Does Temperament Moderate the Relation between Preschool Parenting and School-Age Self-Regulation? Contrasting Diathesis-Stress and Differential Susceptibility Models

SYNOPSIS

Objective. Children vary in how sensitive they are to environmental influences. Child temperament is an individual difference factor that appears to moderate the impact of environment on early child development. This study contrasts the “diathesis-stress/dual risk” and “differential susceptibility” models in examining difficult temperament as a moderator of the relation between preschool parenting and school-aged child persistence. Design. A longitudinal design included 61 typically developing Portuguese children (31 girls) assessed when they were toddlers (Time 1 at 1–3 years), preschoolers (Time 2 at 4–6 years), and school aged (Time 3 at 8–10 years). At Time 1, parents were recruited and interviewed. At Time 2, semi-structured mother–child interactions were observed, and preschool teachers rated children’s temperament. At Time 3, children’s task persistence was rated by their elementary teachers. Results. Difficult temperament moderated the association between mother–child interactions and child persistence, with stronger associations for children with more difficult temperaments. Conclusions. Consistent with the diathesis-stress model, results reveal that high levels of positive parenting reduce the risk of low self-regulation associated with difficult temperament.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical Principles: The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and ensuring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Funding: This work was supported by grants POCTI/PSI/35207/1999 and POCI/PSI/58712/2004 from the Portuguese Science Foundation and by the Centre for Psychology at the University of Porto, Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT UID/PSI/00050/2013) and EU FEDER through COMPETE 2020 program (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007294).

Role of Funders/Sponsors: None of the funders or sponsors of this research had any role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful for the participation of families and teachers in this research as well as for the work of the research assistants who assisted in data collection and rating. The ideas and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone, and endorsement by the authors’ institutions or the Portuguese Science Foundation is not intended and should not be inferred.