Independent and interactive associations of temperament dimensions with educational outcomes in young adolescents

Abstract

Few studies investigate temperament interactions and its association with education in young adolescents. Here we examine a sample of 1540 adolescents (9-14 years of age, 733 females) from a community-based study in Brazil. Temperament was derived from adolescents' reports to the Early Adolescence Temperament Questionnaire. Educational outcomes were measured by counting suspension, repetition and dropout events, parent reports on overall academic performance and by reading and writing standardized tests. We used mixed effects models to test associations of temperament dimensions with educational outcomes and tested interactions among effortful control and affective temperament dimensions. Models including temperament were adjusted for age, sex, socioeconomic status, intelligence and psychopathology. We found that high effortful control and fear were independently associated with better educational measurements, whereas high levels of frustration and surgency were independently associated with worse educational measurements. When all temperament dimensions were included at the same time, effortful control was the only significant predictor for educational outcomes. After multiple comparisons adjustment, effortful control and frustration interacts, such that low frustration and low effortful control were a detrimental combination for poor reading ability.