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Preschool Emotion Regulation and Social Engagement Predict Socio-emotional and Academic Adjustment in First Grade

Thu, March 21, 12:30 to 2:00pm, Hilton Baltimore, Floor: Level 2, Key 10

Integrative Statement

A longstanding program of research has demonstrated that the least socially engaged children, whether they lack the motivation to engage or are actively avoided when they seek to engage with peers, are at risk for concurrent and subsequent problems with adaptive functioning, in part because, perhaps, they do not reap the benefits of peer socialization. There are also research programs linking aspects of emotional regulation (ER) to peer social engagement (SE) and social competence. In the present study, we address these issues focusing on the transition from the end of preschool to the primary school. 113 preschool children (62 girls) participated in this study. Children were recruited from classes in two private urban preschool centres in Lisbon, Portugal. All families were of European ethnicity. Written consent for children’s participation was obtained from school directors, teachers, and parents prior to data collection. Two observers collected interaction data in each five year-old preschool classroom. Using the class roster, an observer watched a given child for a 15-sec. interval and recorded identifiers for all persons with whom the target interacted. Positive, neutral and negative codes for the initiator of the interaction episode were recorded for an average of 200 observation rounds. All children present were watched for one 15-sec. interval before any child was watched twice. Total rates of interaction used as the indicator of SE. Mean ICC estimates were .75 for each classroom pair of observers. Two independent observers used the California Child Q-Sort (CCQ; Block & Block, 1969) to derive the ER indicator (Emotion Regulation Q-scale: Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). The Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .71. Both measures were standardized within classrooms prior to further analysis. A Portuguese version of the Teacher-Child Rating Scale (Hightower et al, 1986) was used to collect data in the next year at the primary school. This 38-item questionnaire evaluates different aspects of socio-emotional adjustment of children, including skills in school and behavior problems. Items are organized into 7 scales: Acting-Out (α=.89), Shy–Anxious (α=.84), Learning Problems (α=.90), Assertive Social Skills (α=.87), Task Orientation (α=.90), Frustration Tolerance (α=.82) and Peer Social Skills (α=.82). Total scales for the two major domains were subsequently calculated: Behavior Problems and Competencies. Multiple regression analyses using the PROCESS 3 macro (Hayes, 2017) examined ER as the predictor variable, SE as the moderator, and the T-CRS scales as outcome variables. Results revealed significant effects of ER predicting negatively all outcomes excepting Assertive Social Skills, SE was a significant positive predictor for this outcome as well for the total Competencies, the only significant moderation effect was verified for Acting-Out (see Table 1). Simple slopes analyses (at -1 SD, Mean, +1 SD) revealed significant negative effects of ER on Acting-Out at High and Average values of SE (see Figure 1). Results stress the important role of preschool emotion regulation and social engagement on the subsequent adjustment to primary school as well as their potential for designing evaluations of early intervention programs.

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