The influence of temperamental reactivity and situational context on the emotion-regulatory abilities of 3-year-old children

Although much research has been conducted on emotion regulation, little work in the preschool period has examined the interrelationships between emotion regulation, temperamental reactivity, and situational context. The authors investigated the temperamental dispositions of fifty-three 3-year-old children (27 boys, 26 girls) and their behavioral responses to several challenging tasks (i.e., stranger-approach situation, busy-caregiver paradigm, and delay-of-gratification task). Results indicated that both situational context and temperamental reactivity influenced the type of emotion-regulatory strategy used and that those relationships were best understood within a developmental framework. Moreover, the authors found that girls displayed more comforting strategies, suggesting that gender differences in emotion regulation may exist.