Английский язык учебник

he (or she) an introvert or an extravert? Give your reasons.

Extraverts are people who are often leaders, work well in groups, and prefer being with others to being alone. Other personality traits often associat ed with extraversion include optimism, risk taking, and love of excitement and change. People who are extraverts prefer having company and tend to have many friends.

Extraversion is generally defined in comparison to its opposite, introversion, which is used to describe people who are quieter, more reserved and sensitive, and more comfortable in solitary pursuits. The two tendencies can be regarded as opposite ends of a con tinuum, with most people falling somewhere in bet ween. Nevertheless, many people have traits that clearly place them closer to one end than to the other. Both extraversion and introversion in some people are thought to be the result of inborn tendencies – called temperament – that are shaped by environmental fac tors. The psychologist Hans Eysenck has suggested that the temperamental foundation involves the ease with which the cerebral cortex becomes aroused. Eysenck notes that in introverts some parts of the brain are very sensitive to arousal and are easily over estimated, causing them to prefer quiet surroundings and calm situations. The extravert, on the other hand, can tolerate a higher level of cortical arousal and thus seeks out social interaction and exciting situations for stimulation.

Tendencies toward extraversion or introversion of ten lead people to develop and cultivate contrasting strengths, sometimes referred to in terms of contrast ing types of intelligence. Extraverts more readily de velop interpersonal intelligence, which has to do with making friends easily, demonstrating leadership abili ty, and working effectively with others in groups. In

introverts the more highly developed traits are more likely to be associated with intrapersonal intelligence, such as the deeper awareness of one’s feelings and the ability to enjoy extended periods of solitude. All people have both types of intelligence, but in many people one is stronger than the other, depending on whether the person is an introvert or an extravert.

Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, Extraversion,http:// www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/g2699/0004/2699000460/p1/ article.jhtml.

Exercise 6. You have parents whom you are fond of. Describe your mother’s or your father’s temperament taking into consideration his or her body type, relationship to other people, feelings, and attitude to life and work. Make conclusions about what type of temperament he or she has.

And what about you? Have you taken af ter your father or mother?

Exersise 7. Scan the following text and do the tasks below.

TEXT

American psychologist Gordon Allport (1897– 1967), who came to dislike psychoanalytic theory and behaviorism because of their emphasis on seeking uni versal theories to explain all human behaviour and dis orders, believed that temperament was one of three “raw materials” that distinguish individuals from one another and from other living beings. Along with in telligence and physique, temperament was genetically determined and unique within each person. Allport wrote that temperament includes a person’s suscepti bility to emotional stimulation, strength and speed of

response and mood. In a longitudinal study in New York starting in 1956 with data from more than 100 children that they tracked through adolescence, child psychiatrists Stella Thomas and Alexander Chess identified at birth nine different tempera ment characteristics. These characteristics, which could be observed at widely varying degrees in ba bies, influenced their development: activity level, rhythmicity or regularity in biological functions, tendency to approach or withdraw, adaptability, threshold of responsiveness, intensity or energy le vel of reactions, quality of mood, distractibility, at tention span and persistence. From these nine di mensions emerged three major temperamental types: easy going children, difficult children and slow to warm up children. Chess and Thomas also examined the goodness of fit between the individul child and the environment of the child.

1.An easy child is generally in a positive mood, quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, and adapts easily to new experiences.

2.A difficult child tends to react negatively and cry frequently, engages in irregular daily routines, and is slow to accept new experiences.

3.A slow to warm up child has a low activity level, is somewhat negative, shows low adaptability, and dis plays a low intensity of mood.

Different dimensions make up these three basic clusters of temperament. The three basic clusters and their dimensions are shown in the table below in their longitudinal investigation. Chess and Thomas found that 40% of the children they studied could be classi fied as easy, 10% as difficult, and 15% as slow to warm up. The remaining 35% of the infants were not rated high or low on any of the defining dimensions. Researchers have found that these three clusters of temperament are moderately stable across the child hood years.

296 Unit IX

Chess and Thomas’s Dimensions

and the Basic Clusters of Temperament

Other researchers suggest that temperament is composed of different basic components. Personality psychologist Arnold Buss and behaviour geneticist Robert Plomin believe that infants’ temperament falls into three basic categories: emotionality, sociability and activity level. Emotionality is the tendency to be distressed. It reflects the arousal of a person’s sympa thetic nervous system. During infancy, distress deve lops into two separate emotional responses: fear and anger. Fearful infants try to escape something that is unpleasant; angry ones protest it. Buss and Plomin argue that children are labeled “easy” or “difficult” on the basis of their emotionality.

Sociability is the tendency to prefer the company of others to being alone. It matches a tendency to respond warmly to others.

Activity level involves tempo and vigour of move ment. Some children walk fast, are attracted to high energy games, and jump or bounce around a lot; others are more placid.

Some experts on temperament believe there should be even further differentiation of certain domains of temperament. For example, in the general domain of social withdrawal, researchers are beginning to distin guish between shyness (inhibited and awkward beha viour with strangers or acquaintances, accompanied by feelings of tension and a desire to escape), introversion (a nonfearful preference for not affiliating with others), sociability (a preference for affiliating with others), and extraversion (the tendency to seek social interac tion as a source of stimulation rather than out of true social interest in others).

A number of scholars, including Chess and Tho mas, conceive of temperament as a stable characteris tic of newborns that comes to be shaped and modified by the child’s later experiences. This raises the ques tion of heredity’s role in temperament. Twin and adop tion studies have been conducted to answer this

question.The researchers find a heritability index in the range of 50 to 60, suggesting a moderate influence of heredity on temperament. However, the strength of the association usually declines as infants become old er. This finding supports the belief that temperament becomes more malleable with experience. Alternative ly, it may be that, as a child becomes older, behaviour indicators of temperament are more difficult to spot.

The consistency of temperament depends, in part, on the “match” or “fit” between the child’s nature and the parents’ nature. Imagine a high strung parent with a child who is difficult and sometimes slow to respond to the parent’s affection. The parent may begin to feel angry or rejected. A father who does not need much face to face social interaction will find it easy to ma nage a similarly introverted baby, but he may not be able to provide an extraverted baby with sufficient stimulation. Parents influence infants, but infants also influence parents. Parents may withdraw from difficult children, or they may become critical and punish them; these responses may make the difficult child even more difficult. A more easy going parent may have a calming effect on a difficult child or may continue to show affec tion even when the child withdraws or is hostile, eventu ally encouraging more competent behaviour.

In sum, heredity does seem to influence tempera ment. However, the degree of influence depends on parents’ responsiveness to their children and on other environmental childhood experiences.

A course in language teaching, Cambridge

University, 1996, pp. 186–187

Task 1. Say whether these statements are true (T) or false (F), and if they are false, say why.

T F 1. According to Allport’s theory, along with intelligence and physique, tempe rament was genetically determined and unique within each person.

Task 4. Study the table for exactly two minutes, then close your book and see how many words and word combinations you can write down from memory.