Developmental Links between Executive Function and Emotion Regulation in Early Toddlerhood

• In Event: The Development of Executive Functions in Early Toddlerhood

Abstract

Emotion regulation (ER) and executive function (EF) show an obvious conceptual overlap. Suppressing negative affect entails inhibitory control and possibly also working memory and cognitive flexibility. Equally, EF tasks are challenging, such that poor ER will hinder performance. Toddlerhood is characterised by dramatic gains in ER, but research has been limited by the lack of age-appropriate EF tasks and by contrasting methods of measurement (EF tasks and ER questionnaires). Our own recent work illustrates this problem. Specifically, in two waves of home visits at 14 and 24 months, 438 first-born children (living in the UK, USA and the Netherlands) completed age-appropriate EF measures (Devine, Ribner & Hughes, 2019), with parents rating concurrent externalizing problems. Cross-lagged analysis showed a unidirectional association between poor EF at 14 months and externalizing behavior at 24 months (Hughes, Devine, Mesman & Blair, 2020). Although these findings extend the developmental scope of previous work (reviewed by Schoemaker, Mulder, Dekovic, & Matthys, 2013) highlighting the role of poor EF in preschool externalizing problems, they are limited by the subjective and general nature of parental ratings. We therefore conducted a detailed study of the UK subsample (N =197), including observational ratings of negative affect in dyadic-play sessions with mother and father that were immediately preceded by a frustrating ‘Don’t Touch’ task, such that negative affect was likely to reflect poor ER.

To investigate the developmental association between EF and ER we conducted cross-lagged autoregressive models, using a robust maximum likelihood estimator and regressing the T2 EF and ER measures onto age, gender, socio-economic status and T1 ratings of verbal ability and effortful control. The model explained 10% of variance in T2 EF and 5.6% of variance in T2 ER (Figure 1). Girls and boys showed similar ER at T1,  = .02, SE = .07, and T2,  = .08, SE = .07, and T1 EF,  = -.09, SE = .07, but mean T2 EF was higher in girls than boys,  = .19, SE = .07, p =.006.

There was no cross-lagged association between T1 ER and T2 EF,  = .002, SE = .09. T1 effortful control did not predict T2 ER,  = -.11, SE = .08, or T2 EF,  = .03, SE = .07. Likewise, T1 language was unrelated to T2 ER,  = -.03, SE = .07 and T2 EF,  = .001, SE = .09. However, strengthening Hughes et al’s (2020) reported unidirectional link between T1 EF and T2 externalizing problems, there was a unique cross-lagged association between T1 EF and T2 ER,  = -.17, SE = .05, p =.002. Children who succeeded EF tasks at 14-months showed less negative affect at 24-months, highlighting the predictive utility of measuring EF in early toddlerhood.

Authors

• Claire H Hughes, University of Cambridge
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Foley, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Wendy Browne, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anja Lindberg
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gabrielle McHarg, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rory T. Devine, University of Birmingham
  Non-Presenting Author