Infant temperament and its influence on infant's socio-emotional development

Socio-emotional development of infants from Dharwad district was studied on a sample of 160 infants drawn equally from four age cohorts viz 0–6, 6–12, 12–18 and 18–24 months. The results revealed that majority of the urban and rural infants (72.50 and 75.00% respectively) were slow to warm up. Urban infants had significantly higher scores in temperament than rural infants. Majority of the infants from both urban (37.50%) and rural (50.00%) had average socio-emotional development. There was significant association between locality and infant socio-emotional development as urban infants were significantly better than the rural infants. Urban infants scored signifianctly higher (114.44) than rural infants (103.73). There was significant association between infant temperament and their socio-emotional development. Infants with difficult temperament were significantly lower in socio-emotional development than slow to warm up and easy infants. As the majority of the infants were slow to warm up/difficult there is a need for parents’ education programme on handling infant temperament in order to ensure infants’ optimum socio-emotional development.