Temperament and the transitional object.

Abstract

The transitional object attachments and persistent oral habits of 37 three-year-olds were examined in relation to their present and retrospectively rated infantile temperament. Children attached to a transitional object were differentiable from unattached children on infantile but not early childhood temperament, and the predictive temperament pattern differed from the pattern predicting oral habits. Transitional object attachments were independent from oral habits and were interpreted to serve distinct non-pathological developmental functions. The study suggests that temperament plays an etiological role in transitional object attachments, but that the status of the object as a developmental marker is ambiguous.