Preschoolers' Observed Temperament and Psychiatric Disorders Assessed with a Parent Diagnostic Interview

Abstract

Evidence supports the role of temperament in the origins of psychiatric disorders. However, there are few data on associations between temperament and psychiatric disorders in early childhood. A community sample of 541 three-year-old preschoolers participated in a laboratory temperament assessment, and caregivers were administered a structured diagnostic interview on preschool psychopathology. In bivariate analyses, temperamental dysphoria and low exuberance were associated with depression; fear, low exuberance, and low sociability were associated with anxiety disorders; and disinhibition and dysphoria were associated with oppositional defiant disorder. Although there were no bivariate associations between temperament and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, disinhibition emerged as a unique predictor in multivariate analyses. Findings indicate that the pattern of relations between temperament and psychopathology in older youth and adults is evident as early as age 3.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by NIMH RO1-MH069942 (DNK) and GCRC Grant M01-RR10710 to Stony Brook University from the National Center for Research Resources.

Notes

¹We do not wish to disparage parent report measures of child temperament in general, as they have a number of significant strengths, including time-efficiency, low cost, and capitalizing on the parent's knowledge of the child's behavior across contexts and over time. Our point is simply that parent report measures have limitations in addressing the specific question of the association between temperament and psychopathology in young children.

Note: Component loadings greater than .40 that were unit-weighted to form the scales are in bold. Lab-TAB = Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery; BI = behavioral inhibition; PA = positive affect.

*p < .05. ***p < .001.

²The structure of personality using observational methods is largely unexplored (Zentner & Bates, 2008), and there continue to be inconsistencies in the literature on the structure of temperament in early childhood using parent reports (De Pauw & Mervielde, 2010; De Pauw, Mervielde, & Leeuwan, 2009). Therefore, we employed an exploratory, rather than confirmatory, approach to reduce the number of observed temperament indicators (i.e., PCA).

Note: Significant associations are in bold. ODD = oppositional defiant disorder; ADHD = attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

³Given the lack of clear boundaries for determining clinical diagnoses in preschoolers (Egger & Angold, 2006), we examined temperament-psychopathology associations using both DSM–IV–TR diagnoses and symptom scale scores based on the PAPA. Findings were relatively consistent across approaches.