Temperament characteristics of toddlers born prematurely.

An examination was made of the hypothesis that prematurity is associated with difficult temperament outcome in childhood. Temperament ratings for 40 preterm, very low birthweight 3-year-olds were compared with those of a matched, term control group. Results suggested that while toddlers born prematurely were rated as less rhythmic than their term counterparts, no differences existed between the groups with respect to the diagnostic clusters 'easy', 'difficult', and 'slow to warm up'. It was concluded that from a global temperament standpoint, our high-risk preterm 3-year-olds were not perceived as more temperamentally difficult than term controls. The suggestion was offered that researchers seeking to broaden the scope of outcome assessment of high-risk children turn to more direct measures of behaviour associated with temperament.