Four-month-old infants were screened (N = 433) for temperamental patterns thought to predict behavioral inhibition, including motor reactivity and the expression of negative affect. Those selected (N = 153) were assessed at multiple age points across the first 4 years of life for behavioral signs of inhibition as well as psychophysiological markers of frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry. Four-month temperament was modestly predictive of behavioral inhibition over the first 2 years of life and of behavioral reticence at age 4. Those infants who remained continuously inhibited displayed right frontal EEG asymmetry as early as 9 months of age while those who changed from inhibited to noninhibited did not. Change in behavioral inhibition was related to experience of nonparental care. A second group of infants, selected at 4 months of age for patterns of behavior thought to predict temperamental exuberance, displayed a high degree of continuity over time in these behaviors.

This study investigated the role of children's emotion regulation skills and academic success in kindergarten, using a sample of 325 five-year-old children. A mediational analysis addressed the potential mechanisms through which emotion regulation relates to children's early academic success. Results indicated that emotion regulation was positively associated with teacher reports of children's academic success and productivity in the classroom and standardized early literacy and math achievement scores. Contrary to predictions, child behavior problems and the quality of the student teacher relationship did not mediate these relations. However, emotion regulation and the quality of the student-teacher relationship uniquely predicted academic outcomes even after accounting for IQ. Findings are discussed in terms of how emotion regulation skills facilitate children's development of a positive student-teacher relationship and cognitive processing and independent learning behavior, both of which are important for academic motivation and success.Keywords emotion regulation; academic success; student-teacher relationship; behavior problems; elementary students The Role of Emotion Regulation in Children's Early Academic SuccessThe early childhood years have recently been identified as a crucial period for the development of important executive functions such as attention, inhibition, working memory (Anderson, 2002;Blair, 2002) and literacy skills (Aram, 2005) that are necessary for successful school transition and later academic success. Children demonstrating early academic and learning difficulties are not only more likely to display later academic difficulties including school drop-out (Horn & Packard, 1985), but they are also at risk for developing later peer rejection (Ladd, 1990;Risi, Gerhardstein, & Kistner, 2003) as well as emotional and behavioral disorders including conduct disorder (Bennett, Brown, Boyle, Racine, & Offord, 2003; Moffit, Gabrielli, Mednick, & Schulsinger, 1981). Given these negative outcomes as well as the consistent finding that academic success tends to be stable after first grade (Entwisle & Hayduk, 1988), researchers have attempted to examine sociocultural, school, family, and individual factors that contribute to a child's early school Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Sch Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 December 20. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript success. Among the individual factors associated with academic success, most resear...

The relation between two dimensions of vagal tone (Vna), indexed by a baseline measure of Vna and suppression of Vna, and temperamental reactivity and behavioral regulation was investigated. Forty‐one children were observed during a series of episodes designed to elicit temperamental reactivity and behavioral regulation. Heart rate was recorded during these baseline, positive, negative, and delay episodes, from which measures of vagal tone were computed. Across the entire sample, vagal tone decreased from the baseline episode to the three affect tasks. Baseline measures of vagal tone were related to the tendency to show a decrease in vagal tone: Children who consistently suppressed vagal tone (showed a decrease to all the affect tasks) had higher baseline vagal tone. Baseline vagal tone was related to temperamental reactivity for the positive and negative tasks, but not the delay tasks. Vagal suppression (vagal difference score) was related to several of the behavioral regulation strategies used by the children in the affect‐eliciting situations. These findings are discussed in terms of the adaptive value of physiological regulation in the development of regulatory behaviors that may be critical to social development. ©1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 31: 125–135, 1997

Stability and continuity of vagal regulation of the heart, operationalized as suppression of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during challenge, was examined in a longitudinal study of preschoolers. A sample of 154 two-year-old children was recruited for participation in a study of the effects of emotional and behavioral challenge on cardiac activity and behavioral indices of adjustment and self-regulation. A total of 122 of these children were assessed again at age 4.5 years. At both ages, the children were assessed in a series of laboratory procedures that were intended to be emotionally and behaviorally challenging, during which time heart rate was recorded. To assess vagal regulation, resting measures of RSA and RSA suppression to the challenge task were derived from these procedures. To assess childhood adjustment and self-regulation, a number of parent-report measures were administered when the children were 4.5 years of age. Results indicated that there was high stability in RSA suppression across the challenge tasks within both ages, modest cross-age stability in RSA suppression, and a significant decrease in the magnitude of RSA suppression across age. Second, children who displayed a pattern of stable and high suppression across the preschool period were less emotionally negative, and had fewer behavior problems and better social skills than other children.

Abstract:Self-regulatory processes are believed to be critical to early personality and behavioral adjustment. Such processes can be observed on multiple levels, including the physiological, attentional, emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal domains of functioning. Data from several longitudinal studies suggest links between early temperamental tendencies such as behavioral inhibition and frustration tolerance, and regulatory developments at the levels of physiological, attentional, and emotional regulation. Deficits in these particular levels of self-regulation may underlie childhood social withdrawal and aggression. Significant gaps remain in our knowledge of the pathways to disordered behavior and the role that self-regulation plays in such pathways. Suggestions are made for the ways in which future longitudinal studies might address these gaps. Article:During the last several years, the discipline of developmental psychopathology has produced a corpus of research underscoring the importance for social development and behavioral adjustment of individual differences in personality

The relations between 4 sources of family stress (marital dissatisfaction, home chaos, parental depressive symptoms, and job role dissatisfaction) and the emotion socialization practice of mothers' and fathers' responses to children's negative emotions were examined. Participants included 101 couples with 7-year-old children. Dyadic analyses were conducted using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model and relations were tested in terms of the spillover, crossover, and compensatory hypotheses. Results suggest that measures of family stress relate to supportive and nonsupportive parental responses, though many of these relations differ by parent gender. The results are discussed in terms of the 3 theoretical hypotheses, all of which are supported to some degree depending on the family stressor examined. Keywords emotion socialization; family stress; parental responses to children's negative emotions; parent genderCoping with a negative emotion, such as sadness, anger, or fear, is a more developmentally difficult task for children than coping with a positive emotion (Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002). Until children have learned how to cope with and regulate their negative feelings, it is important for parents to assist children in handling these experiences. In their responses to their children's negative emotions, parents are providing valuable information to their children about Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jackie A. Nelson, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402. janelso3@uncg.edu. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Fam Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 October 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript appropriate emotional displays and successful coping strategies. Parent responses to children's negative emotions have been described as one of the most important methods of direct emotion socialization (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998).Parents vary in the ways they respond to negative emotions, and their responses can be described as either supportive or nonsupportive (Eisenberg et al., 1998;Fabes, Poulin, Eisenberg, & Madden-Derdich, 2002). Supportive responses by parents invite children to explore their feelings by encouraging the child to express emotions or helping the child understand and cope with an emotion-eliciting situation. Nonsupportive responses, such minimizing the child's emotional experience, punishing the child, or becoming distressed by the child's display, send messages to the child that the display of negative emotions is not appropriate or acceptable. Supportive parental responses to children's negative emotions have been found to be related to aspects of emotional and social competence including children's emotion understanding and friendship quality (McElwain, Halberstadt, & Volling, 2007). By contrast, parental nonsupportive or suppressive responses have been linked to stored negative affect in the child and disorgan...

A sample of 335 five-year-old children participating in an ongoing longitudinal study was the focus of a study on the effects of emotional and behavioral challenge on cardiac activity in children with different patterns of early childhood behavior problems. The children were placed in one of three behavior problem groups (low behavior problems, risk for externalizing problems, risk for mixed externalizing/internalizing problems) based on their scores on the Child Behavior Checklist for 4-18 year-olds (Achenbach, 1991), completed by their mothers. To assess cardiac vagal regulation, resting measures of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and RSA change (vagal withdrawal) to five emotionally and behaviorally challenging tasks were derived. In addition, Heart period (HP) and Heart period change (HR acceleration) was examined. Results indicated that the behavior problem groups did not differ in terms of resting measures of either RSA or HP. Analyses of the challenge tasks indicated that the children at risk for mixed problems displayed greater cardiac vagal withdrawal across the five tasks than did the other two groups of children. There was a trend for the children at risk for externalizing problems to display less vagal withdrawal than the control group. In addition, the children at risk for mixed problems displayed greater heart rate acceleration to the tasks than did the other two groups of children. Follow-up analyses indicated that the greater cardiac acceleration observed in the mixed group was largely a function of greater vagal withdrawal. These findings are discussed in terms of the emotion regulatory function of cardiac vagal regulation, and its implications for patterns of risk for behavior problems in young children. Recent work in both developmental and clinical psychology has identified the construct of emotion regulation as one that is critical to understanding adaptive functioning (Baumeister &. The ability to exercise self-control over the expression of emotion, particularly negative emotions, and emotion-related behavior, develops over the first years of life and has particular importance for the development of appropriate and adaptive social behavior during the preschool and school years

Abstract:The authors investigated relations between mother-infant dyadic coordination and infants' physiological responses. Mothers (N = 73) and 3-month-old male and female infants were observed in the still-face paradigm, and mothers' and infants' affective states were coded at 1-s intervals. Synchrony and levels of matching between mother-infant affective states were computed, and infants' heart rate and vagal tone were measured. Infants showed increased negative affect and heart rate and decreased vagal tone during mothers' still-face, indicating physiological regulation of distress. Infants who did not suppress vagal tone during the still-face (nonsuppressors) showed less positive affect, higher reactivity and vagal suppression in normal play and reunion episodes, and lower synchrony in normal play with mothers. The results indicate that infants' physiological regulation in social interaction differs in relation to dyadic coordination of affective behaviors.