From the very first weeks of life, infants differ in their characteristic emotional reactions, with some infants being intense and anxious, while others are easygoing and relaxed. These differences are usually explained as differences in ___.

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Curiosity about early emotional differences in infants leads us to consider inherent traits rather than external factors alone.
Option 1: 'parenting style' suggests that how a caregiver behaves shapes the infant's emotions. While parenting can influence development, the question asks about differences present from the very first weeks of life, which points more directly to intrinsic dispositions rather than learned patterns.
Option 2: 'environment' encompasses the surroundings and circumstances the infant encounters. Although environment matters for development, the prompt emphasizes stable individual differences observable from birth, which are not fully explained by environmental variation alone.
Option 3: 'temperament' refers to the biologically based individual differences in irritable, reactive, or adaptable tendencies that appear early in life. This aligns with the description of some infants being intense and anxious and others easygoing and relaxed, representing stable temperamental profiles.
Option 4: 'attachment' concerns the emotional bond formed between the infant and caregiver, typically developing over the first year and influenced by caregiver responsiveness. Attachment describes relational patterns rather than the infant's own baseline reactivity observed from birth.
In sum, the most fitting explanation for early, stable differences in emotional reactions is temperament, which captures the inherent predispositions present from the outset, whereas the other options describe external influences or later-developing processes that do not account for the initial, innate variation.

PSYC1_FA25_A00 Quiz 3

From the very first weeks of life, infants differ in their characteristic emotional reactions, with some infants being intense and anxious, while others are easygoing and relaxed. These differences are usually explained as differences in ___.

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