okay so our next school of thought on temperament is going to be the thomas and chess school of thought and we're really referring to the work by alexander thomas and stella chess rather than looking at the biological underpinnings much like rothbert's theory of development we're talking more about the environmental influences of temperament and this has to do with how our temperament fits within our environment this is really known as goodness of fit now before we start talking about goodness of faith it's important to understand what are the things we're trying to fit into the environment and so when this theory first started out it was thought that there was going to be nine traits or nine dimensions of temperament and so this is i always enjoy talking about these nine dimensions uh they're very thorough but there is a lot of overlap we're going to go through these and it's important understand i think there's a lot of conceptual overlap in the ones that are colored the same on this slide and that is our tension and persistence have a lot of overlap affect and reactivity have a lot of overlap and we're going to see how adaptivity approach sensitivity and rhythmicity may also contain substantial overlap but we'll go in and define each one of these nine dimensions and so regarding activity this can also be called surgency like with the rothbard approach in fact those two constructs heavily overlap and we can really see how in infants and in children there is a spectrum in which activity can be displayed we could have at one extreme uh we're gonna have someone who is literally bouncing around that infant may be bouncing in a jolly jumper all day or the child may be constantly running around it feels like they never sit still now all three-year-olds tend to have more energy than their parents regardless but sometimes you may have a three-year-old that is above average in their activity level so we can really see that huge hyperactive extreme we can also see on the other end of the spectrum at the very extreme a very sedentary child so you can see a child that doesn't really move around a lot they sit and read books they watch a lot of television we see an infant that's totally content to kind of lay on their plate mat they don't really explore we can definitely see those two extremes it's important to note that most infants and children are going to be in the middle of the spectrum and as adults we also tend to see this as a normative distribution with most of us in the middle now we find that the very extreme extremes tend to be maladaptive someone who's extremely sedentary or extremely hyperactive those are going to be problems and so it's good to be moderate or highly moderate in terms of activity level so that's the first of nine of these dimensions next up we'll talk about rhythmicity and so we know here i also have a normal curve drawn and so this is the idea that some infants seem totally random if they're at one extreme they might eat and sleep at one time a day on monday and they even sleep at a totally other time of day on tuesday some nights they might sleep thoroughly some nights they don't sleep at all some nicely some days they eat a lot some days they don't eat and as they get older into childhood they become more spontaneous and unexpected and unpredictable and we can see how that very very extreme end would become very chaotic and be hard for caregivers to really prepare how to take care of this individual at the other extreme end of rhythmicity we may have an infant that runs like clockwork they feed and sleep at the same time down to the approximate minute you understand when they're going to go for a nap if you can work with their schedule it's great but if you can't work their schedule they're overly rigid and having to move something for a doctor's appointment or what have you oh they're five minutes late for nap time all chaos breaks loose well that could also be maladaptive and as these kids become children they might become locked into their routines they have a certain procedure at bedtime and routines at bedtime are good to an extent but it beyond that at a certain extreme where tonight we have to do things a little bit differently because you know the faucet and the sink broke or something these kids may not handle that very well and so because of that we do like kids that are on somewhat of a schedule but not an extremely rigid schedule next up we're going to talk about affect and this really goes with our emotional disposition so this is the idea uh does somebody wake up on the sunny side of the bed or the more gloomy side of the bed do they tend to have a more rainbows and sunshine positive happy disposition or are they more doom and gloom if we think back to rothbert's uh theory of temperament she really was talking about these as two different spectrums one had positive affect one had negative affect versus in the thomas chess approach we're talking about a two-ended spectrum here one end is very positive and one end it's very negative so a different way to view uh this form of affect but although there's only one dimension of affect in the thomas and chest view they have a second dimension called reactivity and this has to do with how intense or how extreme we feel one's emotions and so this is the idea that whether we're feeling positive or negative emotions the extent to how intense we feel those emotions also plays a role in our temperament so some individuals they stay pretty flat uh if you give them a present they're like hmm and they're they're somewhat happy and they have a little smile thank you if something breaks or a little bit of a frown a little bit upset about that versus other individuals you give them a present they are so elated and happy and enthused and if something breaks they're just absolutely devastated they can't get over it and so that difference in the intensities is considered the temperamental dimension of reactivity some individuals just kind of stay more mild in their emotions and some of us have a wider ranges now that is four dimensions down onto our fifth of nine dimensions in the thomas and chest view next up we have attention and this is the ability to maintain focus on a task this has some pros but it also has some cons if we think about an infant who can really hold their attention on something let's imagine an infant who really wants to touch a coffee pot that's very hot on a kitchen counter they're interested they crawl into the kitchen they want to reach up and touch that coffee pot you say no and they don't give up they're locked on that coffee pot they're going to attempt to touch it you put them in the other room they crawl right back you distract them with toys it doesn't work they go back to the coffee pot at one extreme we're going to have infants that they can hold their attention on things which is good in some situations but also maladaptive in other situations such as when they're being stubborn and they want things that they can't or shouldn't have now on the other extreme we'd have an infant who maybe sees the coffee pot but then you can distract them very easily you can jingle keys in front of their face give them a toy put on the television carry them to another room give them some food and they forget the coffee pot even existed they're they're on to other things that makes the infant have less attention but they're also what we consider more distractible and more soothable a more suitable baby comes in handy if you're at the airport and they want to touch things or put their fingers in plugs and they can't or you need to keep their focus now the really destructible suitable baby can also be considered maladaptive in the extreme because of this attention deficit it's the idea that they don't stay focused on one task very long and they may constantly change their focus when they become an older child you may see that their room is more chaotic but this because they start one task or they start playing with some toys and they don't put them away and they start other toys or they may they may have difficulty maintaining their focus on constructive activities now attention goes hand in hand with the next dimension called persistence so persistence is not how long we can endure attention but more so how much will persevere in the uh in the presence of a challenge and so this is the idea not just can you remember the coffee pot but if you're working on a puzzle and the puzzle's challenging do you give up or do you keep going we know that some infants and babies they'll give up right away it's the idea that they are burnt out they don't know how to do it they're feeling overwhelmed and they ask for help sometimes if asking for help tends to be um beneficial to them they're gonna ask for help more often but we also find that some babies they're just gonna more stick with it when they're trying to learn to read or they're trying to learn to walk or they're trying to learn a new task will they keep going or will they get frustrated easily so this can also be considered like their pronus to frustration and so some kids have very long attention spans but they give up easily some kids will actually keep going they might just be they they might have short attention spans but they won't give up immediately so they might go back to that task later on so although attention and persistence overlap they could be considered independent you could have someone with a short attention span although they might switch tasks they will come back around to it or you might have someone who has a very strong attention span who doesn't have a strong persistence or the two inverses they have long attention span lots of persistence low attention span low persistence there's lots of different combinations now we just have three more left the next dimension of temperament we're going to talk about is the approach so this overlaps greatly with sociability so a child or an infant who's high in sociability they are right away from the outset they're going to make more eye contact they're going to approach more people they're going to have the social smiles early on in their infancy when they go to school they're going to make more friends they're going to want to be around friends more often versus the more withdrawn child they may be interested in people but at a different at a distance so they may be more the watchers or when new people are around them they may actually actively hide and withdraw and so this is on a spectrum of course we're finding out with the covet crisis if you're at the extreme extroverted end of this the covet isolation becomes much more frustrating uh more quickly for those individuals they're used to being around people they're used to talking they used to be in social spaces and having to isolate is very distressing versus if someone's on the withdrawal end we might not notice it impact them right away they might seem like oh i'm a happy introvert in isolation but then when they actually have to interact with people again after a while that may be so uncomfortable for them they have to relearn all their coping mechanisms now most people are in the middle of the spectrum again and we do find the middle of the spectrum to be the most adaptive it allows you to be more flexible in more situations speaking of adaptive then we have adaptability adaptability sounds like a great thing and so this is really a response to novelty this is the idea that when you take a young child to a new park or you give them a surprise or they interact with a new animal how do they react do they get really wound up and really aroused by these new things is it very overwhelming to them do they prefer to be more cautious and not do new things or do they love the spontaneity and they thrive in it now adaptability can include social novelty and be meeting new people but it can also be non-social things too like just taking them to a new place or taking them to a new restaurant or serving a new meal at separate time how do they respond to this change you can really see how this might overlap with rhythmicity and a more rigid rhythmicity child may be less adaptable in that sense and the final spectrum of thomas and chess theory of temperament is sensitivity now this can greatly overlap with things like approach and adaptability but we're also talking about sensory thresholds in a physical sense not just a social or cognitive sense that is right from infancy some of us are able to sleep with the lights on and the television on versus other of us we need complete darkness complete silence to relax some of us like eating new food and when we were infants we probably transitioned fine from breast milk to formula to solids versus others may have experienced really intense digestive pains and really took a long time to adapt because we just had more sensitive system and so this is mainly talking about biological sensitivity but we can see how a more sensitive child may be less adaptable because their experiences of the sensory world is more overwhelming to them so those are the nine traits or dimensions of temperament according to thomas and chess but it's important to understand we quickly realized there was a lot of overlap in those nine dimensions so maybe it's better to cluster and see how certain patterns or constellations emerge and thus we found that there were some definite constellations we found that some kids classify into this bubble we would call easy temperament these are the kids that are moderately active moderately on schedule they show positive affect it's not too intense they persevere but you can sue them and they're pretty adaptable and so these are the kids that are more placid in most situations in north america they can handle themselves quite well they're pretty flexible and so a lot of parents say these are the easy kids um also known as these sucker kids because they may sucker you into having more and more babies before you realize not all babies are that easy we also tend to call them the resilient children so these are the children that regardless of what's going on in the context uh they have the flexibility and their temperament to thrive and go with the flow then we have babies that were originally called difficult but we prefer to call them under-controlled or resistant to control nowadays and these babies they tend to show more negative affect and more intense negative affect they might be more rigid or less flexible less adaptable might be more sensitive and we tend to see them have more visible emotional outbursts more often they may have a hard time controlling their strong emotions might be babies that required a lot more soothing when they were little and when they become children they may be the more impulsive children in an elementary classroom we might see these babies as the ones that speak before they think and they act before they think so we might see them as being diagnosed with behavioral problems more early on and so that's why some researchers call them the under control they have a hard time regulating themselves we also might find that they are labeled resistant to control they're going to be who they are regardless the context they're not as flexible this is who i am the environment has to change to suit me and third we may also experience the slow to warm up infant these are less frequent than the other two but still a very common type and so these babies when things are kind of going normal there's not a lot of novelty these are babies that are pretty happy they might be the ones that are more happy with low arousal activities and so this is the idea that when they're alone with their family and their regular caregivers that you're used to they're pretty they're pretty content they they can handle things they don't show a lot of negative emotionality but when something changes they have low adaptability and high sensitivity and what we find is when they get in really novel situations like early elementary these kids become over control they're they're not regulated they're over regulated they think before they talk but to such a degree they're very quiet and withdrawn in the classroom they might be very tense their muscles might be very tense in the classroom and they're very shy and anxious we can also see about these three types is if you're thinking about a string instrument like a harper or a guitar you want to tune your guitar string so they're not wearing too tight or too loose and so that resilient child that's the guitar that's in tune versus the under controlled child the the strings are a little bit too loose when you play it it doesn't sound right versus the over control their string is just pulled tight tight tight tight you can barely get any vibrations when you will strum that string so that's really the differences here now important to understand that the thomas and chess model was not trying to be evaluative and judging babies although unfortunately it has been used in that way it's more so about saying these different types fit um it's more so about saying how we can fit the environment to these types so understandably there may be some niches that just fit better for instance if a baby and a parent are both very outgoing and you know they want to the parents wants to take the baby to a coffee shop and the baby loves looking at the coffee shop and all the people over there that's going to be a good fit or a very shy parent and a very shy baby they just kind of both want to stay home that's going to be a good fit we can also think about in terms of communication style if we have a family that uses a lot of banter and a lot of width and sarcasm and the kids really thrive in that that'll be a good fit versus a family that's very emotional and mushy and empathetic but the child loves that stuff that's also going to be a good fit so we can see if you were to change that up and have the outgoing or shy or shine outgoing or mushy versus sarcastic those may be a lack of fit and so it's important understand that kids come into the world with their temperament and if the parents can be flexible enough to address their temperamental needs we can provide a better fit for all kids so that being said if parents were sarcastic but they have a very soft hearted child they could become less sarcastic around their kid which can help them to have a better fit and so the problem and so the official term for this is sensitive and responsive parenting this is the idea that the parent pays attention to what's going on with the kid they pay attention to their emotional bids and their tendencies and they really try to pick up on that and respond to their needs for who they are as a person not how the parents just assume kids should be so rather following the script for what boys should be like or girls should be like or six-year-olds should be like they really pay attention to their little person they really pay attention to their child and understand who they are and they let that fall into the bi-directional effects of the parent-child relationship to follow who they're going to be and so that was our second school of thought on peppermint it was the longest one to go through the next two are much more brief you