Regulation During the Second Year: Executive Function and Emotion Regulation Links to Joint Attention, Temperament, and Social Vulnerability in a Latin American Sample

Lucas G Gago Galvagno,Gonzalo D Clerici,Angel M Elgier,Stephanie E Miller,Alba E Mustaca,María C De Grandis

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01473

Abstract

Although a growing body of work has established developing regulatory abilities during the second year of life, more work is needed to better understand factors that influence this emerging control. The purpose of the present study was to examine regulation capacities in executive functions (i.e., EF or cognitive control) and emotion regulation (i.e., ER or control focused on modulating negative and sustaining positive emotions) in a Latin American sample, with a focus on how joint attention, social vulnerability, and temperament contribute to performance. Sixty Latin American dyads of mothers and children aged 18 to 24 months completed several EF tasks, a Still-Face Paradigm (SFP) to examine ER (Weinberg et al., 2008), and the Early Social Communication Scale to measure joint attention (Mundy et al., 2003). Parents completed the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire Very Short Form to measure temperament (ECBQ-VS, Putnam et al., 2010) and the Social Economic Level Scale (SES) from INDEC (2000). Results revealed the typical responses expected for toddlers of this age in these EF tasks and in the SFP. Also, we found associations between EF and ER and between non-verbal communication related to monitoring infants’ attention to objects (i.e., responding to joint attention) and initiation of pointing (e.g., pointing and showing of an object while the child alternates his gaze to an adult) with EF. Regarding social factors, family differences and type of housing contribute to regulation. For temperament, effortful control was associated with both regulatory capacities. Finally, only age predicted EF. These results suggest that many patterns regarding the development of these abilities are duplicated in the first months of life in a Latin American sample while further highlighting the importance of considering how the environment and the individual characteristics of infants may associate to these regulatory abilities, which is particularly relevant to developing public policies to promote their optimal development.

Highlights

EF and ER in the Second Year of LifeExecutive functions (i.e., EF or cognitive control) and emotion regulation (i.e., ER or management of emotions) play a fundamental role during child development, contributing to and predicting the development of cognitive abilities, academic achievements, and developmental disorders (Cunningham and Zelazo, 2016; Costa et al, 2017).The importance of these abilities likely stems from the influence they have on the regulatory capacities
We examine regulatory abilities in EF and ER in a Latin American sample of mother–infant dyads during the second year, to address two research objectives: (1) How does EF and ER develop and relate during the second year? (2) How does joint attention, temperament, and social vulnerability relate to EF and ER?
This study extends examination of EF and ER to a novel sample, we expected that relations between joint attention, temperament, and Social Economic Level Scale (SES) will align with past research in other populations and older samples

Summary

Introduction

Executive functions (i.e., EF or cognitive control) and emotion regulation (i.e., ER or management of emotions) play a fundamental role during child development, contributing to and predicting the development of cognitive abilities, academic achievements, and developmental disorders (Cunningham and Zelazo, 2016; Costa et al, 2017). The importance of these abilities likely stems from the influence they have on the regulatory capacities. Recent work has called for studies of regulation earlier in life to better understand their emergence and the early factors that influence the development of these foundational skills (e.g., Miller and Marcovitch, 2015; Devine et al, 2019). That may aid children in forming taskrelevant representations to guide behavior (e.g., Zelazo, 2004; Marcovitch and Zelazo, 2009)

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Conclusion