The age of entry into high-quality preschool, child and family factors, and developmental outcomes in early childhood

SUMMARY Three blocks of factors were considered as predictors of four year old children's (N = 286) personality, non-verbal intelligence and social behaviour in preschool: (a) personality characteristics at time 1 (T1) when the participants were three years old; (b) parental education and parenting practices measured at T1; and (c) age of child's entry to high-quality preschool. Child personality was rated separately by mothers, fathers and preschool teachers employing The Inventory of Child Individual Differences (Halverson et al., 2003) at T1 and one year later, at time 2 (T2). At both times, the teachers also assessed the children's social behaviour, completing The Social Competence and Behaviour Evaluation Scale (LaFreniere et al., 2001). Both of the parents independently filled in The Family Environment Questionnaire (Zupancic et al., 2004) at T1 and The Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven et al., 2001) were individually administered to each child at T2 to obtain his/her non-verbal intelligence scor...