Development Of Emotion Regulation Research Articles

The Cultural Socialization of Emotion Regulation During Infancy

This article offers a conceptual framework for the study of the development of emotion regulation during infancy that synthesizes evolutionary theory with cultural psychology. Two prototypical environments are characterized: Western urban middle-class families and rural farmer families in non-Western societies. The adult psychologies that are adapted to these environments are oriented toward autonomy and relatedness, respectively. A combined methodological approach of quantitative and qualitative procedures demonstrates that the expression of emotions is differently embodied in these environments. Prototypes are composed from different data sets that exemplify socialization goals, parenting ethnotheories, and behavioral strategies. Developmental consequences of the early experiences in different learning environments are presented with respect to children’s emotion regulation during the approach of a stranger. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Emotion Regulation and Attachment: Unpacking Two Constructs and Their Association

This study examined the association between the security of attachment and processes influencing the development of emotion regulation in young children. A sample of 73 4 1/2-year-olds and their mothers were observed in an emotion regulation probe involving mild frustration for children, and mothers and children were later independently interviewed about how the child had felt. Fewer than half the mothers agreed with children’s self-reports in the emotion they attributed to children (a lower rate than the concordance of observer ratings with children’s self-reports), and higher mother-child concordance was associated with secure attachment and mother’s beliefs about the importance of attending to and accepting their own emotions. Mother-child conversations about recent events evoking children’s negative emotion were also analyzed. Children were less likely to avoid conversing about negative feelings when they were in secure attachments and when mothers were more validating of the child’s perspective. Children’s greater understanding of negative emotions was also significantly associated with higher mother-child concordance and less child conversational avoidance. Taken together, these findings underscore the multiple influences of attachment on emotion regulation and the importance of children’s emotion understanding to these processes.

Crossing the Glass Wall: Using Preschool Educators’ Knowledge to Enhance Parental Understanding of Children’s Self-Regulation and Emotion Regulation

This phenomenological research investigated what fifteen preschool educators have come to know about children’s self-regulation and emotion regulation development, and how we can better enable them to communicate with parents about their children’s development. The data sources included over 100 pages of transcripts, field notes and journal entries for three focus groups. Using these multiple data sources, the researcher applied the seven steps of the phenomenological analysis (Moustakas in Phenomenological research methods. Sage, Thousand Oaks, 1994) to derive a composite structural description of children’s self-regulation and emotion regulation development. This research study found a consistent conceptual view of self-regulation and emotion regulation across these preschool educators. The implications from these findings provide educators with knowledge about self-regulation and emotion regulation to facilitate communicating with parents about realistic expectations and goals for children’s self-regulation and emotion regulation.

Habits of the heart: life history and the developmental neuroendocrinology of emotion.

The centrality of emotion in cognition and social intelligence as well as its impact on health has intensified investigation into the causes and consequences of individual variation in emotion regulation. Central processing of experience directly informs regulation of endocrine axes, essentially forming a neuro-endocrine continuum integrating information intake, processing, and physiological and behavioral response. Two major elements of life history-resource allocation and niche partitioning-are served by linking cognitive-affective with physiologic and behavioral processes. Scarce cognitive resources (attention, memory, and time) are allocated under guidance from affective co-processing. Affective-cognitive processing, in turn, regulates physiologic activity through neuro-endocrine outflow and thereby orchestrates energetic resource allocation and trade-offs, both acutely and through time. Reciprocally, peripheral activity (e.g., immunologic, metabolic, or energetic markers) influences affective-cognitive processing. By guiding attention, memory, and behavior, affective-cognitive processing also informs individual stances toward, patterns of activity in, and relationships with the world. As such, it mediates processes of niche partitioning that adaptively exploit social and material resources. Developmental behavioral neurobiology has identified multiple factors that influence the ontogeny of emotion regulation to form affective and behavioral styles. Evidence is reviewed documenting roles for genetic, epigenetic, and experiential factors in the development of emotion regulation, social cognition, and behavior with important implications for understanding mechanisms that underlie life history construction and the sources of differential health. Overall, this dynamic arena for research promises to link the biological bases of life history theory with the psychobehavioral phenomena that figure so centrally in quotidian experience and adaptation, particularly, for humans.

Self‐reported Use of Emotional Display Rules in the Netherlands and Iran: Evidence for Sociocultural Influence

AbstractSociocultural differences in children's use and understanding of emotional display rules have been under‐researched. In the present study, 56 Dutch and 56 Iranian children aged 10–11 years took part in a structured interview about their experiences of using emotional display rules. In comparison with the Dutch children, the Iranian sample was more likely to report having actually used emotional display rules themselves, more likely to identify family audiences for display rules, and less likely to identify peer audiences. In addition, they were more likely than the Dutch children to identify both prosocial and self‐protective motives for concealing emotion from family audiences, and less likely to identify self‐protective motives for concealing emotion from peers. Results are interpreted in the light of socialization processes involved in the development of emotion regulation.

Narrative Interaction in Family Dinnertime Conversations.

Reminiscing has been shown to be a critical conversational context for the development of autobiographical memory, self-concept, and emotional regulation (for a review, see Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006). Although much past research has examined reminiscing between mothers and their preschool children, very little attention has been given to family narrative interaction with older children. In the present study, we examined family reminiscing in spontaneous narratives that emerged during family dinnertime conversations. The results revealed that mothers contributed more to the narratives than did fathers in that they provided, confirmed, and negated more information, although fathers requested more information than mothers. In exploratory analyses, mothers' contributions to shared family narratives were found to be related to fewer internalizing and externalizing behaviors in their children, while fathers' contributions to individual narratives of day-today experiences were related to fewer internalizing and externalizing behaviors in their children. These results indicate that mothers and fathers may play different roles in narrative construction with their children, and there is some suggestion that these differences may also be related to children's behavioral adjustment.

The functional organization of preschool-age children's emotion expressions and actions in challenging situations.

Although functional links between emotion and action are implied in emotion regulation research, there is limited evidence that specific adaptive actions for coping with a challenge are more probable when certain negative emotions are expressed. The current study examined this question among 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 113; M age = 47.84 months, SD = 6.19). Emotion expressions and actions were observed during 2 challenging tasks: children waited for a gift while the mother worked, and children worked alone to retrieve a prize from a locked box with the wrong key. Angry and happy expressions, compared with sad expressions, were associated with more actions. These actions varied with the nature of the task, reflecting appreciation of situational appropriateness. In addition, when waiting with the mother, happiness was associated with the broadest range of actions, whereas when working alone on the locked box, anger was associated with the broadest range of actions. Results are discussed in terms of the adaptive function of negative emotions and in terms of functional and dimensional models of emotion. Findings have implications for the development of emotion regulation and social-emotional competence.

A neurobiological model for the effects of early brainstem functioning on the development of behavior and emotion regulation in infants: implications for prenatal and perinatal risk

Neurobiological models propose an evolutionary, vertical-integrative perspective on emotion and behavior regulation, which postulates that regulatory functions are processed along three core brain systems: the brainstem, limbic, and cortical systems. To date, few developmental studies applied these models to research on prenatal and perinatal risk. We propose a conceptual model that incorporates three integrated levels of observations for the study of early risk: (a) brainstem-related physiological regulation of cyclic processes and sensory integration, e.g., vagal regulation, circadian rhythms; (b) emotion and attention regulation capacities that draw on the integration of brainstem and limbic systems; and (c) higher-level outcomes that draw on the intactness of brainstem and limbic networks, including socio-emotional self-regulation, inhibitory control, and cognitive processing. We discuss implications of the model for the development of regulatory capacities during the prenatal and early postnatal stages in infants born with specific perinatal risk. We underscore the importance of assessing sub-cortical and brainstem systems and the longitudinal effects of transitory brainstem dysfunction on physiological homeostasis, motivation, arousal-modulated attention, stress reactivity, and mother-infant co-regulation. The assessment of brainstem dysfunction can be conducted during hospitalization and may help detect infants at risk for the development of self-regulatory deficits at the first weeks of life.

Development of Emotional and Behavioral Regulation in Children Born Extremely Preterm and Very Preterm: Biological and Social Influences

This study describes the development of emotional and behavioral regulation in a regional cohort of children born extremely preterm (<28 weeks gestational age, n = 39), very preterm (<34 weeks gestational age, n = 56), and full term (n = 103). At 2 and 4 years, children born at younger gestational ages demonstrated poorer self-regulation across multiple contexts spanning observed interactions, formal cognitive testing, and parental report of child behavior at home. Among children born preterm, the 2 strongest predictors of impairments in self-regulation were the presence of moderate-to-severe cerebral white matter abnormalities on neonatal magnetic resonance and a less sensitive parenting style when children were aged 2 years. Findings support the importance of early neurological development and parenting for developing regulation in children born very preterm.

Individual differences in trajectories of emotion regulation processes: the effects of maternal depressive symptomatology and children's physiological regulation.

Trajectories of emotion regulation processes were examined in a community sample of 269 children across the ages of 4 to 7 using hierarchical linear modeling. Maternal depressive symptomatology (Symptom Checklist-90) and children's physiological reactivity (respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) and vagal regulation (Delta RSA) were explored as predictors of individual differences in trajectories of emotion regulation and negativity (mother-reported Emotion Regulation Checklist; A. M. Shields & D. Cicchetti, 1997). In addition, the authors explored whether children's physiological regulation would moderate the effect of maternal depressive symptomatology on children's emotion regulation trajectories. Results indicated that over time, emotion regulation increased whereas negativity decreased, though considerable individual variability in the pattern of change was observed. Greater maternal depressive symptomatology was associated with less steep emotion regulation trajectories. There was a significant Maternal Depressive Symptomatology x Baseline RSA x Age interaction predicting emotion regulation trajectories. Overall, it appears that the development of emotion regulation over time is compromised when mothers report greater depressive symptomatology. There is also evidence that children's capacity for physiological regulation can buffer some of the adverse consequences associated with maternal depressive symptomatology.

Age and Gender Differences in Decoding Basic and Non-basic Facial Expressions in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

This study examined age and gender differences in decoding nonverbal cues in a school population of 606 (pre)adolescents (9–15 years). The focus was on differences in the perceived intensity of several emotions in both basic and non-basic facial expressions. Age differences were found in decoding low intensity and ambiguous faces, but not in basic expressions. Older adolescents indicated more negative meaning in these more subtle and complex facial cues. Girls attributed more anger to both basic and non-basic facial expressions and showed a general negative bias in decoding non-basic facial expressions compared to boys. Findings are interpreted in the light of the development of emotion regulation and the importance for developing relationships.

Biological processes in prevention and intervention: the promotion of self-regulation as a means of preventing school failure.

This paper examines interrelations between biological and social influences on the development of self-regulation in young children and considers implications of these interrelations for the promotion of self-regulation and positive adaptation to school. Emotional development and processes of emotion regulation are seen as influencing and being influenced by the development of executive cognitive functions, including working memory, inhibitory control, and mental flexibility important for the effortful regulation of attention and behavior. Developing self-regulation is further understood to reflect an emerging balance between processes of emotional arousal and cognitive regulation. Early childhood educational programs that effectively link emotional and motivational arousal with activities designed to exercise and promote executive functions can be effective in enhancing self-regulation, school readiness, and school success.

Review of Handbook of Moral Development.

MELANIE KILLEN and JUDITH G. SMETANA (Eds.) Handbook of Moral Development Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006, 808 pages (ISBN 0-8058-4751-0, US$195.00 Hardcover) Reviewed by MICHAELW. PRATT This is a big book on a big topic. Editors Melanie Killen and Judith Smetana have solicited 26 chapters on the topic of moral development, including many of the key authors and researchers currently working in the field. While the editors themselves share the perspective of theory, the breadth of the current volume is much wider. Indeed it provides a representative overview of work ranging across the entire landscape of moral development research today. The 26 chapters are organized into six sections: structuralism and moral stages, social domain theory, conscience development and internalization, social interactional and comparative approaches, emotions and empathy, and moral education. In general, each chapter reviews recent work on a particular topic within these six areas, provides a theoretical context and overview of the research and typically discusses the author(s)' own research program in detail. Many of the chapters also consider, if only briefly, ideas and prospects for future research as well. The chapters are thus up-to-date, generally well-written, and approachable for advanced students and scholars within the field. This volume is timely in many ways. The field of moral development was dominated for many years by the seminal work of Lawrence Kohlberg, who followed on the early research of Jean Piaget on children's moral thinking, and elaborated a sequence of six stages of moral reasoning development. Over the past 15 years, however, the dominance of this cognitive developmental model has been challenged in a variety of ways, and the field has been moving toward a greater diversity of perspectives on how people understand, feel, and behave regarding matters of right and wrong. In general, moral development over the past two decades since Kohlberg has come to be seen as more complex in nature and as involving many more strands that connect it as a domain to other research in developmental psychology. Much of this vigorous new work and diversity is captured in the contributions to this volume. Researchers have been probing ways in which moral development is connected to the wider field of developmental psychology, and trends in the broader field of development are clearly recognizable here. There are chapters on early moral development in very young children, on the development of emotion and emotion regulation in the moral domain, on the biological bases of morality, and on education and character development, much of which would have been outside the scope of traditional moral reasoning research. As an example, a theme that is particularly strongly represented in this volume (albeit one which was also of great interest to Kohlberg), focuses on the relations of culture and moral development. Here, however, this topic is treated from several different viewpoints: from the social domain perspective (Helwig, Wainryb), the sociocultural perspective (Tappan), the perspective of cultural psychology (Miller), and that of anthropology (Fry). It is simply not possible for me to review the many fine chapters in this volume in any detail here, so I must mention only a few representative chapters that I found especially interesting, and encourage readers to sample the wider volume as a whole themselves. The introductory chapter (Chapter 1) by Elliot Turiel provides an overview of issues within the field from the perspective of social domain theory (which holds that children and adults distinguish the type of reasoning they apply depending on the interactional domain involved - moral, conventional, or personal matters). Turiel ties this model to its Piagetian roots, and discusses important current controversies regarding the role of culture, of emotion, and of intuition versus reflection in moral development. …

Using Scientific Knowledge to Inform Preschool Assessment: Making the Case for “Empirical Validity”

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 crystallized the concern for accountability in education. National testing was mandated as a way to improve the “broken” educational system. Publicly funded early education programs were not spared from such testing. While the positive effects of high-quality early education on children’s later school achievement is well demonstrated, too many early care and educational settings in the United States are of minimal or poor quality. Accountability is clearly important for increasing the quality of our early childhood programs, however, it is not yet evident how best to formulate a standard of accountability that reflects the body of knowledge we have gained concerning how young children learn. In this report, we propose two major thrusts designed to bring about a more scientifically informed accountability system: reconceptualizing the ways in which we think about the validity of our test instruments, and reconceptualizing markers of development from products of learning (performance standards) to processes of learning. We introduce the term “empirical validity” to draw attention to the fact that assessments should be built on current empirical work in the various developmental domains. This report focuses on the domains of language and literacy, two areas of major concern for the Federal Head Start program and for which there is an abundance of current research. This body of knowledge provides many examples illustrating how an emphasis on process rather than product can be vital for improving the quality of education. For example, although vocabulary is centrally important and psychometrically adequate tests of early vocabulary exist, these tests do not measure essential aspects of word learning that have been identified as predictive of later language and reading success in early language learning literature. Our case study of language and literacy illustrates how today’s developmental science offers a new knowledge that can be strategically incorporated in assessments for empirically valid testing of children’s competencies. The same argument for “empirically valid” and evidence-based assessments applies to other domains of cognitive growth and to socio-emotional development. The future of preschool assessment would be well served by attention to primary research that focuses on the processes of learning. In this report, we also suggest that one possible avenue for progress in assessment would center on integrative and dynamic assessment techniques that would comprehensively capture the nature of children’s learning, minimize validity concerns related to context and culture, and evaluate how competencies in different developmental domains interact for optimal learning. To bridge the gap between science and policy, developmental scientists and test developers are urged to work together to create innovative ways to chart the developmental processes that support learning and progress toward social maturity in ways designed to ensure that research findings are continuously reflected in current assessments.

Associations of emotion-related regulation with language skills, emotion knowledge, and academic outcomes.

Research suggests that the development of emotional regulation in early childhood is interrelated with emotional understanding and language skills. Heuristic models are proposed on how these factors influence children’s emerging academic motivation and skills.

Setting the research and practice agenda for anxiety in children and adolescence: A topic comes of age

Select research and practice issues that merit further attention are described. Specifically, we argue that the pathways for profitable research include studies of normative development, assessment and diagnostic considerations, the role of parents, and the ways to optimize the conduct and evaluation of treatment. At present, the field is too uninformed about the development of emotions (e.g., anxiety) and emotion regulation, about adolescence and particular vulnerabilities associated with adolescence, and about the longitudinal course of anxiety in youth. Improved measures, as well as a better understanding of and recommended solutions for parent-child disagreements are needed. How do parents maintain distressing anxiety in their children, and what is the optimal role for parents in the treatment of anxious children? The role of parents may vary across development, and there may be differential advantages and disadvantages for younger children, middle-aged children, and adolescents, and for the different types of anxiety disorders. Although cognitive-behavioral therapy is a probably efficacious treatment, and well on its way to becoming a well-established treatment, much more information is needed about the potential role of medications and the merits of enhancing the therapeutic alliance. Our discussion focuses on mapping the further evolution and maturation of the field of child anxiety.

Developmental Psychophysiology: Temperamental and Parental Contributions to the Development of Emotion Regulation and Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology

Developmental Psychophysiology: Temperamental and Parental Contributions to the Development of Emotion Regulation and Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology

Growing together: personal relationships across the lifespan

Contributors Acknowledgements 1. Coming together: a perspective on relationships across the life span Karen L. Fingerman and Frieder R. Lang 2. Relationships as outcomes and contexts Toni C. Antonucci, Elizabeth S. Langfahl, and Hiroko Akiyama 3. Child-parent relationships Peter Noack and Heike M. Buhl 4. A dynamic ecological systems perspective on emotion regulation development within the sibling relationship context Victoria Hilkevitch Bedford and Brenda L. Volling 5. Romantic and marital relationships Hans-Werner Bierhoff and Martina Schmohr 6. Close relationships across the life span: toward a theory of relationship types Keiko Takahashi 7. Friendship across the life span: reciprocity in individual and relationship development Rosemary Bliezner and Karen A. Roberto 8. The consequential stranger: peripheral relationships across the life span Karen L. Fingerman 9. Stress in social relationships: coping and adaptation across the life span Karen Rook, Dara Sorkin and Laura Zettel 10. Social support and physical health across the life span: socioemotional influences Susan Turk Charles and Shahrzad Mavandadi 11. Social cognition and social relationships Fredda Blanchard-Fields and Carolyn Cooper 12. Dyadic fits and transactions in personality and relationships Franz J. Neyer 13. Relational competence across the life span Robert O. Hansson, Eric L. Daleiden and Bert Hayslip, Jr 14. Social motivation across the lifespan: a goal-resource-congruence model of social relationships Frieder R. Lang 15. A lifetime of relationships mediated by technology Rebecca G. Adams and Michelle L. Stevenson Indexes.

Clarifying parent-child reciprocities during early childhood: the early childhood coercion model.

Consistent with existing theory, the quality of parent-child interactions during early childhood affects children's social relationships and behavioral adjustment during middle childhood and adolescence. Harsh parenting and a propensity toward emotional overarousal interact very early in life to affect risk for later conduct problems. Less empirical work has evaluated the emergence of early childhood coercive parent-child reciprocities. The proposed early childhood coercion model describes the processes by which coercive parent-child reciprocities emerge. Specifically, the interaction between parenting and infants' propensities toward reactivity influences the development of emotion regulation in children and disciplinary styles in parents. Highly reactive children are expected to experience more difficulty learning to regulate emotions and to evoke harsher parenting. Through a process of mutual reinforcement, harsh parenting, negative emotional reactivity, and poor emotion regulation become coercive parent-child reciprocities during early childhood. The emergence of coercive parent-child interactions further diminishes children's emotional regulatory capacities and affects the formation of peer relationships during kindergarten.

Infant and Maternal Behaviors Regulate Infant Reactivity to Novelty at 6 Months.

Three issues were investigated: (a) the regulatory effects of presumed infant and maternal regulation behaviors on infant distress to novelty at 6 months, (b) stability of infant regulatory effects across contexts that vary in maternal involvement, and (c) associations and temporal dynamics between infant and maternal regulation behaviors. Participants were 87 low-risk infants and their mothers, observed at 6 months postpartum during infant exposure to novel toys. Contingencies derived from sequential analyses demonstrate that, by 6 months, some infants reduce their own distress to novelty by looking away from the novel toy or self-soothing, maternal engagement and support have comparable effects, and certain infant and maternal behaviors co-occur. Moreover, infants whose mothers engaged contingently when they looked away from the novel toy expressed less distress than comparable infants whose mothers did not. These findings implicate both infants and mothers in the development of emotion regulation during the infant's first year.