Irritability is a transdiagnostic feature of diverse forms of psychopathology and a rapidly growing literature implicates the construct in child maladaptation. However, most irritability measures currently used are drawn from parent-report questionnaires not designed to measure irritability per se; furthermore, parent report methods have several important limitations. We therefore examined the utility of observational ratings of children's irritability in predicting later psychopathology symptoms. Four-hundred and nine 3-year-old children (208 girls) completed observational tasks tapping temperamental emotionality and parents completed questionnaires assessing child irritability and anger. Parent-reported child psychopathology symptoms were assessed concurrently to the irritability assessment and when children were 5 and 8 years old. Children's irritability observed during tasks that did not typically elicit anger predicted their later depressive and hyperactivity symptoms, above and beyond parent-reported irritability and context-appropriate observed anger. Our findings support the use of observational indices of irritability and have implications for the development of observational paradigms designed to assess this construct in childhood.

易怒是多种形式的精神病理学的跨诊断特征，并且快速增长的文献暗示该结构与儿童适应不良有关。然而，目前使用的大多数易怒测量都是从家长报告问卷中提取的，这些问卷并非旨在衡量易怒本身；此外，父报告方法有几个重要的限制。因此，我们检查了儿童易怒的观察评级在预测后期精神病理学症状中的效用。409 名 3 岁儿童（208 名女孩）完成了利用气质情绪的观察任务，父母完成了评估儿童易怒和愤怒的问卷调查。父母报告的儿童精神病理学症状与易怒性评估同时进行评估，并在儿童 5 岁和 8 岁时进行。在通常不会引起愤怒的任务中观察到的儿童易怒预测了他们后来的抑郁和多动症状，超出了父母报告的易怒和与上下文相适应的观察到的愤怒。我们的研究结果支持使用易怒的观察指标，并对旨在评估儿童期这种结构的观察范式的发展产生影响。