Poster #204 - “Hot,” but not “Cool” Effortful Control Mediates Impact of Early Attachment on Children’s Anger Regulation

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Managing and regulating anger is one of children’s most challenging developmental tasks, particularly at early school age, when they function in ecologies of home, school, and peer groups. Understanding factors that promote adaptive anger regulation remains a critical objective in developmental psychology and psychopathology. Early secure attachment relationships are broadly seen as promoting emotion regulation (Thompson, 2016), but specific mechanisms continue to be studied. Large literatures have also supported links between secure attachment and effortful control (EC; Pallini et al., 2018), a general capacity for deliberate self-regulation, and between EC and emotion regulation. Recently, scholars have distinguished “hot” and “cool” EC, and suggested that only “hot” EC may predict emotional functioning and adjustment (Backer-Grondahl, Naerde, & Idsoe, 2018; Kim, Nordling, Yoon, Boldt, & Kochanska, 2013). Few studies, however, have examined a path from early security to both “hot” and “cool” EC to future anger regulation in both mother- and father-child relationships.

We report findings from a longitudinal study of 102 community mothers, fathers, and children, using multi-method data, parallel for mother- and father-child dyads. Children’s attachment was assessed at age 2, using Attachment Q-Set (AQS, Waters, 1987), performed by coders who observed the child and parent for 2.5 hours in diverse contexts (Boldt, Kochanska, Yoon, & Koenig Nordling, 2014). Children’s EC was assessed in multiple laboratory tasks at ages 3 - 4.5. “Hot” tasks called for suppressing an emotionally charged response (waiting for hedonically attractive, salient rewards, snacks or gifts); “cool”, Stroop-like tasks called for effortful attention and set shifting (Carlson & Moses, 2001). “Hot” and “cool” internally coherent EC composites were created. Parents reported children’s regulation of anger at ages 5.5 - 6.5 in several instruments (dysregulated defiance, oppositionality, angry outbursts, peer aggression). Those scores (Cronbach’s alphas .83 and .79 for mothers and fathers), were standardized, averaged, and reversed to reflect adaptive anger regulation skills.

Analyses tested double-mediation models, separately for mother- and father-child dyads. Child security was the predictor, “hot” and “cool” EC control skills were the two mediators, and child adaptive regulation of anger was the outcome. We used PROCESS (Hayes, 2013), with bias-corrected bootstrapping with 5,000 resamples drawn to obtain the 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the indirect effects of security on regulation of anger via “hot” and “cool” EC.

For mother-child dyads, there were direct significant paths from child security to both “hot” and “cool” EC, and to regulation of anger. Additionally, the expected indirect effect of security on regulation of anger, mediated by “hot” EC, was present, B = .435, SE = .219, 95% CI [.028, .891]. There was no evidence of the path mediated by “cool” EC, B = .054, SE = .094,
95% CI [-.067, .305]. For father-child dyads, the only significant path was from security to ‘hot” EC, B = 1.31, SE = .24, 95% CI [.831, 1.783].

We discuss (a) indirect, yet powerful developmental implications of early security on EC and emotion regulation, (b) differential roles of “hot” and “cool” EC, and (c) different paths in mother- and father-child dyads.

Authors

• Katrina Joy Friedrich, The University of Iowa
  Presenting Author

• Jane Elizabeth Miller, The University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Meaghan Marie Flynn, The University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Neevetha Sivagurunathan, The University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Grazyna Kochanska, The University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author