Physiology and functioning: Parents' vagal tone, emotion socialization, and children's emotion knowledge

This study examined relationships among parents’ physiological regulation, their emotion socialization behaviors, and their children’s emotion knowledge. Parents’ resting cardiac vagal tone was measured, and parents provided information regarding their socialization behaviors and family emotional expressiveness. Their 4- or 5-year-old children (N = 42) participated in a laboratory session in which their knowledge of emotional facial expressions and situations was tested and their own resting vagal tone was monitored. Results showed that parents’ vagal tone was related to their socialization behaviors, and several parent socialization variables were related to their children’s emotion knowledge. These findings suggest that parents’ physiological regulation may affect the emotional development of their children by influencing their parenting behaviors.     

Executive attention and self-regulation in infancy

This study investigates early executive attention in infancy by studying the relations between infant sequential looking and other behaviors predictive of later self-regulation. One early marker of executive attention development is anticipatory looking, the act of looking to the location of a target prior to its appearance in that location, a process that involves endogenous control of visual orienting. Previous studies have shown that anticipatory looking is positively related to executive attention as assessed by the ability to resolve spatial conflict in 3–4-year-old children. In the current study, anticipatory looking was positively related to cautious behavioral approach in response to non-threatening novel objects in 6- and 7-month-old infants. This finding and previous findings showing the presence of error detection in infancy are consistent with the hypothesis that there is some degree of executive attention in the first year of life. Anticipatory looking was also related to the frequency of distress, to looking away from disturbing stimuli, and to some self-regulatory behaviors. These results may indicate either early attentional regulation of emotion or close relations between early developing fear and later self-regulation. Overall, the results suggest the presence of rudimentary systems of executive attention in infants and support further studies using anticipatory looking as a measure of individual differences in attention in infancy.     

The Role of Maternal Communication Patterns About Interparental Disputes in Associations Between Interparental Conflict and Child Psychological Maladjustment

The present study examined the role of mothers’ communication with children about interparental disputes in associations between interparental conflict and child psychological maladjustment in a sample of 227 children and their parents followed over a one-year span. Most of the time (i.e., 79.8%) mothers reported that they would communicate with their children following interparental disputes, with the vast majority of those communications containing relatively constructive depictions of interparental conflict. Post-conflict communications were not associated with children’s adjustment above and beyond the impact of interparental conflict. However, maternal communications underscoring family cohesion and warmth, emphasizing remorse for engaging in the interparental disagreement, and denying the occurrence of the dispute each moderated associations between interparental conflict and child externalizing symptoms in distinct, complex ways. The findings in general suggest that not all positive communications have the beneficial impact on children that parents may have intended.     

Vagal activity, early growth and emotional development

A review of the research on infant vagal tone suggests that vagal activity is associated with both infant growth and infant socioemotional development. Vagal activity has been noted to increase following the stimulation of pressure receptors as in massage therapy. Vagal activity, in turn, stimulates gastric motility which mediates weight gain in infants. Vagal activity has also been notably elevated during synchronous mother–infant interactions and positive affect, providing confirmatory data for the Porges “social engagement system” model. In contrast, low vagal activity has been noted in prenatally depressed mothers (and prenatally angry and anxious mothers) and their infants, as well as in children with autism. These studies highlight the relations between vagal activity and the social behaviors of attentiveness, facial expressions and vocalizations.     

Understanding children's emotional processes and behavioral strategies in the context of marital conflict

Marital conflict is a distressing context in which children must regulate their emotion and behavior; however, the associations between the multidimensionality of conflict and children’s regulatory processes need to be examined. The current study examined differences in children’s (N = 207, mean age = 8.02 years) emotions (mad, sad, scared, and happy) and behavioral strategies to regulate conflict exposure during resolved, unresolved, escalating, and child-rearing marital conflict vignettes. Children’s cortisol levels were assessed in relation to child-rearing and resolved conflict vignettes. Anger and sadness were associated with escalating and child-rearing conflicts, fearfulness was related to escalating and unresolved conflicts, and happiness was associated with resolution. Anger was associated with children’s strategies to stop conflict, whereas sadness was associated with monitoring and avoidant strategies. Cortisol recovery moderated the link between fearfulness and behavioral regulation. These results highlight the importance of children’s emotions and regulatory processes in understanding the impact of marital conflict.     

Children and Violence: The Role of Children’s Regulation in the Marital Aggression–Child Adjustment Link

Exposure to marital psychological and physical abuse has been established as a risk factor for children’s socio-emotional, behavioral, and cognitive problems. Understanding the processes by which children develop symptoms of psychopathology and deficits in cognitive functioning in the context of marital aggression is imperative for developing efficient and effective treatment programs for children and families, and has far-reaching mental health implications. The present paper outlines our research program, Child Regulation and Exposure to Marital Aggression, which focuses on children’s emotional and physiological reactivity and regulation as pathways in the marital aggression–child development link. Findings from our research program, which highlight the importance of children’s regulatory processes for understanding children’s adjustment in contexts of intimate partner violence, are presented, and future directions in this line of inquiry are outlined.     

Methods and measures in developmental emotions research: some assembly required

The remarkable contributors to this special issue highlight the importance of developmental research on emotion and its regulation, as well as its conceptual and methodological challenges. This commentary offers some additional thoughts, especially concerning alternative views of the convergence of multiple measures of emotional responding, the conceptualization of emotion and emotion regulation, and future directions for work in this field. In the end, in light of the complex construction of emotion and its development, we may learn from studying the divergence among multiple components of emotional responding as we do from expectations of their convergence. In each case, some assembly is required.     

Emotionality, Emotion Regulation, and School Performance in Middle School Children

This research investigated the connections of middle school students' emotional dispositions and academic-related affect with their school performance. One hundred three 6th-8th grade students completed three self-rated assessments regarding: (a) their academic competency; (b) affective tendencies (both mood and emotion regulation); and (c) negative emotions experienced during school-related tasks. Teachers assessed students' positive and negative moods, and schools provided achievement test results and student grades as measures of cognitive ability/achievement and school performance, respectively. Results indicated that although students' emotion regulation, general affective dispositions, and academic affect were related to each other, each of these variables also made a unique significant contribution to students' GPA, over and above the influence of other cognitive contributors. Overall, these results provide support for the role of socio-emotional factors in students' school performance, while also clarifying some of the uniquely affective contributors (rather than relationships or goals) to that performance.     

Emotion regulation and emotional information processing: The moderating effect of emotional awareness

The aim of this study was to examine the moderating role of emotional awareness in the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and emotional information processing. A total of 120 female students regulated emotions while watching an unpleasant film. Before and after emotion induction, participants completed a set of tasks that required matching facial expressions. The results demonstrated that participants who were high in emotional awareness showed a significantly smaller increase in error responses (i.e., incorrect matches) than participants who were low in emotional awareness. However, this effect was observed only in suppression (i.e., inhibition of an emotionally expressive behavior), masking (i.e., emotion experienced with a happy expression) and control (i.e., no regulation) conditions. Among reappraisers, who were instructed to adopt a neutral attitude toward the film, regardless of whether they were high or low in emotional awareness, there was not a significant increase in error responses. This study shows that the potentially damaging impact of negative emotions on the processing of emotional information can be prevented by a high emotional awareness or with the implementation of reappraisal as an emotion regulation strategy.     

Emotional competencies and maladjustment in Singaporean adolescents

This study explores the relationships between four emotional competencies (i.e., intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, adaptability skills, and stress management skills) and four factors of maladjustment (i.e., antisocial behavior, anger control problems, emotional distress, and negative self problems) in 217 students from Singapore. Multiple regression findings indicated that stress management skills significantly predicted overall maladjustment, antisocial behavior, anger control problems, emotional distress, and negative self problems. With regard to the three remaining emotional competencies, interpersonal skills significantly predicted negative self problems, while intrapersonal skills and adaptability skills were not predictive of any of the four factors of maladjustment. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

Emotional reactivity and regulation in preschool-age children who stutter

Purpose.

This study experimentally investigated behavioral correlates of emotional reactivity and emotion regulation and their relation to speech (dis)fluency in preschool-age children who do (CWS) and do not (CWNS) stutter during emotion-eliciting conditions.

Method.

Participants (18 CWS, 14 boys; 18 CWNS, 14 boys) completed two experimental tasks (1) a neutral (“apples and leaves in a transparent box,” ALTB) and (2) a frustrating (“attractive toy in a transparent box,” ATTB) task, both of which were followed by a narrative task. Dependent measures were emotional reactivity (positive affect, negative affect), emotion regulation (self-speech, distraction) exhibited during the ALTB and the ATTB tasks, percentage of stuttered disfluencies (SDs) and percentage of non-stuttered disfluencies (NSDs) produced during the narratives.

Results.

Results indicated that preschool-age CWS exhibited significantly more negative emotion and more self-speech than preschool-age CWNS. For CWS only, emotion regulation behaviors (i.e., distraction, self-speech) during the experimental tasks were predictive of stuttered disfluencies during the subsequent narrative tasks. Furthermore, for CWS there was no relation between emotional processes and non-stuttered disfluencies, but CWNS's negative affect was significantly related to nonstuttered disfluencies.

Conclusions.

In general, present findings support the notion that emotional processes are associated with childhood stuttering. Specifically, findings are consistent with the notion that preschool-age CWS are more emotionally reactive than CWNS and that their self-speech regulatory attempts may be less than effective in modulating their emotions.Educational objectives. The reader will be able to: (a) communicate the relevance of studying the role of emotion in developmental stuttering close to the onset of stuttering and (b) describe the main findings of the present study in relation to previous studies that have used different methodologies to investigate the role of emotion in developmental stuttering of young children who stutter.     

Emotion regulation and aggression

This review considers the impact of deliberate emotion regulation on aggression, by integrating findings from recent emotion regulation research with a contemporary model of aggressive behavior, the General Aggression Model. First, it considers how individuals who under-regulate anger and other emotions may be more likely to behave aggressively in an attempt to repair, terminate, or avoid uncomfortable emotional states. Second, it explores how over-regulation of emotion may lead to aggressive behavior by increasing negative affect, reducing inhibitions against aggression, compromising decision making processes, diminishing social networks, increasing physiological arousal and hindering the resolution of difficult situations. Finally, it reviews three skills thought to underlie deliberate emotion regulation: emotional awareness, emotional acceptance and proficiency in a variety of emotion regulation strategies. Treatment encompassing all of these skills may improve an individual's ability to regulate difficult emotion states more adaptively and thereby lessen aggressive behavior.     

The influence of parenting on infant emotionality: A multi-level psychobiological perspective

Infant temperament is theorized to have a strong genetic basis. Yet, studies of the stability of temperament and molecular genetics research on temperament have revealed inconsistent findings. One reason may be because research has not taken into account the influence of early social experiences. We review research on aspects of infant emotionality presumed to be temperamental in origin, emotion reactivity and emotion regulation, and integrate research addressing parenting influences on physiology and genetics of infant emotionality with traditional research on behavioral expression of emotionality. Empirical research supports the theory that sensitive and appropriately responsive parenting in infancy is related to more optimal patterns of behavioral and physiological reactivity and regulation. Molecular genetics research with both animal and human populations has produced consistent results when environmental experiences are taken into account. Findings suggest that the short allele of the serotonin transporter gene and the long allele of the DRD4 dopamine receptor gene may be related to distinct patterns of infant emotionality and to later problems with depression, impulse control problems, and externalizing/antisocial behaviors, primarily when paired with insensitive parenting, abuse or neglect, or other adverse family environments. Future directions and limitations in the field are discussed.     

Maternal posttraumatic stress symptoms and infant emotional reactivity and emotion regulation

The current study examined associations between maternal posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and infant emotional reactivity and emotion regulation during the first year of life in a primarily low-income, urban, ethnic/racial minority sample of 52 mother–infant dyads. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing their own trauma exposure history and current PTSD and depressive symptoms and their infants’ temperament when the infants were 6 months old. Dyads participated in the repeated Still-Face Paradigm (SFP-R) when the infants were 6 months old, and infant affective states were coded for each SFP-R episode. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing infant trauma exposure history and infant current emotional and behavioral symptoms when the infants were 13 months old. Maternal PTSD symptoms predicted infants’ emotion regulation at 6 months as assessed by (a) infant ability to recover from distress during the SFP-R and (b) maternal report of infant rate of recovery from distress/arousal in daily life. Maternal PTSD symptoms also predicted maternal report of infant externalizing, internalizing, and dysregulation symptoms at 13 months. Maternal PTSD was not associated with measures of infant emotional reactivity. Neither maternal depressive symptoms nor infant direct exposure to trauma accounted for the associations between maternal PTSD symptoms and infant outcomes. These findings suggest that maternal PTSD is associated with offspring emotion regulation difficulties as early as infancy. Such difficulties may contribute to increased risk of mental health problems among children of mothers with PTSD.     

The dimensionality and antecedents of emotional labor strategies

This investigation had two purposes. The first was to determine whether the display of naturally felt emotions is distinct from surface acting and deep acting as a method of displaying organizationally desired emotions. The second purpose was to examine dispositional and situational antecedents of surface acting, deep acting, and the expression of naturally felt emotions. Results supported a three-dimensional structure separating deep acting, surface acting, and the expression of naturally felt emotions. In addition, the dispositional and situational variables exhibited theoretically consistent and distinct patterns of relationships with the three emotional labor strategies. Overall, the results of this study expand the nomological network of surface acting and deep acting and suggest that the expression of naturally felt emotions is a distinct strategy for displaying emotions at work and should be included in research on emotional labor.     

Linking emotion regulation strategies to affective events and negative emotions at work

This study examined the use of specific forms of emotion regulation at work, utilizing Gross’s [Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology 2, 271–299] process-based framework of emotion regulation as a guiding structure. In addition to examining employee self-reported usage of these emotion regulation strategies, we assessed the types of discrete negative emotions and negative affective events associated with their use. Results demonstrated that employees reported using a wide variety of emotion regulation strategies, and that each strategy tended to align with a distinct set of discrete negative emotions and affective events. These findings support expanding the focus of emotion regulation strategies at work beyond the deep acting (i.e., changing feelings) and surface acting (i.e., changing expressions) distinction. The results also suggest that focusing on specific strategies, rather than categories of emotion regulation, could enhance understanding of how employees manage their emotions at work.     

Emotion regulation in action: emotional reactivity in experiential avoidance

The present study examined the relationship between emotional reactivity (self-report and physiological reactivity) to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral emotion-eliciting stimuli and experiential avoidance (EA). Sixty-two participants were separated into high and low experiential avoiders. Results indicated that high EA participants reported greater emotional experience to both unpleasant and pleasant stimuli compared to low EA participants. In contrast to their heightened reports of emotion, high EA participants displayed attenuated heart rate reactivity to the unpleasant stimuli relative to the low EA participants. These findings are interpreted as reflecting an emotion regulation attempt by high EA participants when confronted with unpleasant emotionally-evocative stimuli.     

Antecedent-Focused Emotion Regulation,Response Modulation and Well-Being

The aim of the research was to examine the full range of emotion regulation strategies proposed by the Gross and John (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85:348–362, 2003; John, O. P., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Individual differences in emotion regulation. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 351–372). New York: Guilford) process model of emotional regulation. Seventy-three participants from Australia provided information on their use of emotion regulation strategies, well-being, and emotional intelligence. As predicted by the process model of emotional regulation, antecedent focused regulation strategies were associated with greater well-being. Response-modulation strategies predicted no additional variance in well-being beyond antecedent-regulation strategies. In contrast to past research on the selected response modulation strategy of suppression, in the present research response modulation was not associated with negative well-being outcomes. Individuals higher in emotional intelligence showed more antecedent-focused regulation, a finding congruent with model-based predictions.     

Gender and age differences in emotion regulation strategies and their relationship to depressive symptoms

We examined differences between men and women, and between young, middle and older age adults in emotion regulation strategies (rumination, suppression, reappraisal, problem-solving, acceptance, social support) and the relationships between these strategies and depressive symptoms. Women were more likely than men to report using several different emotion regulation strategies, and these gender differences were significant even after statistically controlling for gender differences in depressive symptoms. Use of most strategies decreased with age, with two exceptions: (1) use of suppression increased with age for women but not for men and (2) use of acceptance did not decrease with age for women. Use of maladaptive strategies was associated with more depressive symptoms in all age groups and both genders, yet, the use of adaptive strategies generally was not related to lower levels depressive symptoms across groups.