General Features of Temperament
Source: Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall
Topics: Early Years (Birth-5), Middle Years (5-9), Preteen Years (9-13), Teen Years (13-19), Temperament and Personality
The general features of temperament (Thomas & Chess, 1977; Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1970) include:
- Rhythmicity: The regularity of the student’s activity patterns, such as eating, playing, studying, bladder, and bowel functions.
- Mood: The student’s overall demeanor, such as happy or sad, friendly or unfriendly.
- Activity: The frequency of movement.
- Adaptability: The ability of the student to adapt to new situations.
- Distractibility: The ease with which the student is interrupted from an activity.
- Persistence: The student’s ability to attend to or persist in an activity.
- Threshold: The student’s sensitivity to stimuli and changes in the environment, such as noise or temperature.
- Intensity: The student’s magnitude of response to a specific stimulus, such as the tendency to smile or laugh when amused or to scream or whimper when hurt.
- Approach: The student’s attraction or withdrawal to novel stimuli and situations.
Excerpted From:
Excerpt from Assessment of Children & Youth with Special Needs, by L.G. Cohen & L.J. Spenciner, 2007 edition, p. 317.
© 2007, Merrill, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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