Relations Between Reflection-Impulsivity and Behavioral Impulsivity in Preschool Children

• Published in: Developmental psychology 1985-01, Vol.21 (1), p.141-148
• Main Authors: Victor, James B, Halverson, Charles F, Montague, Ruth B
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activity Level; Biological and medical sciences; Cognitive Style; Developmental psychology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Human Sex Differences; Impulsiveness; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychometrics
• ISSN: 0012-1649; 1939-0599
• DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.21.1.141

Reflection-impulsivity was studied in 90 preschoolers to clarify underlying behavioral dimensions, sex differences, and the contribution of activity level, mental age, and socioeconomic status. A factor-analytically derived teacher-rated dimension of impulsive behavior was used in hierarchical stepwise and nonhierarchical multiple regression analyses to resolve these issues. The analyses replicate Block's finding that the dimension of behavioral impulsivity characterizes children with long response latency and high error scores, not the impulsives as defined by the Kagan studies. Furthermore, when variables are treated as continuous and analyzed by multiple regression analysis, we found, as did Block, that response accuracy was the variable with important relations to behavior, not response latency. The data also indicate that there are important gender differences often masked in research designs that account for important variance in the relations of conceptual and behavioral impulsivity. In predicting impulsive behavior, activity level is the central differentiating variable, being important for boys and unimportant for girls.