ABSTRACT
The aim of the present study is the validation of a German questionnaire that was designed to assess "infant temperament" by parental judgement. The questionnaire represents an adaptation of Rothbart's "Infant Behavior Questionnaire" (IBQ). It was studied whether the parental judgements concerning positive emotionality, negative emotionality/irritability, motor activity and soothability of the infant are correlated to corresponding observed child behavior. Furthermore we tried to determine influences of parental characteristics on their judgements. 31 First-born healthy 4 months old infants were observed in their home environment as well as in the video laboratory of our institute. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development (Mental Scale) were applied. The mothers filled in the Temperament Questionnaire and scales to assess maternal depression and anxiety. We yielded the expected significant correlations for the scales measuring positive and negative emotionality, and motor activity with the observed behavioral characteristics of the infants. Independent of these results the mothers' judgements of their infant's positive and negative emotionality was associated with maternal depression. We can therefore conclude that the two scales contain subjective and objective elements that are independent of each other.
