Cross-cultural assessment of childhood temperament. A confirmatory factor analysis of the French Emotionality Activity and Sociability (EAS) questionnaire.

The Emotionality Activity Sociability (EAS) questionnaire focuses on heritable individual differences in reactivity and behavior which are often referred to in developmental temperament research. Psychometric properties of the French version of EAS were examined in a sample of 197 school-children aged six to 12 years. Parents, teachers and children aged nine years and more completed parallel forms of the EAS questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the fit between the original factors and the data. Internal consistency of each subscale, inter-rater and external validity were also examined. Children-rated EAS showed the best indices of fit between the four hypothesized factors and the data, but internal consistency was generally lower than in adult-rated questionnaires. Shyness and sociability showed significant overlap in both parent and teacher-rated EAS. The low concordance between child and adult-ratings indicates that temperament evaluation and interpretation of items may be influenced by subjective and/or developmental factors. Results are discussed in the perspective of validity versus cross-cultural comparability of temperament measurement. The theoretical four-factor structure was not completely replicable in our sample.

An assessment of handedness in mice.

Mice from a pool of inbred strains (384 males and 329 females) were tested for handedness according to Collins' protocol in order to assess the reliability of this measurement. As previously reported by Collins these data revealed that a) approximately half of the mice were right-handed and half left-handed, b) most of the mice were strongly lateralized and c) females were more lateralized than males. The study of the psychometric characteristics of the test suggested that this measurement of behavioral asymmetry is both stable and observer independent. The test of paw preference also appeared to measure preexisting lateralization and was not a function of training during the test.