Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

Temperament is often regarded as biologically based psychological tendencies with intrinsic paths of development. The existing research findings reveal that the development of temperament plays a unique role in protesting and understanding children’s personality and socialization in the future. With emphasis on the enhancement of people’s quality in the 21st century, research on children’s temperament will be of much value in developing developmental theories and promoting children’s healthy personality development. Since the 1980s, developmental psychologists outside China have conducted a large quantity of research, both empirical and theoretical, in this area of children’s temperament. This has made it one of the most active and important research areas in child psychology. In contrast, systematic research efforts have been rare in China’s developmental psychology, and the general tendencies of the development of children’s temperament in Chinese culture remain a big area to be explored.

A comprehensive literature review is made with regard to the important empirical findings, major theoretical models as well as the research deficiency.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the Structure of Chinese children’s temperament aged 3 to 9, to develop indigenous instrument. Based on the open questionnaires that Chinese teachers provided on their students’ characteristics, one temperament questionnaires for ages 3 to 9 was developed. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted using AMOS and SPSS in attempt to testify the temperament structure of Chinese children. The major findings in the study are as follows: 1) The questionnaire of children’s temperament has high reliability and validity so that it can be used by teachers and researchers to evaluate children’s temperament. 2) The structure of Chinese children aged 3–9 is a multifactor, which involves five aspects: emotionality, activity, reaction, social inhibition and attention.

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