Moving Forward in the Study of Temperament and Early Education Outcomes

Mediating and Moderating Factors

Cynthia L. Smith, David J. Bridgett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367361891
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000701272
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book furthers understanding of how child temperament is linked to educational outcomes through mediating and moderating factors.

As the importance of socio-emotional development for educational outcomes is increasingly recognized, understanding the influence that children's temperament—which includes their emotional reactivity and regulation of emotions, cognitions, and behaviors—can have on educational factors, such as school readiness and academic achievement, is crucial. First, the chapters in this book examine pathways connecting temperament with educational outcomes; for example, one study reports that toddler negative affect predicted executive functioning, which then predicted achievement at age six. The second way that chapters in this book examine links between temperament and education is by identifying factors that make associations between temperament and educational outcomes more salient; for example, findings from one study show that shyness and negative emotion were more strongly associated with lower academic achievement only when children received fewer than nine hours of sleep each night, highlighting the importance of sleep.

By examining pathways through which temperament exerts effects on educational outcomes (i.e., mediators), or factors that modify associations between temperament and educational outcomes (i.e., moderators), the potential for interventions aimed at improving early educational outcomes can be fully realized.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Early Education and Development.

Moving Forward in the Study of Temperament and Early Education Outcomes: Mediating and Moderating Factors

Cynthia L. Smith

and David J. Bridgett

As the importance of socioemotional development for educational outcomes is increasingly recognized as a crucial aspect of children’s success in the classroom, the role of temperament in children’s education has also been emphasized. As defined by Shiner et al. (2012), “Temperament traits are early emerging basic dispositions in the domains of activity, affectivity, attention, and self-regulation, and these dispositions are the product of complex interactions among genetic, biological, and environmental factors across time” (p. 437). Many of these temperament traits (e.g., high negative affect, poor self-regulation) are often associated with risk for problems with behavior as well as poorer academic outcomes (Blair, Ursache, Greenberg, & Vernon-Feagans, 2015; Smith & Day, 2018), which makes it important to more fully understand how temperament translates into issues related to educational outcomes as well as cases in which potential protective factors can be illuminated. However, existing studies have largely examined direct associations between children’s temperament and their education-related outcomes. In contrast, in other areas within the field, it has long been recognized that moderators (e.g., the role of negative affect in differential susceptibility models; Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van Ijzendoorn, 2007) and mediators (e.g., regulation mediating the association between fear and anxiety; Nozadi, Spinrad, Eisenberg, & Eggum-Wilkens, 2015) of associations between temperament and children’s outcomes are critical to consider. Hence, the goal of this special issue is to move beyond consideration of the direct associations between children’s temperament and their educational outcomes by identifying potential mediators and moderators of these direct associations. By examining pathways through which temperament may exert effects on educational outcomes, or factors that may modify associations between temperament and educational outcomes, the field can fully realize the potential for interventions aimed at improving early educational outcomes.

The first series of articles in this special issue examine intraindividual attributes as mediators and moderators of associations between children’s temperament and their education-related outcomes. In the first article, Berger et al. (2018) examine the amount of sleep that children receive as it relates to their academic achievement. Using a short-term longitudinal design, these researchers found that more shyness and negative emotion, both temperament traits, were most strongly associated with lower performance on standardized assessments of academic achievement when children received fewer than 9 hr of sleep at night. The authors conclude that educational interventions should include parental encouragement of healthy sleep patterns for children as a way to help minimize the potential negative effects that these temperament traits may have on academic outcomes.

Often neglected, though important to consider in regard to children’s outcomes, is the interplay (mediation or moderation) between distinct temperament attributes. Liu et al. (2018) found that more negative affectivity in toddlerhood was associated with lower executive functioning in preschool, which mediated the association between children’s negative affect and their lower scores in math and reading at age 6. By controlling for surgency and effortful control, two other temperament characteristics, the authors were able to make stronger conclusions about the roles of negative affectivity and executive function in academic outcomes. These findings support educational interventions for children that focus on parents helping younger children learn effective emotional regulation strategies and educators helping preschoolers enhance their executive functioning, particularly for children high in negative affectivity.

Further emphasizing the effect that children’s emotions and control of their emotions can have on classroom behaviors, Verron and Teglasi (2018) found that children’s emotion situation reasoning mediated the relation between children’s temperament and their social competence within the classroom. Specifically, less anger/frustration and more smiling/laughter were associated with better emotion situation reasoning, which was associated with greater social competence in the classroom. The authors conclude that emotion reasoning may be another target of interventions because delays in emotion understanding may amplify the impact of temperament characteristics on classroom social relationships that have been recognized as being important for children’s educational outcomes (Buhs, Rudasill, Kalutskaya, & Griese, 2015; VanSchyndel, Eisenberg, Valiente, & Spinrad, 2017). The findings from this study further emphasize the importance of children’s emotional behaviors that have temperament underpinnings; helping children to understand these emotions can have beneficial outcomes in terms of their classroom behaviors.

In the next article, Sette, Hipson, Zava, Baumgartner, and Copland (2018) report complicated relations between shyness and inhibitory control in predicting prosocial behaviors, popularity, and regulated school behaviors. Although both shyness and inhibitory control reflect temperament aspects of regulation, shyness is a bottom-up, reactive regulator of behavior, whereas inhibitory control is a top-down regulator of behavior. Examining both types of regulation, Sette et al. report that shyness was positively associated with more regulated school behaviors but only when inhibitory control was high. Shyness was also negatively associated with prosocial behaviors and popularity, but only when inhibitory control was high. These findings raise the possibility of a subset of children who may be overregulated (i.e., the combination of high inhibitory control and high shyness) in school settings, which may be detrimental to their social development and ultimately their educational outcomes. Moreover, to attain healthier peer relationships and adequate educational outcomes, these children may require unique interventions or instructional techniques—which to our knowledge have not yet been considered in regard to such children.

McCormick et al. (2018) also consider the role of shyness in the classroom. Instead of focusing on shyness at the level of individual students, they measured mean classroom-level shyness and found that the effects of INSIGHTS (a temperament-based intervention) on instructional support and math skills were moderated by classroom levels of shyness in first grade. By considering classroom levels of shyness, the authors are able to emphasize the importance of not just the temperaments of individual children within a classroom but also how having multiple children with shyness in the same classroom can present challenges at the classroom level. These findings suggest that considering the temperament-related climate of the classroom can have direct effects on intervention efforts aimed at addressing children’s temperament within the classroom and identifying classrooms in need of additional support.

The second series of articles examine relationships in children’s lives that are important to understanding how temperament is associated with educational success. The first two articles in this series emphasize the role that early maternal behavior can play in supporting children. In a longitudinal study, McDoniel and Buss (2018) examined toddlerhood exuberance, which is a temperament trait that can be considered a risk factor for children’s adjustment to school because children high in exuberance often have behavioral problems related to their high activity level and a greater tendency toward impulsiveness within the classroom. These authors, however, found that toddlerhood exuberance was only associated with classroom behavior problems in kindergarten when maternal responsiveness in toddlerhood was low. The authors conclude that parent components, particularly addressing maternal responsiveness, may be key to realizing the full benefits of temperament-based interventions like INSIGHTS.

Laake and Bridgett (2018) examined the role of maternal behavior in infancy as it related to language development, which is important to children’s school readiness. These authors found that more maternal support and less maternal intrusiveness were associated with better performance on a standardized measure of expressive language when infants were high in positive affectivity. In addition, infants high in negative affectivity who had mothers who were less intrusive performed better on the measure of expressive language. Further highlighting the importance of early temperament characteristics, specifically the role of early negative reactivity, Dollar, Perry, Calkins, Keane and Shanahan (2018) emphasize the role that children’s social skills can play as a protective factor in how temperament is related to academic success. These researchers found that higher anger at age 2 was associated with children’s social skills at age 7, which mediated the associations between anger and children’s school-related behavioral difficulties and academic competence when children were 10 years of age. Findings reported by Dollar et al., Laake and Bridgett (2018), and McDoniel and Buss (2018) highlight the importance, and potential long reach, of early temperament in setting the stage for children’s educational outcomes and behavior within school settings.

Peer relationships are examined in the next article, which is notable because being successful in such relationships can contribute to success in school. Liew, Cao, Hughes, and Deutz (2018) examined an aspect of self-regulation, ego resiliency, which reflects children’s adaptability, resourcefulness, and flexibility. They found that positive peer relationships mediated the association between resiliency and reading achievement. Among children originally struggling with reading, those higher in resiliency had better peer relationships 1 year later, which mediated the association between resiliency and scores on standardized measures of reading. Teacher relationships did not emerge as a significant mediator, but the authors conclude that teacher relationships might play a role in supporting more positive peer relationships. The authors highlight the importance of using peers as a learning resource within the classroom, which could also prove useful in temperament- based interventions for social and emotional development.

In the final article of this special issue, Bryce et al. (2018) examine the critical transition from preschool to formal schooling in a high-risk sample of predominantly low-income Latino children enrolled in Head Start. The effects of preschool temperament, which included anger, positive emotionality, and effortful control, on kindergarten achievement were mediated by the children’s behavioral engagement with school. In this case, reactive and regulatory aspects of temperament were important to children’s cooperation and active involvement in school, which was then tied to their academic success. The authors emphasize that behavioral engagement is likely an important mechanism in understanding how temperament is linked to early academic achievement.

Taken together, the articles in this special issue illustrate either ways in which temperament can indirectly impact different areas of children’s academic success or the conditions under which such effects are more and less likely to be observed. These findings emphasize how important consideration of children’s social and emotional development—and their temperament specifically—is for their education across many different types of education-related outcomes. Implications for intervention include potential protective factors found within the results of the collective studies. In many cases these protective factors include more support for children’s emotional development and further highlight the need for a curriculum that does not ignore children’s socioemotional development when considering their academic development. Many of the studies included in the special issue stress the need for more temperament-based interventions, particularly those focused on children’s self-regulation. If children are able to control their emotions and behaviors associated with temperament reactivity, such as high levels of anger or shyness, then they are more likely to be successful in the classroom. Interventions focused on increasing skills related to children’s emotional regulation, effortful control, executive function, and other aspects of self-regulation are likely to have significant benefits in terms of building children’s academic skills by increasing their ability to focus on appropriate materials in the classroom and by decreasing potential socioemotional problems, such as issues with peers or problems with aggressive behavior.

Although each study included in this special issue identifies important future directions relevant to its specific findings, the studies more broadly are not genetically sensitive. Furthermore, none of the studies used physiological assessments of temperament, such as heart rate variability (Holzman & Bridgett, 2017); electroencephalogram markers (Smith, Diaz, Day, & Bell, 2016); or, with the notable exception of Berger et al. (2018), other biobehavioral processes (e.g., stress response). Each of these additional factors likely intersects with children’s temperament in relation to education-related outcomes. Thus, the inclusion of more diverse methods of assessing children’s temperament, the use of genetically sensitive designs, and consideration of biobehavioral processes that may act as mediators or moderators of the effects of children’s temperament on their education-related outcomes remain important considerations for future and ongoing work in this area.

ORCID

Cynthia L. Smith

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3555-8771

David J. Bridgett

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3138-5199

References

Belsky, J., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van Ijzendoorn, M. H. (2007). For better and for worse: Differential susceptibility to environmental influences. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 300–304. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00525.x

Berger, R. H., Diaz, A., Valiente, C., Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., Thompson, M. S., … Southworth, J. (2018). Sleep duration moderates the association between children’s temperament and academic achievement. Early Education & Development, 29(5), 624–640. doi:10.1080/10409289.2017.1404884

Blair, C., Ursache, A., Greenberg, M., & Vernon-Feagans, L. (2015). Multiple aspects of self-regulation uniquely predict mathematics but not letter-word knowledge in the early elementary grades. Developmental Psychology, 51, 459–472. doi:10.1037/a0038813

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Moving Forward in the Study of Temperament and Early Education Outcomes: Mediating and Moderating Factors
• 2. Sleep Duration Moderates the Association Between Children’s Temperament and Academic Achievement
• 3. Executive Function Mediates the Association Between Toddler Negative Affectivity and Early Academic Achievement
• 4. Indirect Effects of Temperament on Social Competence via Emotion Understanding
• 5. Linking Shyness With Social and School Adjustment in Early Childhood: The Moderating Role of Inhibitory Control
• 6. Instructional Support and Academic Skills: Impacts of INSIGHTS in Classrooms With Shy Children
• 7. Maternal Responsiveness Protects Exuberant Toddlers From Experiencing Behavior Problems in Kindergarten
• 8. Early Language Development in Context: Interactions Between Infant Temperament and Parenting Characteristics
• 9. Temperamental Anger and Positive Reactivity and the Development of Social Skills: Implications for Academic Competence During Preadolescence
• 10. Academic Resilience Despite Early Academic Adversity: A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study on Regulation-Related Resiliency, Interpersonal Relationships, and Achievement in First to Third Grade
• 11. Kindergarten School Engagement: Linking Early Temperament and Academic Achievement at the Transition to School
• Index