Temperament profiles to distinguish resilient from stress affected children during Covid-19 pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a public health emergency worldwide that has posed unprecedented challenges to individual resilience, especially among children who are the most affected by its psychological consequences. We aim to investigate temperament profiles that might constitute a potential risk factor for the development of psychopathology and low levels of resilience in children experiencing Covid-19 quarantine. The sample included 158 Italian children aged 5 to 10 years (48% boys, M = 7.4, SD = 1.8) recruited through a snowball sampling from the general population. Temperament, psychopathological symptoms, and resilience were assessed with the Junior Temperament and Character Inventory, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, and the Child and Youth Resilience Measure. Profile Analysis was employed to outline temperament differences between resilient and stress-affected children. Results evidenced that high-resilient children displayed high persistence, reward dependence, and low novelty seeking. Conversely, behavioral difficulties were associated with low persistence, reward dependence, and high novelty seeking whereas internalizing symptoms were more likely among children with high harm avoidance and low persistence. These findings identify clusters of individuals with distinguishing temperament profiles strongly related to both negative and positive outcomes in facing stressful situations paving the way for planning early preventive interventions for vulnerable targets.