Poster #21 - Profiles of Emotion Regulation Components are Linked With Adjustment Outcomes Across Ages 3 to 10 Years

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Children’s ability to effectively regulate negative emotions plays a significant role in their development and adjustment. However, there are gaps in our understanding of how multiple components of the emotion regulatory process (e.g., emotional valence, situational appraisal, cognitive control) establish children’s emotion regulation (ER) competency and later adjustment. Moreover, few studies have used multiple methods of ER incorporating different informants, tasks, and contexts. Therefore, our main goal was to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of ER in early childhood by modeling systematic person-centered patterns using measures of different ER components. In addition, we investigated whether children’s ER profiles in early childhood predict concurrent later internalizing and externalizing behaviors.
Participants were 238 children (122 boys) who were at risk for school-age adjustment problems. ER components were measured using different behavioral tasks and maternal ratings at age 3. Specifically, mothers reported child’s levels of negative affectivity and cognitive control by answering the Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ). Children participated in various behavioral tasks, including Disappointment Gift Task, Clean-up Task, and Effortful Control Batteries. Those tasks were used to assess children’s expressed negative emotion and regulatory ability across different settings. In addition, mothers and teachers rated children’s internalizing and externalizing problems at ages 3, 6, and 10 years using Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Teacher Report Form (TRF).
Results of the Latent Class Analysis indicated that children could be grouped into three classes based on their profiles of ER components (See Figure 1): 1) consistently regulated group, children characterized by lower negative emotion (NE) and higher cognitive control (CC) across settings and tasks (50%), 2) consistently dysregulated group, children with higher NE and lower CC (43.4%) across settings and tasks, and 3) situationally regulated group, children with fair NE and fair CC (7.5%) except for poor ER competence during the clean-up task with interaction of their caregiver. One-way ANOVA tests revealed the significant group differences in externalizing and internalizing problems. Specifically, Tukey’s HSD Test for multiple comparisons found that children with low ER competence across different settings (i.e., consistently dysregulated group) displayed significantly higher parent- and teacher-reported externalizing problems at ages 3, 6, and 10, compared to children in consistently regulated group and situationally regulated group. Moreover, children in the consistently dysregulated group had higher levels internalizing problems at age 10 reported by their teachers compared to the children in the other groups. Children who showed fair ER competence except for the Clean-up Task had higher levels of mother-reported externalizing and internalizing problems at age 3, compared to children in the consistently regulated group (Please see Table 1 for details). Our results highlight the value of more comprehensive ER assessments as predictors of concurrent and long-term child adjustment and provide valuable implications for early identification and intervention.

Authors

• Sujin Lee, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Erna Chiu, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Alaina Schreiner

• Sheryl L Olson, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor