bachiller

medigraphic

Artemisa
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¿QUÉ ES EL TEMPERAMENTO? EL RETORNO
DE UN CONCEPTO ANCESTRAL

Lilia Albores-Gallo*, Ma. Elena Márquez-Caraveo*, Bruno Estañol**

SUMMARY
History
The awareness of a peculiar style of behavioural functioning in
individuals, basically regarding emotional nature and associated
to personality present in Greek Medicine. Since ancient times, it
stillprevails.
Hippocrates in V a.D. described four types of individuals: the
sanguine or cheerful type, the melancholic or of black bile, the
irritable associated to an increase of yellow bile, and the phlegmatic
(due to a phlegm excess), present in the passive or calmed type of
individual.
This old concept is present in more recent theories that
emphasize the relationship between temperament andneurotransmissers (Bond, 2001) and between these and specific receptors,
genetically determined, associated to certain temperamental
features (Cloninger, 1987, 1996; Auerbach, 2001). The concept
of biological-genetics, and the “humoral” theory that support the
idea that emotions constitute a distinctive feature of the
temperament, remain valid for contemporary theories.
Categorical vision
In1968, A. Thomas, S. Chess and H. Birch revolutionized the
temperament´s concept in childhood pointing out the innate
behavioural quality in contrast with predominant theories that
considered children as passive recipients of external influences, as
had been proposed in former unilineal and unidirectional models.
They established nine behavioural categories present from birth:
activity level;regularity or rhitmicity in biological functions, as
feeding, sleep and elimination; approach to new stimuli like foods,
toys or people; adaptability to new situations; answer threshold
to stimuli; intensity of the reaction; humour quality; attention
and distractibility as well as persistence. They pointed out 3
temperamental styles that are combinations of these categories:
easy temperament(40% of their sample), difficult temperament
(10%) and slow to warm up (15%), the remaining percentage
constitutes mixtures of these 3 basic types.
These authors also developed the concept “goodness or poorness
to fit” to make reference to a particular style to respond to the
environment.
Traits´ vision
Goldsmith (1987) and Plomin (1993): considered emotions,

activity and sociability asimportant temperamental domains.
Rothbart (1988, 1989) highlighted the self-regulation and reactivity
as a nuclear element of temperament; this author considered auto
regulation as a group of processes to modulate (facilitate or inhibit)
reactivity and include attention, approach or retreat, attack or
inhibition as well as the ability to calm. This author also designed
a temperamentquestionnaire for children.
Profiles´ vision
Kagan et al. (1987) developed the term of shyness or behavioural
inhibition as a profile type of infantile behaviour, which is stable
and present in 20% of the children. This profile contrasts with
disinhibited type of children that approach without fear to events
and people, and it comprise, 40% of the sample.
These authors also studied therelationship between these profiles
and their neurobiologic response types. Shyness is associated to
stable heart rates, high stress hormones levels like cortisol and
norepinephrine, arterial blood pressure modifications and some
changes in the voice parameters when speaking under stress
cognitive conditions. Different studies have been done, to study
the association between cortisol, shyness andinsecure attachment,
not present in secure attachment (Nachmias, 1996).
Genetics, temperament and neurotransmissers
Longitudinal studies in monozygotic twins (Robinson and cols.,
1992) have identified the heretability basis of behavioural inhibition,
they also suggested gene activation and deactivation in different
stages of the child development (Cherny, 1994; Plomin, 1993).
The first report...