Basic Temperament Handout

Class Notes
Professor Henry Schissler
Biopsychosocial Model


Basic Temperament


Temperament – one of the many components of personality – describes each child’s unique, biologically-based, consistent pattern of behavioral responses to people, events and conditions. Everyone, including individuals with disabilities, at every age, shows a degree of response – high, medium, low – to nine behavioral categories influenced by temperament.

1. Activity levels: Some people seem always to be in a state of flurry, others seem to exist on a level of permanent calm. Others are consistently at various points between these extremes.

2. Predominant mood: Some people are born optimists, some pessimists.

3. Intensity of reactions: Whether positive or negative, people express their feelings in degrees – more or less dramatically.

4. Rhythmicity: Everyone has a degree of regularity or predictability to personal habits. Much of this can be attributed to brain functions.

5. Approach/withdrawal: People’s initial perception and response to change ranges from interest and openness to aversion.

6. Adaptability: When confronted with new circumstances, some people can adjust right away, others take longer.

7. Sensory threshold: Some people’s senses seem that much sharper than others; some seem to get frustrated much easier than others.

8. Attention span or persistence: One person will grab onto an idea or an effort with great intensity; another gives up at the first perceived obstacle or is always turning to new interests.

9. Distractibility: Whether it is by sight, sound, odor or any other sense, some people immediately turn their attention from what they are doing to pursue the distraction. Others continue on the path in which they were originally headed.

- adapted from Peter A. Gorski M.D., Journal
of Developmental and Behavioral Pediat