Children's Emotion Regulation Strategies Research Articles

Awareness and regulation of emotions in deaf children

In this study, deaf children's understanding of their own emotions was compared with that of hearing peers. Twenty-six deaf children (mean age 11 years) and 26 hearing children, matched for age and gender, were presented with various tasks that tap into their emotion awareness and regulation (coping) regarding the four basic emotions (happiness, anger, sadness, and fear). The findings suggest that deaf children have no difficulties in identifying their own basic emotions and the elicitors, or multiple emotions of opposite valence (happy and sad). Yet, they did show an impaired capacity to differentiate between their own emotions within the negative spectrum, which suggests a more generic evaluation of the situation. Deaf children's emotion regulation strategies showed a strong preference for approaching the situation at hand, but almost no deaf child reported the use of an avoidant tactic in order to diminish the negative impact of the situation. Overall, deaf children's emotion regulation strategies seemed less effective than those of their hearing peers. The implications for deaf children's emotional development are discussed.

아동의 또래친밀도에 따른 정서조절전략과 사회적능력

The purpose of this study is to investigate children's emotional regulation and social competence in relation with peer friendliness. Specifically, it examined the hypotheses that children's emotion regulation strategies would be different depending on age, gender, and peer friendliness, and that children's emotion regulation strategies would affect their social competences. The subjects were 197 of the second, fourth, and sixth graders in an elementary school located in Gangdong-gu, Seoul. The findings are as follows: first, children's emotion regulation strategies are different according to gender and age. Girls use more 'external response strategy' than boys do. Elder children use more 'internal response strategy' than younger children, and younger children use more 'problem solving strategy' than elder children. Second, children's emotion regulation strategies are different depending on the degree of peer friendliness. Children employ more 'problem solving' and 'internal response' strategies to close friends rather than to just friends. Children used more the strategies as 'request for social support', 'evasion', and 'external response' to just friends rather than to close friends. Finally, children's social competencies are influenced by the strategies of 'problem solving' and 'evasion'.

Emotion self-regulation in preschool-aged children with and without orofacial clefts.

Emotion self-regulation is an important developmental task in the preschool period that is related to children's emotional and behavioral adjustment in early childhood. Emotion self-regulation and its relation to later adjustment has not been studied in children born with orofacial clefts, despite their risk for externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. Eighty-three 5-year-old children with cleft lip and palate, isolated cleft palate, or no cleft condition were videotaped during a laboratory disappointment situation. Results showed that children in the cleft group expressed less disappointment than children in the comparison group. Longitudinal analyses revealed that parenting stress measured when the children were 2 years of age predicted Expressed Disappointment at age 5 years, which, in turn, predicted severity of behavior problems at age 7 years. Although tentative, results indicate that control over mild negative affect may be a protective factor for children with clefts, buffering the effects of early stress on the development of later behavioral and emotional problems. Thus, interventions that reduce parenting stress and enhance children's emotion regulation strategies may decrease the risk for later psychological problems in this population.