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University of Groningen
Temperament profiles associated with internalizing and
externalizing problems inpreadolescenceOldehinkel, Albertine J.;
Hartman, Catharina A.; Winter, Andrea F. de; Veenstra, René;Ormel,
JohanPublished in:Development and Psychopathology
DOI:10.1017/S0954579404044591
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Citation for published version (APA):Oldehinkel, A. J., Hartman,
C. A., Winter, A. F. D., Veenstra, R., & Ormel, J. (2004).
Temperament profilesassociated with internalizing and externalizing
problems in preadolescence. Development andPsychopathology, 16(2),
421-440. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579404044591
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579404044591https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/temperament-profiles-associated-with-internalizing-and-externalizing-problems-in-preadolescence(df708868-28d4-4e73-8ad3-12f9d8e1f12f).htmlhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579404044591
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Temperament profiles associated withinternalizing and
externalizingproblems in preadolescence
ALBERTINE J. OLDEHINKEL,a,b CATHARINA A. HARTMAN, a
ANDREA F. DE WINTER,a RENÉ VEENSTRA,a and JOHAN
ORMELaaUniversity of Groningen; andbErasmus Medical Center,
Rotterdam
AbstractThis study investigates how temperament factors are
linked to internalizing and externalizing problems in a
Dutchpopulation sample of preadolescents~N 5 2230!. Internalizing
and externalizing problems were assessed by theChild Behavior
Checklist and the Youth Self-Report and temperament was evaluated
by the parent-version of theRevised Early Adolescent Temperament
Questionnaire. Temperament profiles were examined in children
with~a!neither internalizing nor externalizing problems,~b! only
internalizing problems,~c! only externalizing problems,and~d! both
internalizing and externalizing problems. The results suggest
clearly diverging temperament profilesfor these groups of children,
with High-Intensity Pleasure and Shyness~representing the broad
dimension ofSurgency! steering the conditional probability of
internalizing and externalizing problems~direction
markers!,Frustration mainly being related to maladaptation in
general~severity marker!, and Fear and Effortful Control
beingassociated with both the severity and the direction of
internalizing and externalizing problems, respectively. Girlsand
boys differed in the distribution across the problem groups, but
the associations between temperament andpsychopathology were
comparable for both genders.
Temperament research has indicated that dif-ferent children may
respond to similar envi-ronmental challenges in predictably
divergentways, with the individual characteristics of thechild
influencing pathways to both successfuland maladaptive
outcomes~Rothbart & Put-nam, 2002!.
Maladaptive outcomes of person–environment interaction can
result in mentalhealth problems. The most common disordersare
anxiety disorders, attention-deficit0hyperactivity disorder~ADHD!,
mood disor-ders, and conduct disorder. Prevalence ratesof mental
health problems in the Dutch popu-lation of children and
adolescents range from12 to 18%~Verhulst, 1995!, and about 7%
suf-fer from psychiatric disorders with significantimpairment
~Verhulst, Van der Ende, Ferdi-nand, & Kasius, 1997!. Problem
behavior inchildren and adolescents can be distinguishedinto
internalizing behavior, which reflects thechild’s internal
distress~e.g., anxiety anddepression!, and externalizing behavior,
whichbrings the child into conflict with others~e.g.,
rule-breaking0aggressive behavior andADHD!.
Based on Gray’s~e.g., 1981, 1987! neuro-psychological model of
brain functioning,
This research is part of the Tracking Adolescents’ Indi-vidual
Lives Survey~TRAILS!. Participating centers ofTRAILS include
various Departments of the Universityof Groningen, the Erasmus
Medical Center of Rotterdam,the Vrije University of Amsterdam, the
University ofNijmegen, and the Trimbos Institute, The
Netherlands.TRAILS is financially supported by grants from the
Neth-erlands Organization for Scientific Research~GB-MW940-38-011,
GB-MAG 480-01-006, ZonMw 100-001-001! and the Ministry of
Justice~to F.C.V.! and by theparticipating centers.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: A. J.Oldehinkel,
Department of Psychiatry, University ofGroningen, P.O. Box 30.001,
9700 RB Groningen, TheNetherlands; E-mail:
[email protected].
Development and Psychopathology16 ~2004!, 421–440Copyright ©
2004 Cambridge University PressPrinted in the United States of
AmericaDOI: 10.10170S0954579404044591
421
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internalizing and externalizing problems havebeen described in
terms of inhibition and facil-itation of behavior. In Gray’s model,
behavioris seen as resulting from two different brainsystems: a
behavioral activation system~BAS!that generates appetitive and
aggressive behav-ior and is sensitive to reward, and a
behavioralinhibition system~BIS! that mediates the inhi-bition of
behavior in novel situations and inthe presence of cues signaling
impending pun-ishment. A BIS that is more active than theBAS will
increase the likelihood of behaviorto be inhibited. A BAS that is
more active thanthe BIS will cause behavior to be initiated
morereadily ~e.g., Kochanska, Murray, Jacques,Koening, &
Vandegeest, 1996; Kooijmans,Scheres, & Oosterlaan, 2000; Quay,
1988,1993, 1997; Rubin & Asendorpf, 1993!. Sen-sitivities of
the BIS and the BAS are assumedto be independent~Gray, 1987; Quay,
1993!,hence both systems have an independent prob-ability of
activation given a stimulus, and allcombinations of high and low
BIS and BASsensitivity may exist in the population. Whenan
individual actually faces a punishment orreward cue, however,
activation of the BISand the BAS is mutually inhibitory~Avila,2001;
Gray, 1982!.
Gray’s notion of the BIS and the BASencompasses some of the
basic dimensions ofchild and adolescent temperament. However,we
doubt whether these systems aredirectlyassociated with
internalizing or externalizingproblem behavior: most children,
includingthose with relatively high BIS or BAS activa-tion, are
quite capable of mastering the sociode-velopmental challenges they
encounter on theirway to adulthood. In other words, BIS andBAS
activation seems to relate to the probabledirection of
psychopathological problems, ifthey occur~theconditionalprobability
of inter-nalizing or externalizing problems, given thatproblems
arise!, but it is unclear whether theyare associated with the
severity of the prob-lems ~the absoluteprobability that
problemsarise!. It is important to distinguish betweenconditional
and absolute probabilities, becauseabsolute probabilities reflect
risk of psycho-pathology, while conditional probabilities donot. If
the relative overactivation of the BIS orBAS indicates the
conditional probability of
either internalizing or externalizing problems,then additional
factors are needed to distin-guish between adaptive and maladaptive
de-velopments, i.e., to indicate the absoluteprobability of problem
behavior~Elliot &Thrash, 2002!.
A promising approach to a multidimen-sional representation of
constitutionally basedindividual differences in reactivity and
self-regulation is the temperament model de-veloped by Rothbart and
colleagues~e.g.,Rothbart, Ahadi, & Evans, 2000!. Putnam,Ellis,
and Rothbart~2001! investigated thismodel in early adolescents, and
found fourbroad temperament factors: Surgency, Nega-tive
Affectivity, Effortful Control, and Affili-ation. Surgency,
manifested as orientation toand exploration of novelty, was
comprised ofhigh-intensity pleasure~positive loading!,
shy-ness~negative loading!, and fear~negativeloading!, indicating
that this factor largelyreflects the relative activation of the BIS
andBAS system~Panksepp, 1998!. High levels ofSurgency~i.e., high
activation and0or low inhi-bition! may result in externalizing
problems,for instance if goals are blocked~Derryberry& Reed,
1994; Rothbart & Putnam, 2002!. Lowlevels of Surgency~low
activation and0or highinhibition! may lead to internalizing
symp-toms ~Fowles, 1993; Windle, 1994!. How-ever, as indicated
before, we propose that highand low levels of Surgency are
associated withthe conditional probability~direction! ratherthan
with the absolute probability~severity!of behavioral problems.
Negative Affectivity has been found to pre-dict both
externalizing and internalizing prob-lems, especially in
combination with adverseenvironmental factors~e.g., Bates,
2001;Maziade, 1989; Sanson, Oberklaid, Pedlow,and Prior, 1991!.
This suggests that NegativeAffectivity is a potentially negative
constitu-tional factor that may be exacerbated throughdysfunctional
patterns of interaction~Samer-off & Chandler, 1975!. In
children, NegativeAffectivity encompasses both fear and
frustra-tion, in adolescents mainly frustration~Put-nam et al.,
2001!. The correlation between fearand frustration has been found
to decrease dur-ing early stages of development~Rothbart
&Putnam, 2002!; the shift of fear from Negative
422 A. J. Oldehinkel et al.
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Affectivity to Surgency suggests that some-thing similar may
occur between childhoodand adolescence.
Effortful Control, denoting the ability toregulate attention and
behavior, is believed tomake major contributions to social
adaptation~Kochanska, Murray, & Harlan, 2000; Roth-bart &
Putnam, 2002!. Whereas it is evidentthat the ability to restrain
undesirable urgesmay prevent externalizing problems~Lengua,West,
& Sandler, 1998; Wachs & Bates, 2001!,the association with
internalizing problems isless obvious. On the one hand, children
highon Effortful Control may be able to regulatetheir emotional
state by deploying their atten-tion ~Shoda, Mischel, & Peake,
1990!, and thusreduce the probability of internalizing prob-lems.
On the other hand, Rothbart, Ahadi, andHershey~1994! found that
children high inEffortful Control were also high in guilt0shame,
which may predispose to feelings ofanxiety and depression.
The final broad temperament dimension isAffiliation, which
refers to the desire for close-ness with others, independent of
extraversionor shyness. The affiliation system is supposedto play a
role in maternal behaviors, attach-ment, pair bonding, and sexual
behaviors~Cyranowski, Frank, Young, & Shear, 2000;Panksepp,
1998!. Girls tend to display astronger affiliative style than boys,
a differ-ence that becomes more salient during
adoles-cence~Brooks–Gunn & Warren, 1989; Insel& Hulian,
1995; Richards, Crowe, Larson, &Swarr, 1998!. This increase in
affiliative needhas been proposed to make girls more sensi-tive to
interpersonal stressors than boys~Cyr-anowski et al., 2000;
Hoffmann & Su, 1998!,which might explain why they show
higherprevalence rates of internalizing disorder~Bebbington et al.,
1998; Oldehinkel, Wit-tchen, & Schuster, 1999!, starting in
mid-puberty ~Angold, Costello, & Worthman,1998!. By contrast,
high affiliative need might,through social support, protect against
mal-adaptive outcomes~DeVries, Glasper, & Detil-lion,
2003!.
The aim of this study was to investigatehow the joint
configuration of temperamentfactors as proposed by Rothbart et
al.~2000!was associated with internalizing and exter-
nalizing behavioral problems in a large popu-lation cohort of
Dutch preadolescents. Basedon the above-described findings from
previ-ous studies, we hypothesized that~a! HighSurgency is
associated with the conditionalprobability~i.e., the direction,
given that prob-lems arise! of externalizing problems, low
Sur-gency with the conditional probability ofinternalizing
problems;~b! Negative Affectiv-ity is associated with the absolute
probability~the severity! of maladaptation; and~c! ~low!Effortful
Control is associated with both theconditional and the absolute
probability~direc-tion and severity! of externalizing problems.We
did not have clear expectations with regardto the role of
Affiliation and the association ofEffortful Control and
internalizing problems.
Studies linking temperament to child or ado-lescent psychiatric
problems have often focusedon children with either internalizing or
exter-nalizing problems. In practice, however, inter-nalizing and
externalizing problems often occurin concert~Newman, Moffitt,
Caspi, Magdol,Silva, & Stanton, 1996; Verhulst & Van
derEnde, 1993!, and comorbidity of internalizingand externalizing
psychopathology must betaken into account when examining
correlatesof mental health problems~Krueger, Caspi,Moffitt, Silva,
& McGee, 1996; Mesman &Koot, 2000!. This is particularly
true in thisstudy, where we aim to disentangle absoluteand
conditional probabilities of problembehavior.
We examined temperamental profiles ofchildren with~a! neither
internalizing nor exter-nalizing problems,~b! internalizing but
noexternalizing problems,~c! externalizing butno internalizing
problems, and~d! both inter-nalizing and externalizing problems.
Com-pared to the more common variable-centeredapproaches, this
typological approach, identi-fying groups of persons based on
the~proba-ble! presence or absence of disturbed behavior,provides a
straightforward and easily interpret-able way to address the above
research ques-tions, and is more closely related to
clinicalpractice.
Because temperament and mental healthproblems are known to show
gender differ-ences~e.g., Feingold, 1994; Verhulst et al.,1997!, we
checked whether associations were
Temperament and maladaptation in preadolescence 423
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similar for boys and girls. The purpose of thestudy was to
elucidate which temperament fac-tors are associated with
internalizing prob-lems, externalizing problems, or both.
Linkingtemperament and psychopathology may notonly help to identify
high-risk groups, but alsoyield clues about the etiology of several
kindsof problem behavior and potentially effectiveprevention and
intervention actions.
Methods
Sample
The Tracking Adolescents’ Individual LivesSurvey (TRAILS).TRAILS
is a new prospec-tive cohort study of Dutch preadolescents, whowill
be measured biennially at least until theyare 24 years old. The
present study involvesdata from the first assessment wave ofTRAILS,
which ran from March 2001 to July2002. The key objective of TRAILS
is to chartand explain the development of mental healthfrom
preadolescence into adulthood, both atthe level of psychopathology
and the levels ofunderlying vulnerability and environmentalrisk. A
detailed description of the samplingprocedure and methods can be
sent uponrequest. Briefly, the TRAILS target sampleinvolved 10- to
12-year-olds living in fivemunicipalities in the north of The
Nether-lands, including both urban and rural areas.
Sample selection.The sample selectioninvolved two steps. First,
the municipalitiesselected were asked to give names andaddresses of
all inhabitants born between Octo-ber 1, 1989 and September 30,
1990~first twomunicipalities! or October 1, 1990 and Sep-tember 30,
1991~last three municipalities!,yielding 3,483 names. Second,
primary schools~including schools for special education!
withinthese municipalities were simultaneously ap-proached with the
request to participate inTRAILS: that is, pass on students’ lists,
pro-vide information about the children’s behav-ior and performance
at school, and allow classadministration of questionnaires and
individ-ual testing~neurocognitive, intelligence, andphysical! at
school. School participation was
a prerequisite for eligible children and theirparents to be
approached by the TRAILS staff.Of the 135 primary schools within
the munici-palities, 122~90.4% of the schools accom-modating 90.3%
of the children! agreed toparticipate in the study.
If schools agreed to participate, parents~orguardians! received
two brochures, one forthemselvesandone for their children,with
infor-mation about the study; and a TRAILS staffmember visited the
school to inform eligiblechildren about the study.Approximately 1
weeklater, a TRAILS interviewer contacted them bytelephone
togiveadditional information,answerquestions, and ask whether they
and their sonor daughter were willing to participate in thestudy.
Respondents with an unlisted telephonenumber were requested by mail
to pass on theirnumber. If they reacted neither to that letter,
norto a reminder letter sent a few weeks later, staffmembers paid
personal visits to their house.Parents who refused to participate
were askedfor permission to call back in about two monthsto
minimize the number of refusals due to tem-porary reasons. If
parents agreed to partici-pate, an interview was scheduled, during
whichwhere they were requested to sign an informedconsent form.
Children were excluded fromthe study if they were incapable of
participat-ing because of mental retardation or a seriousphysical
illness or handicap, or if no Dutch-speaking parent or parent
surrogate was avail-able and it was not feasible to administer
partof the measurements in the parent’s language.Of all children
approached for enrollment inthe study~i.e., selected by the
municipalitiesand attending a school that was willing to
par-ticipate, N 5 3,145!, 6.7% were excludedbecause of incapability
or language problems.Of the remaining 2,935 children, 76.0%~N
52230, mean age5 11.09,SD 5 0.55, 50.8%girls! were enrolled in the
study~i.e., both childand parent agreed to participate!, of
whom1,978 completed the questionnaires used in thispaper.
Responders and nonresponders did notdiffer with respect to
proportion of single-parent families, teacher-rated problem
behav-ior, or school absence; but children in thenonresponse group
needed additional help forlearning difficulties more frequently and
were~slightly! more often boys.
424 A. J. Oldehinkel et al.
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Measures
Data collection.Well-trained interviewers vis-ited one of the
parents or guardians~prefera-bly the mother, 95.6%! at their homes
toadminister an interview covering a wide rangeof topics, including
the child’s developmentalhistory and somatic health, parental
psycho-pathology, and care utilization. Besides theinterview, the
parent was asked to fill out awritten questionnaire. Children were
mea-sured at school, where they filled out question-naires, in
groups, under the supervision of oneor more TRAILS assistants. In
addition to that,information processing capacities~neurocog-nitive
tasks!, intelligence, and a number of bio-logical parameters were
assessed individually~also at school!. Teachers were asked to
fillout a brief questionnaire for all TRAILS chil-dren in their
class. Measures that were used inthe present study are described
more exten-sively below.
Internalizing and externalizing problems.Inter-nalizing and
externalizing problem behaviorswere assessed by the Child Behavior
Check-list ~CBCL!, which is one of the most com-monly used
questionnaires in current child andadolescent psychiatric
research~Achenbach,1991a; Verhulst and Achenbach, 1995!. TheCBCL
contains a list of 112 behavioral andemotional problems, which
parents can rate asbeing not true, somewhat or sometimes true,or
very or often true in the past 6 months.Syndromes covered by the
CBCL are Anxious0Depressed, Withdrawn0Depressed, Somaticcomplaints,
Social problems, Thought prob-lems, Attention ~hyperactivity!
problems,Aggressive behavior, and Rule-breakingbehavior.
For the present study, we constructed twobroad-band
dimensions:~a! internalizingproblems, consisting of items
measuringAnxious0Depressed, Withdrawn0Depressed,and Somatic
complaints; and~b! externalizingproblems, with items measuring
Attentionproblems and Aggressive and Rule-breakingbehavior.
Originally, the CBCL Externalizingsyndrome consisted of only
Aggressive andRule-breaking behavior~Achenbach, 1991a!.However,
Attention problems are generally
considered as belonging to the group of exter-nalizing
~disruptive! behaviors as well~e.g.,DSM-IV; APA, 1994! and were
highly corre-lated with Aggressive0Rule-breaking behav-ior ~r 5
.64!, so we felt it was justified to treatthem as aspects of a
single dimension. Becauseour research purposes required as valid
andpure dimensions as possible, we performed aprincipal components
analysis~two compo-nents, oblique rotation! and included only
itemswith factor loadings greater than .25 that wereat least twice
as high as the loading on theother dimension. This relatively
lenient selec-tion criterion was chosen to ensure a suffi-cient
variety of symptoms within the broad-band dimensions and to
eliminate symptomsthat were ~also! associated with the
otherdimension and hence might contaminate thegroups with only
internalizing and only exter-nalizing problems. The correlation
between thetwo components was .34. Of the 32 items thatbelonged to
the three internalizing scales ofthe CBCL, eight did not have a
factor loadinggreater than .25 that was at least twice as highas
the loading on the externalizing compo-nent. These items were
excluded, leaving 24items on the internalizing dimension. Of the44
items that belonged to the three externaliz-ing scales, 13 did not
have a factor loadinggreater than .25 that was at least twice as
highas the loading on the internalizing component,leaving 31 items.
The items of both dimen-sions are listed in Appendix A.
Because the scores between the 82nd and90th percentile appeared
to be the most effi-cient discriminators between normal and
dis-turbed behavior~Achenbach, 1991a!, we used1 SD above the mean
as the cutoff point, re-sulting in 15.7 and 15.6% high scorers on
theinternalizing and externalizing dimensions,respectively. We did
not use gender-specificpercentile scores because we felt that
woulderroneously obscure gender differences in theprevalence of
problem behavior. Subsequently,the children were categorized into
four groups,with each combination of low or high scoreson the two
dimensions of problem behavior:~a! no problems~NO!, ~b! only
internalizingproblems~INT !, ~c! only externalizing prob-lems~EXT!,
and~d! comorbidity of internal-izing and externalizing
problems~COM!.
Temperament and maladaptation in preadolescence 425
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Table 1 shows the gender-specific distributionacross the
groups.
Although the core of our analyses was basedon the CBCL, the
self-report version of thisquestionnaire, the Youth
Self-Report~YSR;Achenbach, 1991b!, was also used to see towhat
extent the findings would hold acrossinformants. YSR problem groups
were madefollowing the same procedure as describedabove for the
CBCL. The two YSR compo-nents correlated .39. The YSR
internalizingdimension contained 28 items and the exter-nalizing
dimension 23 items. As opposed tothe CBCL, YSR items measuring
Attentionproblems did not load on the externalizingdimension, hence
the YSR externalizingdimension consisted only of items
measuringAggressive and Rule-breaking behavior. Con-sistent with
other reports~e.g., Achenbach,McConaughty, & Howell, 1987;
Jensen, Tray-lor, Xenakis, & Davis, 1988; Renouf &
Kovacs,1994; Verhulst & Van der Ende, 1992!, theagreement
between parent and children wasonly moderate:r 5 .32 for the
externalizingdimension andr 5 .28 for the
internalizingdimension.
Temperament.Temperament was assessed bythe parent and the child
version of the shortform of the Early Adolescent
TemperamentQuestionnaire —Revised~EATQ-R; Ellis,2002; Putnam et
al., 2001!. We used the par-ent version, because its factor
structure wassuperior to that of the child version in our sam-ple.
The EATQ-R is a 62-item questionnaire
based on the temperament model developedby Rothbart and
colleagues~e.g., Putnam et al.,2001; Rothbart et al., 2000!.
Rothbart’s modeldistinguishes eight temperament dimensionsin early
adolescence~ages 9–16!, namely,High-Intensity Pleasure, Shyness,
Fear, Frus-tration, Activation Control, Attention
Control,Inhibitory Control, and Affiliation, reflectingthe four
broad dimensions of Surgency, Neg-ative Affectivity, Effortful
Control, and Affil-iation~Putnam et al., 2001!. In addition to
thesetemperament scales, the EATQ-R includes twobehavioral
scales~Aggression and DepressedMood, meant to examine possible
relation-ships between temperament and social–emotional
functioning!, which are notconsidered here. Because the scales as
pro-posed by Rothbart and her group had not beenverified
empirically in large population sam-ples, we investigated to what
extent theyreflected the structure of the EATQ-items inthe TRAILS
sample appropriately. Principalcomponents analysis~PCA! on the 50
itemsof the eight temperament scales yielded 10components with an
eigenvalue. 1, with ascree~break in the slope of the plot of the
totalvariance associated with each component! atthe sixth
component. The eigenvalue. 1 rulemay overestimate the number of
factors whenthe number of variables in the analysis is 40
ormore~Linn, 1968!. We examined the interpret-ability of the five-,
six-, seven-, and eight-component solution of PCA with
oblique~oblimin! rotation. With a few minor excep-tions, all four
solutions resulted in compara-
Table 1. Distribution (number and percentage) of the four CBCL
problem groups in girlsand in boys
Girls Boys Total Group
N % N % N %
No problems 789 78.4 682 70.2 1471 74.4Only internalizing 117
11.6 81 8.3 198 10.0Only externalizing 54 5.4 143 14.7 198
10.0Comorbidity 47 4.7 65 6.7 112 5.7
1007 100 971 100 1978 100
Note:CBCL, Child Behavior CheckList.
426 A. J. Oldehinkel et al.
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ble components for Frustration, Shyness, andAffiliation.
Furthermore, we consistently founda strong Effortful Control
dimension, mainlyencompassing Attention and Activation Con-trol
items. With one exception, Inhibitory Con-trol items did not load
on this component, normade up a separate one. High-Intensity
Plea-sure items loaded on one component at thefive-, six-, and
seven-component solution andspread over two components in the
eight-factor solution. Fear did not emerge in the five-component
solution and was relatively weakin the other solutions. The seven-
and eight-component solutions had one or more compo-nents that
could not be interpreted properly.All things considered, six
components, explain-ing 42.6% of the variance, seemed to capturethe
internal structure of the data best~Olde-hinkel & Hartman,
2003!.
An item was assigned to a scale if the load-ing on the component
was greater than6.406~Stevens, 2002! and at least .15 greater
thanthe loadings on all other components. Forvalidity’s
sake~temperament factors were con-ceptually, rather than
empirically derived!,items could only be assigned to their
“own”scale; in other words, we did not assign itemsto any scale
other than the one they had beenselected for initially. The
resulting scales are~a! High-Intensity Pleasure: the
pleasurederived from activities involving high inten-sity or
novelty~6 items, Cronbach’sa 5 0.77!;~b! Shyness: behavioral
inhibition to noveltyand challenge, especially social~4 items,a
50.84!; ~c! Fear: worrying and unpleasant affectrelated to the
anticipation of distress~5 items,a 5 0.63!; ~d! Frustration:
negative affectrelated to interruption of ongoing tasks or
goalblocking~5 items,a50.74!; ~e! Effortful Con-trol: the capacity
to voluntarily regulate behav-ior and attention~11 items,a 5 0.86!;
and~f !Affiliation: the desire for warmth and close-ness with
others, independent of shyness orextraversion~6 items,a 5 0.66!.
The scaleitems are described in Appendix B. In general,the
~absolute! correlation between the scaleswas low to
moderate~averager 5 .17!, withthe strongest association between
EffortfulControl and Frustration~r 5 2.41!.
Based on~higher order! factor loadings, Put-nam et al.~2001!
found that in early adoles-
cents High-Intensity Pleasure,~low! Shyness,and~low! Fear were
assumed to be indicatorsof the broad dimension of Surgency and
Frus-tration was assumed to be the only indicatorof Negative
Affectivity. In our sample, how-ever, Fear had a high loading on
NegativeAffectivity as well, consistent with findings inyounger
children. Otherwise, our findings weresimilar to Putnam et
al.’s~2001!. In the caseof Effortful Control and Affiliation, the
scalesand broad dimensions are similar.
Analysis
Differences in mean temperament scoresbetween the four problem
groups were testedby simple contrasts in univariate analyses
ofvariance~ANOVAs!. With a large sample likeours, many effects,
including trivial ones, tendto get statistically significant;
particularly com-parisons with the largest subgroup of
childrenwithout behavioral problems. Hence, signifi-cance was not
an appropriate criterion for trac-ing meaningful differences. We
used Cohen’sd, an effect size measure that is independentof group
size. Cohen’sd is ~M1 2 M2!0spooled,whereM1 is the mean of the
first group,M2is the mean of the second group, andspooledis the
square root of the mean variance of thetwo groups~M~s12 1 s22!02!.
Cohen ~1988!defined effect sizes that were smaller than .2as small,
effect sizes of .5 as medium, andeffect sizes greater than .8 as
large effects.We decided to focus on effect sizes of .5 orgreater,
which, when normally distributed, cor-respond to at least 33%
nonoverlap of thescores.
After the bivariate analyses, a discriminantanalysis was
performed to find which combi-nation of temperament factors
described dif-ferences between the four problem groups
best.Discriminant analysis breaks down the totalbetween association
in ANOVA into additivepieces, through the use of uncorrelated
linearcombinations of the original variables~the dis-criminant
functions!. Subsequently, analysesstratified on gender were
performed to seewhether the results were similar for girls andboys.
Interactions between gender and discrim-inant scores were tested by
means of ANOVAs.
Temperament and maladaptation in preadolescence 427
-
To examine whether the associations foundmight be due to content
overlap between EATQand CBCL items, we used the empiricalapproach
described by Lemery, Essex, andSmider ~2002!, involving series of
explor-atory ~EFA! and confirmatory factor analyses~CFA! for every
combination of CBCL andEATQ measures~12 total!. The maximum
like-lihood algorithm was used for extraction, andthe factors were
allowed to covary. Items thatwere identified as problematic through
EFA,that is, with loadings..30 on the wrong fac-tor or ,.30 on
right factor, were allowed toload on both factors in the
confirmatory model;all other items were fixed to zero on the
wrongfactor. The criterion of .30 was used in imita-tion of Lemery
et al.~2002! and prior work onitem-content overlap~Lengua et al.,
1998!.Problematic items resulting from CFA, accord-ing to these
criteria, were dropped. The result-ing shortened scales were then
resubjected toEFA and the process was repeated until allremaining
items loaded..30 on the correctfactor, and did not load..30 on the
wrongfactor. The remaining items were used to con-struct “purified”
scales, with which we reana-lyzed the data. CFA was performed
usingMplus 2.11 software; all other analyses wereconducted with
SPSS 11 software.
Results
Mean internalizing and externalizingproblems in the four problem
groups
Before analyzing the association betweenproblem behavior and
temperament, we firstchecked whether the four CBCL problemgroups
reflected children with clearly differ-ent amounts of internalizing
and externalizingproblems. The results are presented in Fig-ure 1.
Please note that average, rather thantotal, problem scores were
used in order toeven up the problem scores for internalizing~24
problems! and externalizing~31 prob-lems! dimension.
As becomes apparent from Figure 1, wemanaged to construct four
distinct groups quitewell. Differences between internalizing
scoresof the EXT group and the COM group, as wellas differences
between externalizing scores ofthe INT group and the COM group are
all small~Cohen’sd , 0.50!; indicating that the COMgroup is not
characterized by considerablyhigher symptom levels within each
problemdimension. Furthermore, the EXT group hasrelatively low
levels of internalizing problems~Cohen’sd for difference with the
NO group,0.50!, and the INT group has relatively low
Figure 1. Mean Child Behavior Checklist internalizing and
externalizing problem scores for the fourproblem groups.
428 A. J. Oldehinkel et al.
-
levels of externalizing problems. Although thelatter group had
more externalizing problemsthan the NO group~d5 0.76!, differences
withthe NO group were much larger for the EXTand the COM group~d 5
3.15 and 3.34,respectively!.
Mean temperament scores in the fourproblem groups
Table 2 shows, for each of the problem groups,mean scores on the
six temperament factors,differences~in terms ofp value and
Cohen’sd! with the NO group, differences with the
COM group, and the difference between theINT and the EXT
group.
Three patterns emerge from Table 2, eachrelating to two
temperament factors.
1. Shyness and High-Intensity Pleasure wereassociated with the
relative rather than withthe absolute amount of problems:
differ-ences between the NO and the COM groupwere small, and
differences between theINT and the EXT group were large.
2. Scores on the Frustration factor steadilyincreased from the
NO group through theINT and EXT group, to the COM group.
Table 2. Mean temperament scores of the four problems groups
NO INT EXT COM
High-Intensity PleasureMean~SD! 3.33~0.91! 2.97~0.92! 3.53~0.96!
3.22~0.92!Differencea with NO group — 20.39* 0.21* 20.12Differencea
with COM group 0.12 20.27* 0.33* —Differencea between INT and EXT
0.60*
ShynessMean~SD! 2.47~0.86! 3.07~0.92! 2.18~0.80!
2.69~0.91!Differencea with NO group — 0.67* 20.35* 0.25Differencea
with COM group 20.25 0.42* 20.60* —Differencea between INT and EXT
21.03*
FearMean~SD! 2.30~0.68! 2.89~0.77! 2.50~0.66!
3.08~0.66!Differencea with NO group — 0.81* 0.30* 1.16*Differencea
with COM group 21.16* 20.26 20.88* —Differencea between INT and EXT
0.54*
FrustrationMean~SD! 2.64~0.60! 2.98~0.61! 3.27~0.56!
3.58~0.57!Differencea with NO group — 0.57* 1.10* 1.62*Differencea
with COM group 21.62* 21.02* 20.55* —Differencea between INT and
EXT 0.50*
Effortful Control 3.38~0.62! 3.12~0.60! 2.63~0.56!
2.45~0.62!Differencea with NO group — 20.42* 21.24*
21.49*Differencea with COM group 1.49* 1.10* 0.30 —Differencea
between INT and EXT 20.84*
AffiliationMean~SD! 3.90~0.55! 3.85~0.58! 3.80~0.57!
3.67~0.60!Differencea with NO group — 20.09 20.18 0.40*Differencea
with COM group 0.40* 0.31* 0.22 —Differencea between INT and EXT
20.09
Note: NO, no problems; INT, only internalizing problems; EXT,
only externalizing problems; COM, comorbidity ofinternalizing and
externalizing problems.aCohen’sd ~bold if .0.50!.*Statistical
significance atp , . 01.
Temperament and maladaptation in preadolescence 429
-
The same was true for low Affiliation butto a much lesser
extent: all effects weresmall.
3. Low Effortful Control was mainly associ-ated with
externalizing problems: rela-tively large differences were found
betweenthe INT and the COM group, between theEXT and the NO group,
and between theINT and the EXT group; other differenceswere small.
Similarly, Fear was mainlyassociated with internalizing
problems~i.e.,large differences between the EXT and theCOM group,
between the INT and the NOgroup, and between the INT and the
EXTgroup, other differences small!.
Because scores on the Frustration scale,hypothesized to be a
general marker of mal-adaptation, were lower in the INT group
thanin the EXT group, we examined whether theINT group~i.e., the
15.7% of the children withthe highest scores on the internalizing
dimen-sions! included more children with relativelymild problems
than the EXT group. The dataconfirmed that average item scores on
the inter-nalizing dimension were lower than those onthe
externalizing dimension, both in the totalsample~internalizing
itemsM 5 .28, SD 5.22; externalizing itemsM 5 .32, SD 5 .25;t
~1977! 5 7.62,p , .01! and in the groups of
high scorers~internalizing itemsM5 .67,SD5.17; externalizing
itemsM 5 .78, SD 5 .19;not testable; see also Figure 1!.
Furthermore,compared to the EXT group, a lower percent-age of the
INT group had visited a mentalhealth professional for their
problems~32.4vs. 19.0%, respectively;x2 5 8.87, df 5 1,p ,
.01!.
In an attempt to visualize the above-described findings, we
located internalizing andexternalizing problems, as well as their
asso-ciation with the six temperament factors, in anarea defined by
two axes, a severity axis and adirection axis~Figure 2!. Although
the latterwas labeled to range from inhibition to activa-tion, we
do not pretend that it exactly repre-sents BIS and BAS activation
as defined byGray~1981!. Internalizing problems were posi-tioned
somewhat lower on the maladaptationdimension than externalizing
problems toreflect the assumed severity differences in oursample.
Comorbidity is supposed to be locatedsomewhere in the middle
between left and rightand relatively high on the severity
dimension.
Aggressive behavior versusAttention problems
Originally, the CBCL Externalizing syndromeconsisted of only
Aggressive and Rule-
Figure 2. An overview of the assumed association of temperament
factors with internalizing and exter-nalizing roblems.
430 A. J. Oldehinkel et al.
-
breaking behavior~Achenbach, 1991a!; theexternalizing dimension
used in this studyincludes Attention problems as well. To exam-ine
to what extent inclusion of Attention prob-lems might have
influenced our findings, wecompared children with Aggressive
behavior~without Attention problems,n5132! to thosewith Attention
problems~without Aggressivebehavior,n 5 120!. One standard
deviationabove the mean was used as the cutoff point todistinguish
between normal and disturbedbehavior. Effortful Control was
significantly~ p , .01! lower for those with Attention prob-lems,
both in the group without and in thegroup with comorbid
internalizing problems.Frustration was higher for Aggressive
behav-ior in the group without comorbid internaliz-ing symptoms.
Other differences were smalland not statistically significant. It
should benoted, however, that more than half of the chil-dren with
Aggressive behavior also had Atten-tion problems and vice versa;
hence, these“pure” groups represent only part of the chil-dren with
externalizing problems.
Discriminant analyses
Discriminant analysis was done to find outwhich combination of
temperament factors dis-criminated best between the four
problemgroups~i.e., NO, INT, EXT, and COM! in orderto assess the
effect of temperament factorsadjusted for each other.
With four groups, the maximum number ofpossible discriminant
functions is three. Twoof these had significant values of
Wilks’l~x2 5 841.36,df 5 18, p , .01; andx2 5203.29, df 5 10, p ,
.01!, meaning theyyielded significant group differences. The
firstfunction consisted mainly of Effortful Controland Frustration,
and to a lesser extent Fear.~Pooled within-group correlations
between thevariables and the discriminant functions were2.77, .77,
and .46, respectively; other corre-lations were#6.166.! The second
functionwas formed primarily by Shyness, Fear, and,to a lesser
degree, High-Intensity Pleasure~variable-function correlations of
.75, .63, and2.44, respectively; other correlations were#6.196!.
Figure 3 displays the canonical dis-criminant functions evaluated
at the means of
the four problem groups. Each group had itsown typical profile
on these two functions:the NO and the COM group had low and
highscores, respectively, on the first function andaverage scores
on the second; the INT and theEXT group had intermediate scores on
the firstfunction and high and low scores, respec-tively, on the
second.
These results support the aforementionedfindings in that
Effortful Control, Frustration,and Fear are important to
distinguish betweenadaptive and maladaptive behavior and Shy-ness,
High-Intensity Pleasure, and Fear todenote theconditional
probability of mainlyinternalizing or externalizing problems.
Theresults further suggest that, compared to theaxis drawn in
Figure 2, the discriminant func-tions may reflect dimensions that
are slightly~158–258! rotated to the right.
Girls and boys
Stratification on gender revealed discriminantfunctions that
were quite similar in girls andboys and comparable to those found
in thetotal group; hence, the same~total-group! dis-criminant
functions could be used to comparethe discriminant scores of both
genders. Girlsand boys did not differ significantly withrespect to
their scores on the first discriminantfunction,F ~1, 1970! 5 2.61,p
5 .11, nor didwe find a significant Gender3 Problem-Group
interaction,F ~3, 1970! 5 1.17,p 5 .32. Girls scored significantly
higher,F ~1, 1970! 514.69,p , .01, than boys on thesecond
discriminant function; we also found atrend for the interaction of
Gender3 ProblemGroup,F ~3, 1970! 5 2.36,p5 .07, which wasmainly
caused by relatively high scores forgirls in the NO group and the
INT group.
Item-content overlap
Associations between temperament and psy-chopathology may partly
be accounted for byitem overlap between the questionnaires thatare
used. To trace overlapping items we per-formed a series of CFA and
EFAs and removeditems that loaded higher than .30 on the
wrongfactor or lower than .30 on the right factor~cf.Lemery et al.,
2002!. Concerning the CBCL
Temperament and maladaptation in preadolescence 431
-
Figure 3. The discriminant functions at the group centroids of
the four problem groups.
43
2
-
internalizing dimension, no items were re-moved in combination
with Frustration, oneCBCL item ~Fears going to school! wasremoved
in combination with High-IntensityPleasure and Effortful Control,
and two CBCLitems were removed in combination with Shy-ness~Fears
going to school and Too shy ortimid! and Affiliation ~Fears going
to schooland Secretive!. The largest overlap was foundin
combination with Fear, where we removedfour items from the
CBCL~Fears certainanimals0situations0places, Fears going toschool,
Too fearful or anxious, Nightmares!and one from the EATQ~Worries
about get-ting in trouble!. With regard to the CBCL exter-nalizing
dimension, we found no problematicitems for the combination with
Affiliation; fourCBCL items in combination with High-Intensity
Pleasure, Shyness, and Fear~Physi-cally attacks people, Sets fires,
Steals outsidethe home, Thinks about sex too much!; fiveCBCL items
in combination with Frustration~Physically attacks people, Prefers
being witholder kids, Sets fires, Steals outside the home,Thinks
about sex too much!; and seven CBCLitems in combination with
Effortful Control~Sets fires, Steals outside the home, Thinksabout
sex too much, Doesn’t finish what s0hestarts, Can’t concentrate or
pay attention forlong, Poor school work, Inattentive or
easilydistracted!. Most often, items were removedbecause they~
just! failed to reach the crite-rion of a loading. .30; items with
high load-ing on the wrong dimensions were scarce. Thefact that
more CBCL than EATQ items wereremoved is conceivable considering
the factthat the original item-selection criterion wasmore lenient
for the dimensions of the CBCL~.25! than for the EATQ
scales~.40!.
Analyses with the purified scales~i.e., withitems removed that
might confound the asso-ciation! yielded results that were very
similarto the ones based on the full scales: the puri-fied means
were approximately the same insize as the original ones and the
same effectswere significant and had an effect size. .50.The only
difference was found for Fear, wherethe purified scales had higher
means in theNO and the EXT group, resulting in a reduceddifference
between the INT and the EXT group~purified effect size .27,p ,
.01!.
The discriminant analysis was based onscales exclusive of all
items that were foundto be problematic in combination with at
leastone of the temperament scales, that is, 6 items~25%! from the
internalizing dimension and 9items ~29%! from the externalizing
dimen-sion, leaving 18 and 22 items, respectively;and 1 item from
the EATQ-Fear scale. Dis-criminant analysis yielded results
comparableto that based on the scales including the~poten-tially!
problematic items. As in the originalanalysis, two discriminant
functions had sig-nificant values of Wilks’l ~x2 5 638.51,df518, p
, .01; andx2 5 111.36,df 5 10, p ,.01!; in other words, they
yielded significantgroup differences. The first function
consistedmainly of Effortful Control and Frustration,and to a
lesser extent Fear.~Pooled within-group correlations between the
variables andthe discriminant functions were2.71, .84, and.38,
respectively; correlations of Shyness andSurgency#6.026;
Affiliation .20.! The secondfunction was formed primarily by
Shyness,Fear, and, to a lesser degree,
High-IntensityPleasure~variable-function correlations of .64,.68,
and2.43, respectively; correlations ofEffortful Control and
Frustration#6.136; Affil-iation .24!. The pattern of canonical
discrimi-nant functions evaluated at the means of thefour problem
groups closely resembled the onepresented in Figure 3. The NO and
the COMgroup had low and high scores, respectively,on the first
function and average scores on thesecond and the INT and the EXT
group hadintermediate scores on the first function andhigh and low
scores, respectively, on the sec-ond. A complete report is
available from thefirst author.
Self-reported problems
To examine to what extent the results heldacross informants, we
also examined temper-ament scores in problem groups constructedon
the basis of self-reported~instead of parent-reported! problems,
using the YSR. Despitethe partly different content of the
externaliz-ing dimension~excluding attention problems!,we found
similar patterns, though with smallereffect sizes, as in the CBCL
problem groupsfor High-Intensity Pleasure~equal in the NO
Temperament and maladaptation in preadolescence 433
-
and COM group, lower in the INT group,higher in the EXT group!,
Frustration~scoresincreasing with severity!, and Effortful Con-trol
~strong marker of externalizing prob-lems!. On average, the effect
sizes were abouttwo to three times smaller, but statistically
sig-nificant ~ p , .01!, and greater than .20, whichCohen~1988!
defined as small. For Shyness,Fear, and Affiliation, differences
were partlystatistically insignificant, but all in the
expecteddirection, with the exception of Fear in theCOM group
~lower than in the INT group!,and Affiliation in the INT
group~higher thanin the NO group!. A complete overview ofmeans and
effect sizes is available uponrequest.
Discussion
The aim of this study was to elucidate whichtemperament factors
are associated with pre-adolescents’ internalizing problems,
external-izing problems, or both. The results suggestclearly
diverging temperament profiles forthese groups of children, with
High-IntensityPleasure and Shyness~representing the broaddimension
of Surgency! steering the con-ditional probability of internalizing
and ex-ternalizing problems~direction markers!,Frustration~and
perhaps also low Affiliation!mainly being related to maladaptation
in gen-eral ~severity markers!, and Effortful Controland Fear being
associated with both the sever-ity and the direction of the
problems. Girlsand boys differed in the distribution across
theproblem groups, but the associations betweentemperament and
psychopathology were com-parable for both genders. Consistent with
pre-vious reports~e.g., Lemery et al., 2002; Lenguaet al., 1998!,
the relation between tempera-ment and psychopathology was unlikely
to beconfounded by item-content overlap betweenthe
questionnaires.
The results largely confirmed our hypoth-eses that Surgency
would be associated withthe conditional probability of
internalizing~lowSurgency! or externalizing problems~high
Sur-gency!, Negative Affectivity with the absoluteprobability of
maladaptation, and EffortfulControl with externalizing problems.
The roleof Fear deviated slightly from the expecta-
tions. Based on Putnam et al.’s~2001! studyon early adolescents,
Fear was assumed to bepart of the broad factor of Surgency. In
oursample of 10- to 12-year olds, i.e., in the tran-sitional stage
between childhood and adoles-cence, Fear appeared to have a high
loadingon Negative Affectivity as well, which isconsistent with
patterns found in younger chil-dren. This may explain why Fear was
associ-ated with both direction and severity, ratherthan with
direction only, and was part of bothdiscriminant functions.
Much previous research on~temperamen-tal! correlates of child
psychopathology tookplace within the framework of Gray’s~1981,1987!
BIS and BAS. Quay~1988, 1993, 1997!found that externalizing
behavior could beaccounted for by~a! an underactive BIS, caus-ing
the BAS to initiate inappropriate behaviorthat would normally be
inhibited by the BIS,~b! an overactive BAS, causing it to
prevailover the BIS, or~c! both. More specifically, ithas been
suggested that a deficiency in theability to inhibit behavior is
the central deficitin ADHD ~Barkley, 1997; Iaboni, Douglas,
&Ditto,1997; Kooijmans et al., 2000!, whereasoppositional
defiant disorder~ODD! and con-duct disorder~CD! are associated with
a height-ened sensitivity to cues for reward, leading toan increase
in BAS behavior~Quay, 1993!.Oosterlaan, Logan, and Sergeant~1998!
re-viewed studies on the relation between inhib-itory control~e.g.,
measured by the stop signaltask; Logan, Cowan, & Davis, 1984!
and exter-nalizing behavior. In most studies, normal chil-dren
outperformed children with ADHD andODD or CD, with the most marked
effects forchildren with ADHD. In our sample, we foundthat the
broad-band dimension of externaliz-ing problems was associated with
both lowShyness, pointing at an underactive BIS, andHigh-Intensity
Pleasure, suggesting high BASactivation, which is consistent with
Quay’s~1988, 1993, 1997! previously mentionednotion. Within the
externalizing dimension,children with attention~hyperactivity!
prob-lems and those with aggressive behavior didnot differ with
respect to Shyness and High-Intensity Pleasure, but children with
attentionproblems had lower scores on Effortful Con-trol, and
children with aggressive problems
434 A. J. Oldehinkel et al.
-
showed higher levels of Frustration. Thesefindings suggest that
a reduced capacity to reg-ulate behavior and attention may mediate
theassociation between low BIS and ADHD; andthat negative affect
related to interruption oftasks or goal blocking, rather than the
merepresence of an overactive BAS, may predis-pose to ODD or
CD.
Concerning internalizing problems, a num-ber of
investigations~reviewed by Oosterlaan,2001! showed that children
high on the tem-peramental trait of inhibition are at increasedrisk
to develop anxiety disorders later in theirlives, and Quay~1988!
suggested that overin-hibition could be the underlying cause of
anx-iety disorders. The few studies that investigatedthe possible
link between inhibitory control asmeasured by the stop task and
internalizingproblems yielded virtually no~Daugherty,Quay, &
Ramos, 1993; Oosterlaan et al., 1998!or only partial~Kooijmans et
al., 2000! sup-port for this association. It is not yet knownto
what extent findings based on a stop task~measuring the ability to
inhibit a prepotentresponse! are generalizable to other forms
ofinhibition ~Nigg, 2000!. Our results suggestthat it might be
important to distinguishbetween Shyness, which may be both a
risk~with respect to internalizing problems! and aprotective~with
respect to externalizing prob-lems! factor; and temperamental Fear,
whichseems to be more detrimental than beneficial.
Our analyses add to earlier studies that wewere able to
disentangle factors associated withthe probability of problem
behavior and fac-tors codetermining the nature and direction ofthe
problems, if any. Factors associated withthe BIS and the BAS, which
are Shyness andHigh-Intensity Pleasure~Surgency!, appearedto be
primarily indicators of direction~mani-festation!: they increased
the probability ofinternalizing problems and decreased the
prob-ability of externalizing problems, or vice versa.The assumed
dual nature of behavioral inhibi-tion and activation~i.e., both
risk-enhancingand protective, depending on the outcome! isin line
with studies by Pliszka~1989!, wherechildren with concurrent ADHD
and anxietyshowed reduced impulsivity compared to chil-dren with
ADHD alone; Bates, Pettit, & Dodge~1995!, where internalizing
behavior restrained
the development of aggressiveness; and Walkeret al. ~1991!, who
found that boys with CDand comorbid anxiety were markedly
lesssocially impaired than boys with CD alone.Only partly
comparable, but seemingly con-tradictory, are results from the
Pittsburgh YouthStudy, where impulsive and disagreeableboys
~so-called undercontrollers! were likelyto have externalizing, but
also comorbid inter-nalizing and externalizing
problems~Robins,John, Caspi, Moffitt, &
Stouthamer–Loeber,1996!.
Whereas Surgency indicated the directionof the problems,
Negative Affectivity~in thisage group mainly Frustration! was
associatedwith their severity: Frustration scores steadilyincreased
from the group with no problems,through the internalizing and the
externaliz-ing group, to the comorbidity group. Theassumption that
Frustration is a general markerfor maladaptation would imply that,
in our sam-ple, externalizing problems were more seriousthan
internalizing problems. Higher averagesymptom scores and mental
health care utili-zation rates in the externalizing group com-pared
to the internalizing group supported theassumption. The severity of
internalizing prob-lems is likely to increase substantially in
theyears to come: the incidence of internalizingdisorders rises
sharply in adolescence~Olde-hinkel et al., 1999!.
As hypothesized, low Effortful Control wasassociated with a high
probability of external-izing problems. We found only limited
sup-port for the protective role of Effortful Controlwith respect
to internalizing problems: chil-dren with only internalizing
problems scoredlower on Effortful Control than those
withoutproblems, but the difference was small. Thismay be due to
the fact that the protective effectof the ability to regulate
emotional state~Shodaet al., 1990! and the risk to experience guilt
orshame~Rothbart, Ahadi, & Hershey, 1994!largely counterbalance
each other.
The affiliation system is supposed to play arole in maternal
behaviors, attachment, pairbonding, and sexual
behaviors~Panksepp,1998!. The fact that Affiliation was onlyweakly,
if at all, associated with the~mal!ad-aptation and
inhibition0activation may indi-cate that a third dimension, for
example,
Temperament and maladaptation in preadolescence 435
-
reflecting sociality0individuality, is requiredto position this
factor appropriately. It is alsopossible that the role of
Affiliation will riseduring adolescence, particularly in girls,
whichhave been found to show an increase of affil-iative need in
this stage of life~e.g., Brooks–Gunn & Warren, 1989; Cyranowski
et al., 2000;Insel & Hulian, 1995; Richards, Crowe, Lar-son,
& Swarr, 1998!.
Both psychopathology and temperamentdata were based on the same
informant, i.e.,the parent~usually the mother!. Because peo-ple
tend to describe other people in a less dif-ferentiated way than
themselves~e.g., Mirels,Stevens, Greblo, and Yurek, 1998! and
answersmay suffer from response sets such as acqui-escence and
social desirability, this brings alongthe risk of inflated
associations. Therefore, wechecked whether the associations of
tempera-ment with parent-rated problem behavior couldalso be found
for self-reported problems.Despite the low agreement between
multipleinformants of psychopathology~e.g., Achen-bach et al.,
1987; Verhulst & Van der Ende,1992! and the partly different
content of theexternalizing dimension~excluding attentionproblems
in the self-report version!, we foundcomparable patterns, though
with smallereffects, in the self-reported problem groups asin the
parent-reported groups for all tempera-ment factors, with only two
exceptions: rela-tively low fear scores in children with
comorbidproblems, and relatively high affiliation inthose with only
internalizing problems.
Our study has a number of notable assets:it was based on a large
population sample ofpreadolescents, coveredseveral
domainsofpsy-chopathology and individual~temperamental!differences,
and employed multiple informants.Hence, we feel that it is an
excellent startingpoint for further research. We propose threelines
of extension. First, the range of problembehaviors could be
extended with~mild! per-vasive developmental problems such as
social-interaction problems and stereotyped behaviors~e.g.,
Luteijn, Luteijn, Jackson, Volkmar, &Minderaa, 2000!. Second,
it will be interestingto see to what extent the cross-sectional
asso-ciations reported here will also hold prospec-tively, so that
high-risk groups can be identifiedand preventive actions targeted
more precisely.For example, we may investigate whether
theassociation between Negative Affectivity andfuture internalizing
or externalizing psychopa-thology is modified by the presence or
absenceofadverseenvironments~e.g.,Bates,2001;San-son et al., 1991!.
The longitudinal nature of oursurvey, TRAILS, allows us to
investigate thesequestions in the future. A third extension is
toinclude environmental factors, such as parent-ing behavior and
life events, in the model. Ear-lier research on
temperament–environmentinteractions~e.g., Bates, Pettit, Dodge,
& Ridge,1998; Kochanska, 1995! has revealed that thisis an
exciting and promising research area,which will help to improve our
understandingof pathways to adaptive and
maladaptivedevelopment.
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Appendix A
Child Behavior Checklist items of the internalizing and
externalizing dimension
Internalizing Externalizing
Withdrawn0depressed Attention problemsWould rather be alone than
with others Doesn’t finish what~s!he starts withSecretive, keeps
things to self Can’t concentrate or pay attention for longToo shy
or timid Can’t sit still, restless, or hyperactiveUnderactive, slow
moving, or lacks energy Impulsive or acts without thinkingUnhappy,
sad, or depressed Poor school workWithdrawn, doesn’t get involved
with others Inattentive or easily distracted
Anxious0depressed Aggressive behaviorCries a lot Argues a
lotFears certain animals, situations, or places Cruelty, bullying,
or meanness to othersFears going to school Demands a lot of
attentionFears~s!he might think or do something bad Destroys
his0her own thingsFeels~s!he has to be perfect Destroys things
belonging to family or othersFeels worthless or inferior
Disobedient at homeNervous, highstrung, or tense Disobedient at
schoolToo fearful or anxious Gets in many fightsFeels too guilty
Physically attacks peopleSelf-conscious or easily embarrassed
Screams a lotWorries Teases a lot
Somatic complaints Temper tantrums or hot temperNightmares
Threatens peopleFeels dizzy or lightheaded Unusually loudOvertired
without obvious reason Rule-breaking behaviorAches or pains~no
stomach or head!a Doesn’t seem to feel guilty after
misbehavingHeadachesa Breaks the rules at home, or somewhere
elseNausea, feels sicka Hangs around with others who get in
troubleStomachaches or crampsa Lying or cheating
Prefers being with older kidsSets firesSteals at homeSteals
outside the homeSwearing or obscene languageThinks about sex too
muchVandalism
aWithout known medical cause.
Appendix B
Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire: Revised scale
assignments
Effortful Control: The capacity to voluntarily regulate behavior
and attentionHas a hard time finishing things on time.~reverse
item@R# !Usually does something fun for a while before starting
her0his homework, even though s0he is not
supposed to.~R!Finds it easy to really concentrate on a
problem.When interrupted or distracted, forgets what s0he was about
to say.~R!Has a difficult time tuning out background noise and
concentrating when trying to study.~R!Usually finishes her0his
homework before it’s due.Usually gets started right away on
difficult assignments.
Temperament and maladaptation in preadolescence 439
-
Usually puts off working on a project until it’s due.~R!Is often
in the middle of doing one thing and then goes off to do something
else without finishing it.~R!Is usually able to stick with his0her
plans and goals.Pays close attention when someone tells her0him how
to do something.
Fear: Worrying and unpleasant affect related to the anticipation
of distressWorries about getting into trouble.Worries about our
family when s0he is not with us.Is afraid of the idea of me dying
or leaving her0him.Feels scared when entering a darkened room at
night.Is nervous being home alone.
Frustration: Negative affect related to interruption of ongoing
tasks or goal blockingIs annoyed by little things other kids
do.Gets very irritated when someone criticizes her0him.Gets
irritated when I will not take her0him someplace s0he wants to
go.Gets irritated when s0he has to stop doing something s0he is
enjoying.Hates it when people don’t agree with him0her.
High-Intensity Pleasure: The pleasure derived from activities
involving high intensity or noveltyThinks traveling to Africa or
India would be exciting and fun.Would be frightened by the thought
of skiing fast down a steep slope.~R!Wouldn’t be afraid to try a
risky sport like deep sea diving.Expresses a desire to travel to
exotic places when s0he hears about them.Would like driving a
racing car.Wouldn’t want to go on the frightening rides at the
fair.~R!
Shyness: Behavioral inhibition to novelty and challenge,
especially socialCan generally think of something to say, even with
strangers.~R!Is shy.Is not shy.~R!Feels shy about meeting new
people.
Affiliation: The desire for warmth and closeness with
othersLikes taking care of other people.Likes to be able to share
his0her private thoughts with someone else.Would like to be able to
spend time with a good friend every day.Enjoys exchanging hugs with
people s0he likes.Wants to have close relationships with other
people.Is quite a warm and friendly person.
Correlations
Eff. Cont.
Eff. Cont. — FearFear 2.24* — Frustrat.Frustrat. 2.41* .31* —
H-Int. Pl.H-Int. Pl. .05 2.20* 2.01 — ShynessShyness 2.02 .15* .10*
2.30* —Affiliat. .12* .09* 2.17 .15* 2.29*
*p , .001.
440 A. J. Oldehinkel et al.