Abstract：
Although individual differences in the behavior of animals, sometimes referred to as personality, have recently received considerable attention, the development of such differences remains understudied. We previously found consistent individual differences in behavior in four tests simulating everyday contexts in 74 preweaning age kittens from 16 litters of the domestic cat. To study the development of consistent among-individual differences in four behavioral traits in cats, we followed a subset of these same individuals and repeated the same tests at 6 and 12 months of age. Some individual differences in behavior became increasingly repeatable with age due to a combination of decreased individual-level variance (canalization) and increased among-individual variance; these changes in variance and repeatability continued into adulthood (12 months). We did not observe behavioral syndromes at any age, in contrast to our previous reports in a different population of adult cats. The mechanisms that underlie increased repeatability with age and the possibility of personality structure differing between populations in this species remain to be studied.
摘要：
虽然动物的行为存在个体差异,有时被称为个性，最近受到了相当多的关注，这种差异的发展仍未得到充分研究。我们以前在四个测试中发现了一致的行为个体差异，这些测试模拟了来自16窝家猫的74只断奶前小猫的日常环境。为了研究猫四种行为特征的一致个体差异的发展，我们追踪了这些相同个体的一部分,并在6个月和12个月时重复了相同的测试.由于个体水平差异（规范化）的降低和个体间差异的增加，行为的某些个体差异随着年龄的增长而变得越来越可重复；这些方差和可重复性的变化持续到成年（12个月）。我们在任何年龄都没有观察到行为综合征，与我们以前在不同成年猫种群中的报道相反。随着年龄的增长，可重复性增加的机制以及该物种种群之间人格结构差异的可能性仍有待研究。
