Anxiety Effect on Chinese Preschoolers: Evidence From Behavioral, Psychological, and Neuroscience Studies

• In Event: 41.083 - Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 41.083-12 - Cracking the Knowledge Bases of Educational Equity: Integrating Findings From the Laboratory With Those From the Classroom

Abstract

Separation anxiety , working as a sign of lacking emotional regulation, caught attention to a lot of educational practitioners. In the present study, we will focus on the separation anxiety in preschoolers (age around 3) and to better understand how to reduce anxiety level based on evidence from behavioral, psychological, and neuroscience (3 dimensions). We will focus on the studies from these three aspects in order to fully understand anxiety, especially for school aged children. Different from western countries, Chinese preschools admit children when they are about 3 years old. Typically, Chinese preschools do not accept infants. The parents/grandparents take full responsibilities of the babies. At age of 3, parents will send their children to preschool. However, the problem emerges as children who suffer from separation anxiety, will not be able to adjust themselves into new environment.
Anxiety at early age can be viewed as a sign of low level of emotion regulation, especially referring as an internalizing problems. Furthermore, good self-regulation skills can form a resiliency against stressors. The regulation of emotion, specifically, is crucial for developing socio-emotional competence. Difficulties with emotion regulation can manifest itself into anxiety.
To address this issue, the present paper is aiming to systematically understand the developmental perspective of emotion regulation (particular for anxiety problems ), align with studies taking educational neuroscience perspectives. Furthermore, the intervention and prevention for separation anxiety will be discussed based on evidence from behavioral, psychosocial and neuroscience studies.
The development of emotion regulation follows steps of increasing flexibility, complexity, and sophistication. During infancy, gaze-aversion, sucking, and grabbing the attention of caregivers, are examples of ways in which negative emotional states can be avoided, reduced, or addressed. Emotion regulation is rapidly changing during early childhood when improved communication and motor skills allow for a better management of emotion, and children rapidly master social display rules . There is continued improvement from early to middle childhood but studies thus far suggest that changes are less dramatic, and stabilize, by early adolescence. Emotion regulation also seems to be a relatively stable, or predictable, trait across the lifespan. The child who have better emotional regulation, will not suffer from separation anxiety at school age. It also convey the message that early age emotion regulation skills is critical and need to be caught attention by educational practitioners.
A lot of neuroscience studies (EEG and FMRI) do also address the developmental trajectory of emotion regulation, which is covary with psychological and behavioral perspectives. The early aged anxiety issues can be traced as lacking of self-regulation. In our present study, we will also address the evidence from educational neuroscience on how to better understand the relationship between emotional regulation and anxiety. Besides on the theory-related discoveries, we are interested in what intervention and prevention strategies can help with anxiety.

Author

• Qinxin Shi, Texas A&M University - College Station