Intellectual and Personality Factors of Preschool Age Children

This is an age of increasing awareness of how various factors such as learning style and skills, cultural deprivation, hyperactivity, and an endless list of other traits affect personality development. One of the most significant traits of an individual is her/his intelligence. This quality and its influence upon and position within personality development present a significant interaction, which has not been thoroughly investigated. It is the purpose of this study to pursue the relationship between intelligence and personality in a population of preschool.girls. Since no systematic research has been done at this age level, the major instruments used in the study will be those employed in standard psychological evaluations. Some of the personality variables which are investigated include a level of social competence, maturity level, anxiety, language skills, fine motor abilities, impulsivity, security and dependency needs. From the measurement of these and other personality parameters as related to various levels of intellectual competency, an initial foundation in identifying the role of. intelligence in personality development is postulated. This type of research reflects recent trends in psychology which tend to view man as a whole. In research this thrust has resulted in a substantial number of studies dealing with the interrelationships of cognition and affect. This was highlighted by the founding of the Center for Research in Cognition and Affect in New York in 1964. In therapy, this merging of feeling and cognitive components is seen in methods as diverse as those developed by Rogers and Ellis. Hence, this study which is attempting to assess correlations between various facets of personality is a child of its time in attempting to see a person as an integrated and interacting whole. This research will utilize both statistics and projective data in its interpretive schema. This combined approach will be used to develop insights into the relationships between-measured intelligence and other personality traits. It is further hoped that it will provide a stimulus to give direction and impetus to future investigations