Word: kagan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Half of the children that were inhibited at four months showed the same characteristics of shyness when they started school, and only a quarter will carry the behavioral characteristic into adulthood. The remaining three-quarters of the children who were originally shy will not be excessively introverted in adulthood, Kagan said...
Children who show early signs of being uninhibited carry the same behavioral trait more consistently through their lives. Kagan reports that 30 percent of the children he studied showed an early tendency toward extroversion. At four months of age, these children were not highly reactive to stimuli and exhibited "low crying...
Over 90 percent of these children will retain characteristics of fearlessness at ages two and three, over 80 percent will still be uninhibited at five years of age, and 70 percent will be extroverted as adults. Kagan said that the behavioral consistency of uninhibited children was due to a lack of intervention on the part of their parents. While parents of shy children place them in therapy that gradually desensitizes them to unfamiliar stimuli, the parents of bold children do not give them similar attention...
While almost half of those children tested by Kagan exhibited extreme shyness or boldness, the majority of children were somewhere in between, neither totally inhibited nor totally uninhibited...
...Kagan has developed a series of tests that define the physiological and psychological essence of shyness...