Within the past two decades, an "affect revolution" [Fischer and Tangney, Self-conscious Emotions: The Psychology of Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, and Pride 1995:3-22] in research has revolutionized the ways in which emotion processes have been conceptualized and subsequently studied. This review discusses the literature on emotion regulation (ER) in childhood and adolescence by first summarizing the trajectory of emotional development from infancy through adolescence, followed by a discussion of the biological and environmental influences on ER, and then a review of the literature linking ER to psychosocial functioning. The penultimate section offers practical suggestions for identifying ER difficulties in children and strategies for intervention efforts. Potential areas for future research conclude the review.

This study examined factors that may influence children's decisions to control or express their emotions including type of emotion (anger, sadness, physical pain), type of audience (mother, father, peer, alone), age, and sex. Children's reported use of display rules, reasons for their decisions, and reported method of expression were examined. Subjects were 32 boys and 32 girls in each of the first (M = 7.25 years old), third (M = 9.33 years old), and fifth grades (M = 11.75 years old). Regardless of the type of emotion experienced, children reported controlling their expression of emotion significantly more in the presence of peers than when they were with either their mother or father or when they were alone. Younger children reported expressing sadness and anger significantly more often than did older children, and girls were more likely than boys to report expressing sadness and pain. Children's primary reason for controlling their emotional expressions was the expectation of a negative interpersonal interaction following disclosure.

This study provides further evidence of the validity of the Children's Somatization Inventory (CSI) and normative information about the intensity, frequency, and types of somatic complaints reported by 540 children and adolescents in a community sample. Among high school students, girls had significantly higher scores on the CSI than did boys. Factor analysis of the CSI yielded 4 factors that correspond to the first 4 categories of the DSM-1I1-R Somatization criteria. The CSI had good concurrent validity with another self-report measure of somatic symptoms and a low but significant correlation with parents' reports of their children's somatic symptoms on the parent version of the CSI. Significant correlations of the CSI with self-report measures of anxiety, depression, and perceived competence provided evidence of its construct validity. The implications of these findings for understanding Somatization disorder in children and adolescents are discussed.