Abstract
Environmental risks, whether physical or psychosocial, vary in their impact on individual children depending on the nature and intensity of the risk, the extent of the exposure of the child to it, and the vulnerability of the individual child. That susceptibility of the child is determined in part by his or her temperament. A child's temperament is his/her behavioral style, or the characteristic pattern of experiencing and responding to the environment. This presentation reviews the nature, origins, stability, assessment, clinical significance, and management of temperament differences. The child's temperament influences the impact of physical environmental risks by inducing a range of reactions to injury hazards, disease-causing agents, natural disasters, and food deprivation. A similar variation in effects occurs with the impact of psychosocial risks like parental conflict, inadequate schools, and other stressors. In both areas the child's temperament interacts both directly in outcome production and indirectly by the ways it has altered the functioning of the caregivers.
