The Development of Emotion Regulation: Implications for Child Adjustment

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider the development of emotion regulation (ER) and its role in child adaptation broadly construed, with the goals of (1) elucidating some of the complex mechanisms and pathways that are operating in development; (2) citing challenges and controversies that have emerged through the study of ER; and (3) advocating for an integrated biopsychosocial approach to the study of ER in the next generation of theory and research in this area. We organize the chapter in five sections: (1) definitional and theoretical considerations; (2) developmental and contextual issues; (3) empirical approaches and challenges; (4) relations to child outcomes (including psychopathology, social competence, and academic achievement); and finally (5) implications and challenges for future research. Our overarching aim is to go beyond a summary of research findings to highlight the many conceptual and empirical issues that ought to be considered in studies examining the relation between ER and child outcomes related to developmental psychopathology.

Children's psychological adjustment in dual‐ and single‐ethnic families: Coregulation, socialization values, and emotion regulation in a 7‐year follow‐up study

“…As with earlier literature, we found that children's effective emotion regulation skills were positively related with their psychological adjustment (Calkins & Perry, 2016), as indicated by low levels of depressive, anxiety, and aggressive symptoms reported by both parents when the children were aged 7 years. However, the results did not support the hypothesis that effective emotion regulation would be especially important for good psychological adjustment in Finnish-Russian families, because the mother's culture emphasizes tight control of especially negative emotional expression (Matsumoto et al, 1998).…”

“…In order to understand why unbalanced coregulation formed a risk exactly to attention problems, a study based on the same sample found that the balanced coregulation was associated with children's better language acquisition in toddlerhood (Lundén & Silvén, ). We may thus cautiously suggest that balanced coregulation within the family in midinfancy is especially important for children's attention and regulation skills, which in turn are agreed to be a pivotal antecedent of good psychological adjustment and development (Calkins & Perry, ). The association between early coregulation unbalance and child ADHD symptoms was similar in Finnish–Russian and Finnish families, which may reflect the view that the quality of early parent–infant relationship is generally salient.…”

“…Findings based on the current data showed that in both Finnish–Russian and Finnish families, infants whose dyadic interactions with mother and father were balanced had more extensive vocabularies in toddlerhood than children with unbalanced coregulation with their parents (Lundén & Silvén, ). As both language and self‐regulation are important antecedents of psychological adjustment (Calkins & Perry, ; Carpenter & Drabick, ), one may expect that balanced coregulation also predicts optimal psychological adjustment in dual‐ as well as single‐ethnic families.…”

The Tools of the Mind curriculum for improving self‐regulation in early childhood: a sytematic review

“…Self-regulation, defined as volitional control of attention, behavior, and executive functions for the purposes of goal-directed action (Blair & Ursache, 2011), is associated with multiple school-related outcomes (Calkins, S. D., Howse, R. B., & Philippot, 2004;A. Diamond & Lee, 2011;McClelland & Tominey, 2011).…”

Low‐income, Minority Fathers’ Control Strategies and Their Children's Regulatory Skills

“…This is an important area of research because children's regulatory skills during the early years are critical for school readiness and later school achievement (Blair & Diamond, 2008). Although children follow a clear pattern in their development of regulatory skills, individual differences appear from an early age (Calkins & Howse, 2004). Much literature has suggested that children's regulatory skills may be influenced by the strategies their parents, mostly mothers, use to promote compliance with their children (i.e., control strategies; Bindman, Hindman, Bowles, & Morrison, 2013;Kochanska & Askan, 1995;Sethi, Mischel, Aber, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 2000).…”