Student Seminar Series - January 20, 2006
University of Minnesota
School of Statistics
College of Liberal Arts
Marginal
Independence between Tantrum Frequency and Duration
Saveth Ho
Friday, January 20, 2006
3:30 PM, B60
Ford Hall
Minneapolis, East Bank Campus
Refreshments at 3:15 PM
300 Ford Hall
Abstract
Tantrums,
such as pushing/pulling, hitting, and kicking, are very common among
young children. Good understanding of tantrums may help predict
children’s future antisocial behaviors. The two basic characteristics
of tantrums are tantrum frequency and tantrum duration, yet we don’t
know much about what controls them and the relationship between them.
In this paper, three available data sets were used to address these
questions. The first data were telephone interviews from parents of 18
through 60-month-old children. This data may not be reliable due to
many bias issues in the parental reports. The other two data sets are
more objective. One used tantrum calendars and the other is from Stony
Brook. Statistical analyses reveal no significant relationship between
frequency and duration; however, the data reveal a misleading pattern
of decreasing variability of duration with frequency. It turns out that
the decreasing variability of duration is mainly due to the averaging
in computing the observations. Our results suggest that tantrum
frequency and tantrum duration may be driven by other covariates.
Hence, future investigation should focus on how relevant covariates,
such as child temperament and parents’ intervention, would affect
tantrum frequency and tantrum duration separately.