Predictors of Compliance in Toddlers: Child Temperament, Maternal Personality, and Emotional Availability. Portions of the research were presented at the Conference on Human Development, Mobile, AL, March 6, 1998

Fifty-one mother-toddler (15 to 31 months) dyads participated in a study on the predictors of compliance. Mothers completed two questionnaires: the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (Tellegen, 1982), a measure of maternal personality, and the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire (Goldsmith, 1987), a measure of child temperament. A free play period in the laboratory provided the observations for scoring the quality of the mother-toddler interactions with the Emotional Availability Scales (Biringen, Robinson, and Emde, 1993). The following clean-up task in which children were asked to help put the toys in the basket provided the observations for scoring compliance with maternal directives. Emotional availability was the strongest predictor of compliance, especially the maternal variables of sensitivity and structuring. Child temperament was also implicated, with high compliance toddlers perceived by their mothers to be less socially fearful and less prone to anger than their less compliant peers. The results are discussed in terms of the contribution of the mother-child emotional climate to the development of compliance.