Ritual, habit, and perfectionism: the prevalence and development of compulsive-like behavior in normal young children.
Young children engage in a significant amount of ritualistic, repetitive, and compulsive-like activity that appears to be part of their normal behavioral repertoire. Empirically, little is known about the onset, prevalence, and developmental trajectory of these phenomena. A parent-report questionnaire, the Childhood Routines Inventory (CRI), was developed to assess compulsive-like behavior in young children, and was administered to 1,492 parents with children between the ages of 8 and 72 months. The CRI has strong overall internal consistency and a distinct two-factor structure. The frequency of compulsive-like behaviors changes with age: Two-, 3-, and 4-year-olds engaged in more compulsive behavior than children younger than 1 year of age and older than 4 years of age. Results are discussed from a developmental psychopathology framework and for their implications for future research in this area.
Evans
D W
DW
University of New Orleans, Department of Psychology 70148, USA. dweps@uno.edu
Leckman
J F
JF
Carter
A
A
Reznick
J S
JS
Henshaw
D
D
King
R A
RA
Pauls
D
D
D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003192:Compulsive Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000523:psychology; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006184:Habits; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D010553:Personality Development; D015995:Prevalence; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*