a construct.
But so as my slide said, there's
some thinking about it back
in the Greco-Roman period.
But in terms of thinking about
temperament in childhood,
this is a fairly
recent endeavor.
And initial
observations were made
in studies that were actually
focused on motor development.
And researchers like
Gessell and Shirley
essentially sort of said,
gosh, not only are these babies
sort of growing in terms
of their motor abilities,
but look at the
individual differences
and how they react to
situations and people
and that sort of thing.
Isn't that interesting?
And so it is, in
fact, interesting.
And back in the 1960s,
Thomas and Chess
were really the
first researchers
to ask questions about
temperament in childhood,
and how it might be
related to things
that happen down the road.
And they began what is
referred to as the New York
longitudinal study.
Their primary achievements
with respect to this study--
well, first and
foremost, they were
the first to demonstrate
that temperament
as early as the
first year of life
actually translates into risk
versus protection for symptoms,
disorders, mental health
related issues in adulthood.
They followed these infants
into their early adulthood,
and so measured those outcomes.
And so they identified a
temperament constellation
they referred to as
difficult temperament, which
has to do with, basically,
distress prone-ness
and poor regulatory capacity.
And so those were the children
that, in their studies,
were at greater risk compared,
for example, to children
they identified as being easy
in terms of their temperament.
With respect to goodness of
fit, this is this idea that,
if you really want to understand
how children will be at risk
versus protected-- again, for
these mental health related
outcomes--
it's not enough just
to ask questions
about their temperament and
measure their temperament-- you
have to also understand their
context from a standpoint
of how they're being parented.
And so, the way that
parents are able to approach
their child in terms of their
demands and expectations
really matters.
If they're able-- if you have
a child who's really distress
prone, but their parents
kind of recognize
this as their
temperament and are
able to work with
it effectively--
they will not face as
much risk down the road
as a child who does not
have that kind of goodness
of fit going forward.
And I do want to tell you
that, in all honesty, children
who are easy--
it's far easier as a parent
to achieve goodness of fit
with them.
It takes a lot more
work for parents
to provide this
goodness of fit for kids
who are on the fussy
end of the spectrum.
And there's also an
eastern European tradition
of temperament that
doesn't get often--
get mentioned very often.
And I'm not going to
talk about it in detail.
But I do want to tell
you that Pavlov--
who's always associated
with classical conditioning
and salivating dogs--
was actually a
temperament researcher.
And he was actually
really interested
in individual differences
around this learning.
So that was his primary
area of research.
Well, the most cited
temperament model today
is the psychobiological
temperament
model, which is going to
be at the heart of what
we will be discussing.
And it defines temperament
as constitutionally based
individual differences.
And these differences encompass
reactivity and self-regulation.
So constitutionally
based-- traditionally,
people interpret this
as genetically based.
But it's really just
biologically based.
And so some of that
biology may, in fact,
be your genetic
predisposition-- what
you inherit from your parents.
But some of that
biology is likely
prenatal effects that are
actually environmental effects,
for example, stress the
mom experiences when she's
pregnant, because it is
transmitted to the offspring
sort of molecularly
through, initially,
changes in her physiology,
then through the uterus
and the placenta.
So that's the
constitutional piece.
Reactivity is emotional
reactivity, activity level.
And these differences
are influenced over time.
I already mentioned heredity.
Also maturation and experience--
so brain development,
of course, really shapes how
temperament comes online.
And experience is where
parenting comes in.
Temperament is thought to be
the core of the developing
personality.
And so when I started
to do this work,
one of the things that drew
me to working with infants
was research suggesting
that, in fact,
these individual
differences in infancy
were the foundation for who
we were to become as adults.
And I'm not saying to
you that the way somebody
is when they're six months or
12 months is exactly how they
are in their 20s or their 40s.
That would be crazy.
But somebody who's very
reactive as an infant tends
to be a reactive adult. Somebody
who is behaviorally inhibited,
and so is very cautious
to approach new things--
that's a behavioral style.
That's a temperament
constellation
that tends to persist
into adulthood.
And temperament itself develops.
And of course, one of the
reasons why it develops
is because the underlying brain
structures themselves develop.
That's that maturation piece.
And also it develops
based on the inputs
from the environment--
the contextual factors.
In the first year of life,
those contextual factors
are primarily parenting.
So how do we
measure temperament?
Well, another thing
that really attracted me
to working with infants is this
added degree of difficulty.
They can't tell us
anything about themselves.
So we have to be very clever in
how we gather this information.
So one thing we can do is we
can ask parents questions.
And we have to do this really
carefully because parents
of babies are tired.
And they're not super objective,
because obviously, they're
invested in the outcomes of
their hard work as parents.
And so you have to ask
questions in a very
particular and careful manner.
You have to ask about very
recently occurring things,
like only the past week or two.
You have to ask about
very concrete behaviors,
like in the past week,
when you're bathing Johnny,
how frequently did
he smile or laugh?
And you have a
little Likert scale--
a seven point scale
for them to use.
You can really
minimize a lot of--
sort of response sets or
biases by taking this approach.
And so, Mary Rothbart, who
was my postdoctoral advisor
at the University
of Oregon, invited
me to revise her infant
behavior questionnaire, which
had been very widely used.
And I, of course, said yes.
And so we wrote some additional
items to create more scales.
And then we evaluated
these items and scales
psychometrically, as the
say, which really just means
that we had to demonstrate
that, in fact, these scales work
the way that we
anticipated they would,
that they actually measure the
constructs-- the attributes--
that they were
designed to measure.
And so some of that
work is achieved
via a statistical approach
called factor analysis.
When we applied that
approach to the data
we had collected with
the questionnaire,
it lo and behold
told us that our 14
scales formed these three
overarching factors.
And when we looked at the
factors in their composition--
their content--
the first one was
labeled as positive
affectivity/surgency-- which
is like the infant counterpart
for what adult personality
people call extroversion.
So it's baby extroversion.
Negative emotionality-- which
is what adult personality
people refer to as neuroticism.
It's essentially
distress prone-ness.
And then regulatory
capacity or orienting,
which is certainly not the same
thing as conscientiousness.
Again, that's from
personality world,
or what researchers who
work with older kids
will call effortful control.
Because effortful
control is all--
really, entirely based just
about on executive functions.
Well, executive
functions come online
because of the maturation
of the frontal lobes.
That hasn't yet happened
in the first year of life.
It begins to happen
towards the end.
So it's a more primitive,
attention based regulation,
if you will.
It's based primarily
in orienting attention.
And also, you can
see from the scales
like suitability, that parents
and the way that parents
are able to help
their infant calm down
is also a part of this
really regulatory capacity.
Well, what else can we do?
Well, we can also observe babies
when they come to the lab.
And so together with
some colleagues,
actually, at the University
of Murcia in Spain,
along with Mary Rothbart,
we developed a set
of procedures that are
standardized procedures, which
means that they're followed
exactly the same every time.
There are very
specific instructions.
We time things in
a very precise way.
But the idea is that we
create these situations
in the lab that are
designed to elicit
different types of reactivity.
So peek a boo, of
course, is designed
to elicit smile and laughter
positive emotionality.
We show masks because--
not because babies
know they're scary.
Because they haven't
learned that yet.
They haven't been through that
kind of associative learning.
But masks are unusual.
And so it's really measuring
this sort of distress
to novelty, which is, of course,
the foundation for fearfulness.
So we can present babies with
these situations in the lab,
and measure their reactions
by video recording them,
and then applying, again, a very
precise kind of coding scheme
in which we have to show
our research assistants
are reliable.
And that means this
is an inter-rater type
of reliability, probably
more than you ever wanted
to know about reliability.
It has to do with how
much people agree.
If I think that baby's smiling,
but it's sort of ambiguous.
And I'm like, OK,
well, that's a one.
Somebody else looking
at the same video
has to agree that that
number is the same number,
or it's not a good code.
And so that's what
we do in the lab,
is we present these situations.
This is peek a boo.
And what Mom does,
is she actually
peeks through each one
of these little windows.
And she opens it and looks at
her baby, and says peek a boo.
And babies really like it.
So this is kind of,
obviously-- this is just
a snapshot in time.
But you can see he's
beginning to smile.
So that's how we
observe temperament.
Again, there's a very huge sort
of quantification piece to it
and a huge demand
for measures to be
consistent in the case of
observations across observers
and cross readers.
So as [AUDIO OUT] masks,
[INAUDIBLE] my research
assistants generally really
like peek a boo, because, well,
it's nice.
Babies smile.
They like it.
Masks is one of the least
favorites, because it
ruins everyone's hair.
But you can see Momma
sitting off to the side.
And we tell the mom
not to intervene.
But of course, if she needs
to soothe the baby, that's--
we don't preclude
moms from doing that.
So how do these
measures hold up?
Well, when we look at the
questionnaire, it looks like--
I'm not going to go into
details on these numbers.
But what it looks like is
the scales and the factors
we've constructed actually
tap these attributes
in a consistent way.
All of the items hang
together, as they
say, and appear to
measure the construct we
were trying to measure.
For the observation
measures, people
do agree in terms of the
ratings that they provide.
One of our interesting
findings, with respect
to looking at what we get
in the lab versus what
the parents report to
us, was that the lack
of agreement,
actually, in this case,
for fearfulness, is related
to parents' own attributes.
And this is consistent
with the literature.
The literature is more
about a depressed mom's kind
of overrating distress
for their kids.
In our case, this is
a community sample
that we're not talking
about clinical depression.
But they rated themselves
on negative emotionality,
their own distress
prone-ness, and moms
who reported higher levels
of negative emotionality
overrated their
babies on fearfulness
relative to what we
observed in the lab.
And we thought that was
kind of interesting.
So let's talk about development.
I promised you we would.
I'm going to show you some
data showing that temperament,
in fact, developed over time--
this older paper from 2010,
and this new one from 2018.
So what's interesting about
growth modeling from the 2010
paper was that-- so
we measure temperament
from four to 12 months.
This is fearfulness.
And what we find is
that the levels--
so fearfulness increases
across the first year of life.
There is a big jump
here, around 10 months.
This is pretty consistent
with the literature.
What we find here-- what you
can observe in this picture--
is that it tends to
accelerate and ultimately
be higher for girls than boys.
And this is one of
the places where
people find gender
differences as early
as the first year of life.
There are far more gender
differences with older kids.
But in infancy, you do
get them with fearfulness
in this direction,
and with activity
in the opposite directions,
with boys basically being
rated as higher in activity.
In this slide, you can see that
the difference in fearfulness
is also related to
maternal depression.
And what's interesting here is
that this is another community
sample.
So this is not a clinically
depressed sample of moms.
These are moms who
are rating themselves
on a depression scale.
And we're using the
depression cutoff score
that comes with that
instrument to separate them
into minimal versus moderate
to high symptom groups.
And so for those moms
who rate themselves
as moderate to
high on depression,
you can see how their
babies increase in
fearfulness earlier,
and ultimately
attain higher levels
of fearfulness.
So maternal
characteristics really
do appear to shape
temperament development.
Let's see.
So this next study is
a more recent study
that was conducted based
on data here from--
collected here
locally in Pullman.
And what I'm going
to show you first
of all-- this
particular graph has
to do with how
fearfulness is increasing
from eight to 10 months.
And this is based on
that mask observation
I was showing you earlier.
So I will make a connection
here to theories of development.
Some of them are stage-like,
and others talk about more
gradual developmental courses.
This definitely is
more reflective of sort
of a stage increase, where
you're qualitatively different
in terms of your
fearfulness here
at 10 months, relative to eight.
Now, there are multiple
individual differences.
This is what people
call a spaghetti plot.
So you can see that when we
look across our 150 infants
individually, they have
rather different trajectories.
But on average, you get this
jump from eight to 10 months.
You don't get this jump when
you look at parent report,
and how parents
rate their infants.
This looks a lot more gradual.
The way that I explain
this finding is that its--
parents are probably
not the best rate judges
of rapid growth
for their children.
So for example,
with my daughter,
I often have the
experience of going
to visit our grandparents,
who don't live nearby.
And they're like, oh, my
goodness, she's grown so much.
And I'm like, oh, really?
So I think it's sort of,
in the parents' mind,
it's a little bit more gradual.
But when we observe
them in the lab,
we do get that
significant increase
from eight to 10 months.
But again, even
with parent report,
you get a lot of
individual variability
around this trajectory of growth
and this pathway of growth.
Smiling and laughter
also increases
across the first year of life.
But this is far more gradual.
And there's again, a great
deal of individual variation.
And parents, again, see
a much less rapid kind
of increase in this
attribute, compared
to what we observe in the lab.
So one of my conclusions,
based on this particular study,
was that--
because there's a big
debate in the field,
as what do we make--
how do we make
sense of when the lab and the
parent report don't agree?
Well, so one way,
based on our data,
is to understand it
from the standpoint
of parents' characteristics.
Are these parents depressed?
Are they high
negative emotionality?
Because if they are,
they may be reporting
more of that for their infants.
But I think the
other takeaway point
is, using the lab
versus parent report,
probably that judgment
call depends on what
you're wanting to measure.
And if you really want
to measure development,
then the lab is probably
better, because it's more
sensitive to those processes--
at least our data suggests
that those observations are.
These are just some numbers
that go along with that model
testing that I'll spare
you for the purposes
of our conversation today.
So one of the reasons--
I'm shifting gears now to talk
about why we study temperament.
I hope I made a case that it
develops over time, especially
rapidly in the
first year of life.
One of the reasons
we study temperament,
as I mentioned in the context
of the Thomas and Chess
conversation, is that it
predicts your mental health
related outcomes.
Well, I haven't had the luxury
of studying people from infancy
into their 20s.
But we did do this
short term longitudinal
study, where we
measured temperament
with my questionnaire--
the IBQ-R-- in the
first year of life.
And then we followed these kids
up into the preschool period.
So four and five,
that's how old they
were, when we asked parents
questions about their symptoms.
And you'll see, slide 1 is
for internalizing symptoms.
Internalizing is
a little jargon-y,
so I'll [? sort of ?]
unpack that for you.
Internalizing is depression,
anxiety, somatic concerns,
like tummy aches, headaches.
And so you can see,
if the question
is who is at greatest risk
for having high internalizing
symptoms, it is the
kids who are both
high in negative
emotionality and low in terms
of their abilities
to self regulate.
So this is what
people in the field
call temperament by
temperament interaction.
So it's not just
being distress prone.
It's being high
negative emotionality
of being distress prone,
plus having deficits
in terms of being able to
regulate oneself that translate
into higher internalizing
problems later
in childhood, and also higher
externalizing problems-- very
similar pattern here.
And externalizing problems
are under-control problems.
So aggression,
impulsivity, inattention
fall into this category.
So again, negative emotionality
and regulatory capacity
together predict these
symptom and behavior problem
oriented outcomes.
So now, I'm going to shift
gears into talking to you
about my cross-cultural work.
And I'm not going to
spend a lot of time
on this slide sort
of setting this up.
I'll just say to you that--
I'll give you a very
short background story
on how I came to do this work.
So I told you that I had
developed this instrument
with my postdoctoral
mentor, Mary Rothbart.
And because she has
been a famous researcher
and has really
contributed to this field,
it became really widely used.
I think it was more of her
contribution there than mine.
But I certainly
benefited from it.
And one of my
collaborators, Sam Putnam--
who is in Bowdoin
College in Maine--
was her postdoc after I
left Eugene and University
of Oregon.
And he continued-- he actually
followed up my babies,
and studied them as toddlers
and preschoolers, for which I'm
really grateful.
And he continued
to do this work.
Also, we collaborate
to this day.
One of the things
that he had done--
which is truly amazing--
is that he took charge
of disseminating
all of Mary's questionnaires,
including the baby one.
And so he has a website where
researchers who are interested
go and they ask--
they request the measure.
They provide their information.
And then he shares
the instruments
with those who are
qualified to use them.
And so at one point-- and
this has been some years ago.
I think was right before my
daughter was born, so 2007--
he shared the spreadsheet of
these researchers with me.
And I looked at it and I just
had this total aha moment.
Because I was--
it was researchers
from around the world.
And I said to him,
oh my god, Sam.
We have to collaborate
with these people.
They wouldn't be requesting
our questionnaires
if they weren't studying things
that-- if they didn't have
similar interests that we do.
And so that's how this
program of research began.
And it's really all a
function of these instruments
being widely used.
We were able to approach these
collaborators and, of course,
they were interested in
running studies with us.
And so, I'm showing
you the slide.
You're like, why is the
slide of WSU campuses?
What does this have to do with?
So one of the things that's
funny in cross-cultural work,
is when I talk with my
international colleagues,
and they're like, well,
where are you from?
And I'm like, oh,
Washington State University.
So first thing
that they think is
that I'm in Washington, D.C.
This is time and time again.
So then I'm like, no.
State of Washington.
So then, of course, they
think that I'm from Seattle.
So what I've started to do
is, when I present these data,
I show the slide.
And I say to people, WSU--
the primary campus-- is
actually in Pullman, Washington.
So here's Idaho, which is
as far east as you can go.
And I also show them some
photos of the lovely Palouse,
to just kind of ground
them contextually
in what it is to live
here, to grow up here.
And I also show slides of
places around the world
where our data has been
collected for the same reason--
to kind of ground
people ecologically,
with respect to where
the data come from.
So my Russian data set comes
from Novosibirsk in Russia,
which is consequential, because
Russia, just like China--
if you go to Moscow
or St. Petersburg,
those are very
westernized places.
And so they're
going to be skewed
in terms of the kinds of
information that you get.
Novosibirsk is very old
school Russian to this day.
I'll come back to
some of these data.
But I'll just run
through the places--
highlight some of the places
where we've collected data.
I have another
great collaborator
in the Netherlands, in
Nijmegen. And so I've
been fortunate to
visit her and to work
with her for a long time now.
We more recently collected
data in Ethiopia,
which is probably one of
the more exotic locations
for our work.
And although there is kind
of an urban center that's
in our data collection
site, most families
there live more rurally in
these kinds of settings.
And we are very grateful for
them taking part in this work.
So let me backtrack and
highlight some of the findings
from at least some
of these projects.
So in terms of the
Russian data set,
I think my favorite
study is this one from--
I think it was 2009,
in the European
Journal of Developmental
Psychology,
where we basically
showed that there's
an interesting
difference with respect
to how infant temperament
predicts this later
self-regulation
effortful control that I
was talking to you about.
And what this slide
shows is that,
if you're a child growing
up in the United States,
if you smile and laugh
more as an infant,
if you have more of
this baby surgency,
then you're going to end up
with higher effortful control
as a toddler.
But this doesn't
make a difference
for children who are
growing up in Russia.
And the way that we
interpreted this finding
is that smiling and laughter are
so critical to moms in the US.
And so there is something that
they do to support regulation
when their babies
are able to approach
them-- to interact with
them-- with greater
positive emotionality.
And you don't get
that effect in Russia,
presumably because there
is less value placed
on positive affectivity.
I'm going to skip that.
I'm going to tell you a
little bit about Dutch babies.
Dutch babies-- after
this paper was published,
I got a lot of,
actually, media requests
to talk about this data set.
Because what it showed
was that Dutch babies--
it was interpreted as
Dutch babies are happier.
But really, what it is, is
that Dutch babies are less
distress prone, and
they're better regulated.
So the single biggest
difference we get
is on the suitability scale.
So Dutch babies are far easier
to sooth than babies in the US.
And babies in the US come out
higher on those dimensions--
those scales and
attributes that have to do
with negative emotionality.
So for example,
distress to limitations,
which is frustration, fear.
And by the way, in
this initial paper,
this is all based
on mom's report.
But we have done
a follow up study
since then looking
at dad's report.
And interestingly
enough, it pretty much
confirmed these
original observations.
So I feel good about
reproducibility of these data.
When we looked at
our Ethiopian sample,
and how moms rated
their babies here,
we found quite a
few differences.
And it tended to be in the
direction of higher distress
related kinds of dimensions
for babies in Africa.
But not uniformly, because
there were also higher
on falling reactivity, which
is babies' ability to lower
their own level of distress.
So it was kind of
an interesting mix.
I'm going to skip
this interaction
effect in the interest of time.
So what does this all mean?
So kind of putting
it all together,
because we've now studied
temperament differences
across a variety of cultures--
and this particular graph that--
diagram that I'm going
explain here in a minute
comes from our recent book,
Toddlers, Parents, and Culture,
which is a data book.
So don't look at it if you're
not interested in data.
But it looks at
temperament and parenting
across 14 different cultures.
So to kind of give
you a brief summary,
essentially what
we find is, when
we compare babies and toddlers
and young children in the US
to those from Asian
countries or Russia,
we tend to see that
babies in the US
generally get higher
ratings on things that have
to do with positive affect--
so again, that sort
of baby extroversion--
smiling, laughter, and
higher-- and lower ratings
on distress prone-ness.
So babies from Russia,
babies from Asia and Africa
tend to get higher
ratings with respect
to distress related dimensions.
However, when we look
at northern Europe--
and I just showed
you the Dutch data
as an illustration of that--
kids from northern Europe
tend to be lower in distress
relative to the US.
And they also tend to
be viewed as having
greater regulatory capacity.
So how do we understand these
cross-cultural differences?
What's really driving them?
And so in this
diagram, we kind of
lay out our theory with
respect to these factors
that are behind--
that are sort of
the causal factors
here behind this effect.
So culture drives things
like socialization goals
and parental ethnotheories.
So socialization
goals have to do with,
what do you want for your kid?
What do you value for them
as they're growing up?
Is it important for you that
they're respectful of adults--
that they obey authority?
Is it important to you
that they're a good leader?
Parental ethnotheories are
closely related concepts,
that have to do with, what
does a good parent do?
Does a good parent set a lot
of limits on their child?
Or does a good parent
let their child sort
of pursue their own
interests to some extent?
And that translates,
in turn, into things--
so these are cognitive things.
This is parental psychology.
These things are in
the parent's mind.
They translate into
what parents do.
They translate into
daily activities.
So if I value, for example, my
kid growing up to be a leader,
we're going--
and I think that parents
should give their children
an opportunity to
pursue their interests--
we're going to have daily
activities where my child can
sort of practice those skills.
I'm going to let
them decide, maybe,
what game they're going to play
or what they have for lunch.
And I'm going to give them that
space to make those choices.
Responses to
temperament-- how do I
respond when temperament
displays are presented?
In other words, when
my kid is upset,
when my kid is showing
fear, what do I do?
Do I cuddle them?
Do I let them sort of cry it out
and just sort of cope with it,
and lower their own
level of arousal?
This, of course, is now
more proximately related
to temperament.
And behavior problems, because
as I was saying to you earlier,
we have a lot of
data that suggests--
going back to Thomas and Chess--
that temperament is
an important factor
that plays into
whether or not we're
on a trajectory of having sort
of mental health and adjustment
versus struggling with things
like depression, anxiety,
aggression, and attention
deficit hyperactivity.
That was a shameless
plug for my book.
So what else have we
done with temperament?
And I know I'm kind of
getting close to the end
of the didactic portion
of our meeting today.
So I started my life as a
researcher in psychology,
working with pediatric
populations in graduate school.
I spend most of my time
in Children's Hospital
in Cincinnati and looking
at kids with chronic illness
and their adjustment.
And so I've maintained
some of that interest.
And we've looked at temperament
and kids with Down syndrome,
and kids with Fragile X.
And for Down syndrome, we
found something that
is actually pretty
consistent with the
literature, which is,
these babies actually
show lower levels
of negative emotionality.
And although that may seem
like a sort of a temperament
profile that's conducive to
adjustment, in this case,
it's interpreted as
potentially limiting
their cognitive development.
And I'll tell you why
that is very briefly.
So distress to limitations,
recall is frustration.
If I'm trying to
solve a problem,
if I'm working on
a cognitive task,
frustration is really important.
Because when I feel
frustrated, this
is information that what
I'm doing is not effective.
So maybe I have to try
a different solution.
Maybe I have to get some help.
So if you don't feel that--
if that emotion isn't there--
you're not motivated to pursue
these strategies that will lead
to effective problem solving.
So for kids with
Fragile X, I will
show you this table-- or
this figure-- very quickly.
What we find in typically
developing kids--
now we're looking at
negative emotionality,
that sort of overall
distress prone-ness-- what
happens over time with
matched controls, which
are healthy typically developing
children-- is over time,
as they get older, as
they become preschoolers,
they show less
distress prone-ness.
Why?
Because they're
better regulated.
They develop that
effortful control,
that self-regulation that
comes from maturation
of the frontal lobes.
This is compromised in
kids with Fragile X.
And what happens with
them is that actually,
as they get older, they
present with higher levels
of distress prone-ness.
They're not able to regulate
themselves effectively.
And of course, that does play
into compromised development
with respect to adjustment
and mental health.
So just briefly,
current projects
we're looking at, EEG--
electroencephalogram
reportings-- as another data
point, because, of
course, temperament
is very closely related
to brain activity-- linked
with brain activity.
Our primary brain
activity indicator
is this EEG asymmetry.
And asymmetry is this-- so
you already know, I'm sure,
that brain is lateralized
for a variety of functions.
A lot of people don't
realize that brain is also
lateralized for emotion.
And so, it's typically
in the frontal area
where you get this
lateralization.
What happens is,
those who are more--
sort of have a greater
tendency towards withdrawal,
negative affect,
and fearfulness--
tend to have greater
activation on the right
in the frontal lobes.
And those who are more
approach oriented,
who present with higher
positive emotionality,
tend to have greater
activation on the left.
And there's a huge
literature in children,
adults that really demonstrates
that this is a pretty
consistent and stable finding.
So we look at this asymmetry.
And our experimental paradigm
is we don't just look at it
sort of when babies are
relatively calm and alert,
which people call baseline.
We also look at it in the
context of these manipulations,
where we cause distress or
that are mildly stressful.
And we've been using
the still face paradigm,
which briefly has to do
with the mom presenting
with a still face.
It was developed to sort of
mimic maternal depression.
So they're not communicating
and they're not presenting
with any facial affect.
So what we find--
and this is where parenting
comes into play again--
is that for those
babies whose moms
are really intense and
sort of overstimulating,
they tend to have this shift
towards a greater relative
frontal activation-- so greater
avoidance withdrawal emotion
motivation, in the context of
that still face manipulation.
And babies, if
they are, in fact,
themselves sort of lower on
baby extroversion or surgency,
as we call it--
so babies are sort of
immune to the effects
of maternal over-stimulation
if they're higher on surgency.
And surgency is that big factor
that I was telling you about.
If we unpack it a
little bit and look
at one of its component
scales approach,
what we find is that--
so babies who are low
in approach-- approach
has to do with really
being into sort
of going after things
that are potentially
rewarding or interesting.
So for babies who
are low in approach,
they have that shifting to
the right towards withdrawal
during still face, when their
moms tend to be very intense
and overstimulating
in their interactions.
With babies who are high
in approach, actually--
and this is a kind
of trend level.
It's not, technically,
statistically significant.
But you can see the
effect looks pretty
meaningful in this graph.
They tend to actually go
towards left frontal activation.
So the way that
we interpret this
is, in the context
of goodness of fit.
So having these intense,
potentially over
stimulating interactions
is not a problem--
does not cause this tendency to
go into that sort of withdrawn
negative emotionality
brain activity mode
for babies who are
themselves a really
sort of sensation seeking--
sort of approach oriented.
For them, it's a good fit.
And when we look
at brain activity,
it translates into
actually movement
towards left and
positive affect,
even under a mild stressor.
So we've interpreted
this from the standpoint
of that goodness of fit idea,
that how parents approach
their infants, if it, in
fact, is consistent in demands
and expectations to what
the baby or the child
brings to the plate with
respect to their temperament,
that that's conducive to
more positive outcomes.
I'll show you one
more brain picture.
And then we'll call it good.
So in this slide--
this is a picture of the brain.
That's what's called a topoplot.
And you can see it
illustrates brain activity.
And you can see this hot spot
in the frontal right region.
And you're seeing it--
this brain activation--
that context of that
still face procedure
I was just telling you about.
So in still face, babies
whose moms are more responsive
tend to have a hot spot in
brain activity on the right.
What that actually
means, because we're
looking at alpha--
everything is very complicated
with brain activity.
Alpha is cortical rhythm
that is inhibitory in nature.
So a hot spot here
actually means
that the right side of the
brain is being inhibited.
So these babies are
actually activated here
on the left, where
you see the blue.
So remember,
activation on the left
is like sort of happy approach.
Things are good.
So babies whose moms
are more responsive,
when we present them with
a mild stressor of mom's
unavailability in
still face, still
are able to demonstrate
this greater activation
in the frontal left
region that's associated
with positive emotionality.
So the punch line, I think, is
that parenting really matters
with respect to temperament.
And it matters with
respect to temperament
whether we look at how it
drives its development-- so I
was showing you the difference
in fear trajectories for babies
of moms who are depressed
versus non depressed.
When I was showing you
those other graphs,
I forgot to mention that
when we look at mother infant
interactions, more responsive
moms tend to have babies
who are lower in fearfulness.
And moms who are more
intense, or potentially
overstimulating-- if we
look at behavioral fear
reactivity-- those
babies tend to increase
in their fearfulness across
the first year of life.
So clearly, parenting
is a key factor
in how temperament develops.
And we find differences in
temperament cross culturally,
which we think are
ultimately a function
of those contextual
factors, primarily
related to how parents interact
and approach their children.
And when we sort
of say, well, does
this still work on-- not
at the behavioral level,
but at the brain activity level?
The answer is still yes.
That how parents parent and
approach their infants--
interact with them--
still makes a big difference.
And I think I'm going
to end with that
and see if you have questions.
ANDREA JIMENEZ:
Thank you so much.
So-- oh, we already
have a question.
So Celeste asks, when conducting
international studies,
did you encounter any challenges
regarding cultural norms
or other factors?
She says, since I recently
completed Psych 412, testing
and assessment, I
found your development
of the IBQ-R very interesting.
MARIA GARTSTEIN: There are
challenges at every corner.
I mean, anything
that you do, when
you do it cross culturally with
this international component,
there's an added
degree of difficulty.
So of course, when you're
translating your instruments,
you have to be really,
really careful.
And so you have to do what
they call back translation,
which means-- so for example,
with the Russian version
of the IBQ-R. It was originally
translated into Russian
by my collaborator.
I happen to be a Russian
speaking person myself,
because I grew up there
till I was 12 years old.
So I was able to back
translate it back into English.
And then we compared
that English version
to the original version,
to see if it's close.
I mean, and it should be.
It should be identical.
There are some items that
don't work in all cultures.
So when we were making
the Ethiopian adaptation,
in many ways, it
was the hardest.
Because, for example,
for frustration,
we have questions
about what about--
does your baby get upset when
their movement is confined
in a crib or a car seat?
They don't have those things.
So we had to eliminate
a number of questions
that just didn't fit.
Of course, the way that you
present the questionnaire-- so
in Ethiopia, a lot of those
moms can't read and write.
So the items had to be read to
them in their native language.
How you recruit your samples--
you're going to do it
in the way that works
in that particular location.
So here, we do it
through Facebook,
through birth centers.
That's not always
the best approach.
In Russia, my colleague
approached day cares.
In the Netherlands,
my collaborator
there recruits through
midwives, because everyone
gets free prenatal care and goes
to midwives and gets a doula.
So those are great resources
for recruiting, of course,
during pregnancy.
And then we collect the
data from the infants
once they're born.
So going through numerous
institutional review boards,
because every
place has their own
and explaining the study to them
in the way that makes sense.
So it's challenging,
but it's very rewarding.
It's rewarding for one--
for one thing, working
with these international
collaborators is amazing.
They're so devoted
to their work.
And they're so interested
in these partnerships.
And they just really
make it worthwhile.
And of course, visiting
them is a lot of fun, too.
ANDREA JIMENEZ: I
will ask, in terms
of the cultural differences
that you mentioned, do you
think that is something
that could change with time,
or is it pretty much ingrained
in terms of how parents parent
their children?
Do you think that's
culturally ingrained,
or do you think that it could
change in time with different--
with more study?
MARIA GARTSTEIN: So that's a
really interesting question.
I'm going to answer
it like this.
It has to do with how
dynamic the culture is.
And so that's often
not a uniform,
kind of monolithic thing.
Because different regions within
different countries undergo
change at different rates.
I'll give you a very
clear example of this.
So in China, the traditional
finding-- and this
is Jian Chen's research.
He's now at University
of Pennsylvania.
The traditional finding
is that Chinese children
are rated as more behaviorally
inhibited or shy, or fearful.
But although that translates
into mal-adjustment
and internalizing problems
here in the States--
and those kids are seen
as less socially competent
in the States--
they haven't found
those negative kinds
of outcomes in China.
And the interpretation has
been, well, Chinese don't really
value extroversion.
In China, being
shy and more timid
is actually what's viewed as
sort of the better alternative,
in part, because of their
collectivistic way of thinking.
You have to fit into the group.
What's best for the
group comes first,
which means that if
you are timid or shy
and you're not a great leader,
that's actually not a problem.
So that's been the
interpretation.
But what has
happened in the last,
I'm going to say 10 years, is
that urban centers in China--
they have become very
westernized, of course,
because the commercial
ties, and lots of people
come and study in the States.
And so today, if you go
to places like Shanghai
or Beijing, and you measure
these same attributes,
what people find
is that you don't
get that sort of shyness
bonus that we used to see back
in the 80s and the 90s.
Now, Chen says that
you still have--
that it still works the same in
more rural areas, which are not
as dynamic and have not changed
in terms of their values
as much as the urban centers.
But in urban areas
in China, there
has been this really
dramatic shift
in terms of how these attributes
are valued, and arguably,
with a shift towards sort
of viewing extroversion
and leadership as a more
positive set of traits.
I hope I answered that.
ANDREA JIMENEZ:
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Let me see.
OK.
It looks like we don't
have any more questions.
I want to thank you all so
much for coming, once again.
And thank you, Dr. Gartstein,
for presenting for us.
This is very informative.
MARIA GARTSTEIN:
You're so welcome.
If you go to my
website, it really--
it's pretty
comprehensive and current
in terms of presenting different
work that's done in my lab.
And if you think
of questions later,
that you're not
asking right now,
you're welcome to email me.
And I will certainly respond.
ANDREA JIMENEZ:
Thank you so much.
MARIA GARTSTEIN:
You're very welcome.
It was fun to do this.
Thank you.
Thanks for inviting me.
ANDREA JIMENEZ: Thank you.
MARIA GARTSTEIN: Bye bye.
