What did jerome Kagan contribution to psychology?

He was one of the key pioneers of developmental psychology. Kagan has shown that an infant’s “temperament” is quite stable over time, in that certain behaviors in infancy are predictive of certain other behavior patterns in adolescence. He did extensive work on temperament and gave insight on emotion.

What is jerome Kagan’s behavioral inhibition?

Kagan et al. (1984) included social withdrawal in their initial definition of behavioral inhibition as a tendency to show reluctance, withdrawal, and fearfulness especially when encountering novel situations, objects, or people.

What is jerome Kagan best known for?

Professor Kagan’s highly-respected and groundbreaking research on the cognitive and emotional development of a child during the first decade of life focuses on the origins of temperament. He has tracked the development of inhibited and uninhibited children from infancy to adolescence.

What did Jerome Kagan believe?

Behaviorism was popular at the beginning of Kagan’s career, but Kagan’s research led him to believe that environment wasn’t the sole determining factor of a child’s personality, and he began to examine the influence of biological factors.

What does Kagan say about the second year of life?

It is Kagan’s premise that the roots of self-awareness emerge in the second half of the second year of life. Kagan argues that this distress could arise only from the child’s growing sense of what she can and can’t do—her awareness of herself.

What causes inhibited temperament?

Inhibited temperament likely has a neurobiological origin and is associated with physiological differences—such as a high and stable heart rate, increased salivary cortisol and greater asymmetry in frontal electroencephalography (EEG) (Kagan et al., 1998; Fox et al., 2005a).

What is easy temperament?

About 40% of babies and children have an easy temperament, meaning that they readily approach and easily adapt to new situations, they react mildly to things, they are regular in their sleep/wake and eating routines, and they have a positive overall mood. Slow-to-warm-up babies do not like to be pushed into things.