| The two temperamental profiles (Kagan & Snidman, 1991a, 1991b) called inhibited and uninhibited are moderately stable from infancy through the eighth year. If genes contribute to the differences between the inhibited and uninhibited temperamental types, then the relatives of the two groups should differ in ways that are theoretically consistent with the temperamental profiles of their children. This assumption provided the impetus for the search for behavioral and physiological markers in a sample of 78 parents of inhibited and uninhibited children chosen from recent cohorts of children studied in Kagan's laboratory. A battery of cognitive, behavioral and psychometric measures and a clinical interview were administered to the adult subjects. The parents of inhibited and uninhibited children differed significantly on self-report assessments of social behaviors, heart rate and blood pressure, handwriting, response to a conditioning task, an emotional Stroop task, and in their medical histories. |
