Poster #11 - Measuring Inhibitory Control and Emotion Regulation in Young Children

• In Event: Poster Session 08

Abstract

Emotion regulation (ER) difficulties and poor inhibitory control (IC) are two well established early associates and potential precursors of psychopathology in children (Miu et al., 2022; Taylor & Barch, 2022). ER, behavioral responses to emotions in the service of regulation or control, is primarily measured in young children using parent or teacher report (Gross, 2015). IC is an executive function skill that involves the capacity to suppress prepotent responses; this skill is primarily measured using behavioral tasks (Simpson & Carroll, 2019). The relationship between ER and IC remains elusive. Many researchers contextualize IC as one of multiple processes involved in ER (Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000; Gagne et al., 2021) and recent findings implicate shared underlying neural processes between IC and ER (Liu et al., 2020). One barrier to progress is the discrepancy in common measurement practices for IC and ER. The present study compares parent-report and child performance on tasks measuring IC and ER. In a sample of children aged 4-8 years, we collected parent-report of child ER and IC using the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields, & Cicchetti, 1997) and the Inhibition sub-scale of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF; Gioia et al., 2000), respectively. In addition, we also measured IC and ER using behavioral tasks. We measured IC using the Simon Task, by comparing accuracy and reaction time on congruent vs. incongruent trials (Simon & Small Jr, 1969). We measured ER using puppet scenarios in which characters express emotions like sadness and anger and participants are asked to relay ER strategies they would use to reduce the emotion (Dennis & Kelemen, 2009). The puppet task measures ER flexibility by averaging the number of ER strategies given across all vignettes, creating an overall ER strategy score for each child. In addition to measuring ER and IC we will measure child age, sex assigned at birth, IQ using the Kaufman brief intelligence test (K-BIT; Kaufman, 1990) and psychopathology using the child behavior checklist (CBCL; Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983). Our first aim is to identify if behavioral and parent-report are more strongly related within a skill (IC or ER) versus across skills. Our second aim is to observe if age associations within skill (IC vs. ER) are more consistent than between skills. We will address all aims using regression analyses. Given the ambiguity in the relationship between ER and IC, and the differences in measurement between parent-report and task performance we expect scores of IC and ER to have a strong positive correlation within measurement domains. We expect that parent-reports of child ER and IC will be moderately and indiscriminately associated with child behavior on ER and IC tasks. We expect that child behavior and parent report of ER and IC will be positively associated with age but that this association will be similar within and between skill domains. Future directions will examine factors that influence discrepancies between parent-report and child task scores for both ER and IC.

Authors

• Celina Meyer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Summer Motton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Helen Milojevich, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Margaret A. Sheridan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill