Glossary

Temperament and personality

Temperament - a pattern of reacting that exists before anything has been learned: how quickly a child responds to something new, how big the feeling gets, how long recovery takes. Observable from the newborn period and carrying relatively far into adulthood.

Personality - the broader pattern built when experience and learning settle on top of temperament. If temperament is the material, personality is closer to what was built with it.

Big Five (five-factor model) - the main psychological model describing personality on five axes: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness. KidType adapts these for children as outgoing, caring, self-control, emotional sensitivity and curiosity.

Typology - sorting people into a small number of categories, as MBTI does. Research generally reports that continuous scores predict better than categories, which is why KidType calls the animal a name and treats the score bars as the substance.

Development and environment

Goodness of fit - how well a child's temperament meshes with their environment. It doesn't ask which temperament is better but what environment suits this child. A high-activity child is a problem in a classroom that requires all-day sitting and an asset in a setting built around movement.

Non-shared environment - everything that happens to one child and not the other, even under one roof: a changed parent, each other's presence, life outside the house. Reported as the main source of personality differences between siblings.

Slow to warm up - a temperament pattern where a child hangs back at first in a new setting and participates fully given time. Roughly 15% of children.

Longitudinal study - research following the same people over a long period. Most of what is known about the stability and change of temperament comes from these.

Regulation and executive function

Self-regulation - the ability to stop an impulse, wait, and handle a feeling. It grows fastest between ages 3 and 6.

Executive function - the umbrella term for planning, working memory, inhibition and switching. It overlaps heavily with self-regulation.

Working memory - the ability to hold information briefly and use it. It's what carries a three-step instruction like 'socks on, bag on, meet me at the door'. Where it's weak, the instruction disappears midway.

Transition - moving from one activity to the next. For a child low on self-regulation, the transition is harder than the activity, which is why advance warning works.

Emotion and anxiety

Emotional sensitivity - the strength and duration of emotional signal. High doesn't mean unstable; it means joy and sorrow are both felt intensely. It corresponds to neuroticism in the Big Five, but despite that name it isn't an axis measuring defect.

Introversion and anxiety - different things. Introversion is recovering in time alone; anxiety is wanting to and being unable. The dividing question: did the child want that situation?

Separation anxiety - anxiety about being apart from a primary caregiver. Developmentally normal between ages 1 and 3, and worth checking later if it narrows daily life.

Selective mutism - speaking normally at home but not at all in a specific setting. Worth checking if it lasts a month or more, and an area where early intervention is known to clearly help.

Assessment and measurement

Item - an individual question making up an assessment. KidType uses picture choices, forced choice and scale responses depending on age band.

Anchor item - an item kept identical on re-test. If every item changes, you can't tell whether a change is real or an artefact of the items, so some are fixed as reference points.

Scale response - answering by degree, as in 'a bit' versus 'a lot'. It works meaningfully from around age seven.

Measurement error - measuring the same child twice on the same day doesn't give identical values. So small score differences aren't read as meaningful differences. This is why the site groups scores into three bands.

Not a diagnosis - KidType does not screen for or diagnose any condition. Clinical assessment involves observation across settings, reports from home and school, developmental history, and ruling out other causes. That isn't a range an online quiz can cover.