Skip to main content
  • Poster presentation
  • Open access
  • Published:

Bulgarian version of TEMPS-A

Background

Temperament and character are definitions that describe human individuality. Interactions between temperament and character are sophisticated and they mould personality - phenomenon, which is unique for human beings. Temperament is the “virtual” structure that defines dynamics and speed of psychic processes: The temperament regulates what is announced and the character - what is the meaning. The meaning of life events and knowledge of life are modified by both.

Actuality of modern groupings into temperamental traits is legalized by conception of H. Akiskal that linked temperamental structure and affective disorders.

Materials and methods

Aim

Approbation of Bulgarian version of TEMPS-A (Temperament Evaluation of the Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego Autoquestionnaire).

Tasks

To investigate healthy population between 17 and 45 years.

To identify specific biological predispositions which are predictors of personality and behavioral deviations.

To identify dynamics of personality and temperamental structure during ontogenesis.

Exclusion criteria

1. Clinical evidence of organic or toxic etiology of brain injury.

2. Mental retardation - mild and severe.

3. Linguistic or some other difficulties in communication that might interfere with adequate clinical assessment.

4. Substance dependence (alcohol and/or other substances) and substance related personal change that can disturb the homogeneity (?) of the group.

5. Delusional disorders, acute or other psychotic disorders.

6. Evidence of individual dysfunction caused by psychiatric disorder, for example psychosis

Instruments

• TEMPS-A - Temperament Evaluation of the Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego Autoquestionnaire.

• EPQ - Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.

• Screening IPDE (IPDE-s) - International Personality Disorder Examination - screening Autoquestionnaire.

• MPDO - diagnostic psychological inventory for personality features - A. E. Lichko modification personality diagnostic questionnaire.

Results

One of investigators translated original test and a professional translator who has never seen original text, made back-translation. We received full approval by the author.

523 healthy volunteers between 18-45 years old, take part in the study.

Regarding test-retest (temporal) reliability - test was done again 45 days after first one. Our results demonstrate excellent correlations by test at all and by five dimensions separately.

Analysis of the principal components with a Varimax rotation confirm that from the 110 Bulgarian items of the TEMPS-A we brought out five factors that were interpreted as representing the cyclothymic, depressive, irritable, hyperthymic, and anxious factors.

Conclusions

TEMPS-A showed a good reliability and validity (internal consistency) in a Bulgarian non-clinical population. It gives us a new challenge to understand affective disorders nature and opportunities to measure it.

Such research is in progress.

Limitations

The study sample was relatively small.

This is a preliminary report from an ongoing study.

References

  1. Akiskal H.: Temperament: the bridge between biology and affective illness. Annals of General Hospital Psychiatry. 2003, 2 (Suppl 1): S48-10.1186/1475-2832-2-S1-S48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Akiska KK, Akiskal HS: The theoretical underpinnings of affective temperaments: implications for evolutionary foundations of bipolar disorder and human nature. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2005, 85 (1-2): 231-239. 10.1016/j.jad.2004.08.002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Akiskal H.S., Akiskal K.K, Haykal R.F., Manning J.S, Connor P.D.: TEMPS-A: progress towards validation of a self-rated clinical version of the Temperament Evaluation of the Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego Autoquestionnaire. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2005, 85 (1-2): 3-16. 10.1016/j.jad.2004.12.001. March

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Allport GW: The functional autonomy of motives. American Journal of Psychology. 1937, 50: 141-156. 10.2307/1416626.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Blφink R, Brieger P, Akiskal HS, Marneros A: Factorial structure and internal consistency of the German TEMPS-A scale: validation against the NEO-FFI questionnaire. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2005, 85 (1-2): 77-83. 10.1016/S0165-0327(03)00101-0.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Cloninger CR, Svrakic DM, Przybeck TR: A Psychobiological model of temperament and character. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1993, 50: 975-989.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Erfurth A, Gerlach AL, l Michael N, Boenigk I, Hellweg I, Signoretta S, Akiskal K, Akiskal HS: Distribution and gender effects of the subscales of a German version of the temperament autoquestionnaire briefTEMPS-M in a university student population. J Affect Disord. 2005, 85 (1-2): 71-6. 10.1016/j.jad.2003.07.003.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Evans L, Akiskal H.S., Paul Keck, McElroy S.L., Sadovnick D.A., Remick R.A., Kelsoe J.R.: Familiality of temperament in bipolar disorder: support for a genetic spectrum. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2005, 85 (1-2): 153-168. 10.1016/j.jad.2003.10.015.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Eysenck HJ: Dimensions of personality: 16, 5, or 3?–Criteria for a taxonomic paradigm. Personality and Individual Differences. 1991, 12: 773-790. 10.1016/0191-8869(91)90144-Z.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kagan J: Temperamental contributions to cocial behavior. American Psychologist. 1989, 44: 668-674. 10.1037/0003-066X.44.4.668.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Karam E.G., Mneimneh Z, Salamoun M, Akiskal K.K., Akiskal H.S.: Psychometric properties of the Lebanese-Arabic TEMPS-A: A national epidemiologic study. PMID:. 16145815, PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE

    Google Scholar 

  12. Matsumoto S, Akiyama T, Tsuda H, Miyake Y, Kawamura Y, Noda T, Akiskal KK, Akiskal HS: Reliability and validity of TEMPS-A in a Japanese non-clinical population: application to unipolar and bipolar depressives. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2005, 85 (1-2): 85-92. 10.1016/j.jad.2003.10.001.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Sanchez-Moreno J, Barrantes-Vidal N, Vieta E, Martinez-Aran A, Saiz-Ruiz J, Montes JM, Akiskal K, Akiskal HS: Process of adaptation to Spanish of the Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego Scale. Self applied version (TEMPS-A) PMID: 16155815 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE.

  14. Svrakic NM, Svrakic DM, Cloninger CR: A general quantitative theory of personality development: fundamentals of a self-organizing psychobiological complex. Dev Psychopathol. 1996, 8: 247-272.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Thomas A, Chess S: Temperament and development. 1977, New York: Bruner/Mazel

    Google Scholar 

  16. Vazquez GH, Akiskal H: The temperament evaluation of the Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego autoquestionnaire, Argentine version (TEMPS-A Buenos Aires). PMID: 15912215 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Martinova, H., Donchev, T., Petkova, P. et al. Bulgarian version of TEMPS-A. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S223 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S223

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S223

Keywords