The development of children's emotion-related self-regulation appears to be related to, and likely involved in, many aspects of children's development. In this review, the distinction between effortful self-regulatory processes and those that are somewhat less voluntary is discussed, and literature on the former capacities is reviewed. Emotion-related self-regulation develops rapidly in the early years of life and improves more slowly into adulthood. Individual differences in children's self-regulation are fairly stable after the first year or two of life. Such individual differences are inversely related to at least some types of externalizing problems. Findings for internalizing problems are less consistent and robust, although emotion-related self-regulation appears to be inversely related to internalizing problems after the early years. Self-regulatory capacities have been related to both genetic and environmental factors and their interaction. Some interventions designed to foster self-regulation and, hence, reduce maladjustment, have proved to be at least partially effective.

Empathy-related responding, including empathy, sympathy, and personal distress, has been implicated in conceptual models and theories about prosocial behavior and altruism, aggression and antisocial behavior, and intergroup relationships. Conceptual arguments and empirical findings related to each of these topics are reviewed. In general, there is evidence that empathy and/or sympathy are important correlates of, and likely contributors to, other-oriented prosocial behavior, the inhibition of aggression and antisocial behavior, and the quality of intergroup relationships. Applied implications of these findings, including preventative studies, are discussed, as are possible future directions.

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Research Findings-In this article, we review research on the relations of self-regulation and its dispositional substrate, effortful control, to variables involved in school success. First, we present a conceptual model in which the relation between self-regulation/effortful control and academic performance is mediated by low maladjustment and high-quality relationships with peers and teachers, as well as school engagement. Then we review research indicating that effortful control and related skills are indeed related to maladjustment, social skills, relationships with teachers and peers, school engagement, as well as academic performance.Practice or Policy-Initial findings are consistent with the view that self-regulatory capacities involved in effortful control are associated with the aforementioned variables; only limited evidence of mediated relations is currently available.Recently, there has been a sharp increase in research concerning the role of emotion-related self-regulatory processes in children's school readiness and academic outcomes. Definitions of emotion-related self-regulation vary, but in general it refers to processes used to manage and change if, when, and how one experiences emotions and emotion-related motivational and physiological states and how emotions are expressed behaviorally (Eisenberg, Hofer, & Vaughan, 2007; see Table 1 for some key definitions). Emotion-related self-regulation includes regulatory processes that can be willfully controlled (although they are often in an automatic mode) when used to manage emotion-related processes. Of course, children's emotion can also be regulated by external factors such as parents' behaviors.Individual differences in emotion-related self-regulation are at least partly due to individual differences in temperament. According to Rothbart and Bates (2006), two major components of temperament are regulation and reactivity (i.e., responsiveness to change in the external and internal environment). At the core of temperamental regulation is the construct of effortful control (EC), defined as "the efficiency of executive attention-including the

Indices of physiological regulation (i.e., resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA] and RSA suppression) and observed fearfulness were tested as predictors of empathy-related reactions to an unfamiliar person’s simulated distress within and across 18 (T1, N = 247) and 30 (T2, N = 216) months of age. Controlling for T1 helping, high RSA suppression and low fearfulness at T1 predicted T2 helping. In a structural model, empathic concern was marginally positively related to resting RSA at both assessments whereas personal distress was related to RSA suppression within time (marginally positively at T1 and significantly negatively at T2). Fearfulness was associated with self-oriented, distress-related reactions within time. Comfort seeking (an index of personal distress) declined in mean level with age whereas helping increased, and both behaviors exhibited differential continuity (as did resting RSA). Individual, as well as developmental, differences in the types of reactions that young children exhibit when witnessing others’ suffering and distress were discussed.

Friendships matter for withdrawn youth because the consequences of peer isolation are severe. From a normative sample of 2,437 fifth-graders (1,245 females; M age = 10.25), a subset (n = 1364; 638 female) was classified into three groups (anxious-solitary, unsociable, comparison) and followed across a school year. Findings indicated that it was more common for unsociable than anxious-solitary children to have friends, be stably friended, and participate in multiple friendships. For withdrawn as well as non-withdrawn children, peer rejection predicted friendlessness, but this relation was strongest for anxious-solitary children. The friends of unsociable youth were more accepted by peers than those of anxious-solitary youth. The premise that friendship inhibits peer victimization was substantiated for withdrawn as well as non-withdrawn youth.

The goals of the present study were to examine (1) the mean-level stability and differential stability of children's positive emotional intensity, negative emotional intensity, expressivity, and social competence from early elementary school-aged to early adolescence, and (2) the associations between the trajectories of children's emotionality and social functioning. Using four waves of longitudinal data (with assessments 2 years apart), parents and teachers of children (199 kindergarten through third grade children at the first assessment) rated children's emotion-related responding and social competence. For all constructs, there was evidence of mean-level decline with age and stability in individual differences in rank ordering. Based on age-centered growth-to-growth curve analyses, the results indicated that children who had a higher initial status on positive emotional intensity, negative emotional intensity, and expressivity had a steeper decline in their social skills across time. These findings provide insight into the stability and association of emotion-related constructs to social competence across the elementary and middle school years. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptEmotion. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 September 29. Published in final edited form as:Emotion. 2009 February ; 9(1): 15-28. doi:10.1037/a0013970. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptDevelopmental scientists have increasingly acknowledged the importance of the experience and expression of emotion in every-day life and its potential role in social competence. However, our understanding of developmental trajectories in children's intensity of emotion and their implications for social competence is limited. The first major goal of the present study was to examine the degree of stability of children's emotional intensity, expressivity, and social competence. Another major goal (which was dependent on the analyses pertaining to the first goal) was to examine associations between the trajectories of emotion and social functioning as children moved into early adolescence. Notions of StabilityGiven the goal of investigating children's emotionality across time, the stability of these constructs was examined in two ways: (1) the rank-order of variables and (2) the mean level across time (Fraley & Roberts, 2005). Rank-order stability provides information about differential continuity (i.e., degree to which individual differences remain stable across time) whereas mean-level stability refers to change in the average level of a variable across time (De Fruyt et al., 2006). Both types of stability are useful for understanding development. Positive and Negative EmotionalityResearchers typically view positive and negative emotionality as dimensions of temperament (Aksan et al., 1999;Rothbart & Bates, 2006), defined as a set of constitutionally based traits that are the core of personality and influence the direction of development (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). Even though temperament is usually de...

The purpose of the current study was to predict the development of aggressive behavior from young children’s respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and environmental quality. In a longitudinal sample of 213 children, baseline RSA, RSA suppression in response to a film of crying babies, and a composite measure of environmental quality (incorporating socioeconomic status and marital adjustment) were measured, and parent-reported aggression was assessed from 18 to 54 months of age. Predictions based on biological sensitivity-to-context/differential susceptibility and diathesis-stress models, as well as potential moderation by child sex, were examined. The interaction of baseline RSA with environmental quality predicted the development (slope) and 54-month intercept of mothers’ reports of aggression. For girls only, the interaction between baseline RSA and environmental quality predicted the 18-month intercept of fathers’ reports. In general, significant negative relations between RSA and aggression were found primarily at high levels of environmental quality. In addition, we found a significant Sex × RSA interaction predicting the slope and 54-month intercept of fathers’ reports of aggression, such that RSA was negatively related to aggression for boys but not for girls. Contrary to predictions, no significant main effects or interactions were found for RSA suppression. The results provide mixed but not full support for differential susceptibility theory and provide little support for the diathesis-stress model.