This document discusses emotion and self-regulation development in children. It covers: - Self-regulation develops from birth through childhood, progressing from reflexes to flexible management of behavior and emotions. - Emotion regulation involves monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions to accomplish goals. It is influenced by both intrinsic factors like temperament and extrinsic factors like parenting. - Problems can arise in defining emotion regulation and distinguishing it from emotions. Research needs independent measures of emotion and regulation and examination of temporal relationships between the two.

1. Emotion and Self Regulation
Naomi Ekas
9/28/09

2. Self-Regulation
 Children do not come into this world
with all of the skills necessary to
regulate their behavior
 It is around 2 years that we really start
to see children monitoring behavior

3. Self-Regulation
 Ability to comply with a request, initiate and
cease activities according to situational
demands, to modulate the intensity,
frequency, and duration of verbal and motor
acts in social and educational settings, to
postpone acting upon a desired object/goal,
and to generate socially approved behavior in
the absence of external monitors (Kopp,
1982)

4. Self-Regulation
 Neurophysiological modulation
 Birth to 2-3 months
 Reflexes

5. Self-Regulation
 Sensorimotor modulation
 3 months - 9 months +
 Engage in voluntary motor acts (reach &
grab, hand to mouth, etc.) and change that
act in response to environmental demands
 No awareness of meaning of situation

6. Self-Regulation
 Control
 9-12 months to 18 + months
 Emerging ability of children to show
awareness of social or task demands and
modulate behavior/emotions
 E.g. compliance to demands

7. Self-Regulation
 Emergence of self-control and the
progression to self-regulation
 24 + months
 Compliance, delay an act on request
 Representational thinking and recall
memory
 Limited flexibility

8. Self-Regulation
 Self-regulation
 36 + months
 Flexibility!!!

9. Emotion Regulation
 In addition to regulating behaviors,
children must also regulate emotional
experiences
 Development of emotion regulation
abilities follows Kopp’s description of
emergence of self-regulation
 Reflexes to flexible management

10. Emotion Regulation
 Emotion regulation consists of the
extrinsic and intrinsic processes
responsible for monitoring, evaluating,
and modifying emotional reactions,
especially their intensive and temporal
features, to accomplish one’s goals

11. Emotion Regulation
 Monitoring, evaluating, modifying
 Not only negative emotions
 Not only dampening emotions, but also
increasing

12. Emotion Regulation
 Extrinsic influences
 Parents!!!
 Critical in the early months
 Intrinsic influences
 temperament

13. Emotion Regulation
 Intensive and temporal features
 Intensity - subdue or enhance
 Speed or slow onset or recovery
 Reduce or increase lability (range)
 Limit or enhance persistence over time

14. Emotion Regulation
 Accomplish one’s goals
 Must be regarded functionally
 What are regulator’s goals for that
situation?

15. Emotion Regulation
 What is regulated?
 Control of underlying arousal processes
through maturing systems of
neurophysiological regulation

Diffuse excitatory processes decline in lability
during first year

Cortical inhibitory controls emerge gradually
during infancy

Nervous system reactivity

16. Emotion Regulation
 Attention processes
 Emotion can be regulated by managing the
intake of emotionally arousing information

Redirecting attention

As they get older can do things like internal
redirection of attention (e.g. thinking of
something pleasant during unpleasant
situation)

17. Emotion Regulation
 Other components of information
processing
 Alter interpretations

“He didn’t really die, he just got frightened and
ran away”

“It’s just pretend”

18. Emotion Regulation
 Increase access to coping resources
 Regulating emotional demands of
familiar situations

19. Emotion Regulation
 Importance of social interaction
 Others can help regulate our emotions
(e.g. mothers soothing young infant)

Importance of attachment relationship
 Others can help us with our interpretations
of situations
 Modeling behavior of those around us

20. Emotion Regulation
 Individual differences
 Temperament
 Attachment
 Parenting
 Others???

21. Emotion Regulation
 Problems with the construct and
research area

22. Emotion regulation…
• …viable scientific construct?
• …proposes to account for how and why
emotions
• organize, facilitate other physiological processes (e.g.,
promote problem solving)
– and/or
• have detrimental effects (harm relationships)
• …integrates an understanding of typical and
atypical development
– emotions relate to cognition and behavior -->
developmental outcomes
Fernandez

23. • Concerns
– Use the term without a definition
• define emotion & emotion regulation
– Do not distinguish between emotion and emotion regulation
• emotions are inherently regulatory
• physiological systems aren’t clearly distinct from
emotions
– Use valence to provide information about emotion regulation
without evidence of regulatory process
• regulating & regulated
• intra/interdomain
– Optimal functioning only or includes maladaptive regulation
– Emotions understood in context
Fernandez

24. • Areas of Research
– Infant Temperament
• Reactivity (speed & intensity of initial activity)
• Self-regulation (ability to modify the intensity & duration
by engaging in behavioral strategies)
– Mother-Child Interactions
• regulated and regulating in social interactions
• quality of emotional exchanges related to child’s ability to
regulate own behavior
– Early Emotional Self-Regulation
• emergence of new (more complex) use of objects and
interactions (ages 2-4)
• manner of self-regulation is predictive of later outcomes
Fernandez

25. • Direction for New Research
– Independent measures of emotion & regulation
• Avoid confounding valence with regulation
• Use of multiple measures
– Analysis of temporal relations between emotion & regulation
• Demonstration of change over time
– Comparison of emotion & regulation in contrasting
conditions
• Help the researcher infer emotion when its barely detectible
• Disentangle activation of emotion & regulatory process
– Multiple converging measures
• Self-report, expressive behavior, and physiological change
• Heightens inferencing
Fernandez

26. Feldman, R. (2009). The development of regulatory functions
from birth to 5 years: Insights from premature infants. Child
Development, 80(2), 544-561.
 Different perspectives of regulation
 Posner & Rothbart (1998) – interplay of b/mechanisms of excitation and
inhibition
 Calkins & Fox (2002) – integration of physiological, emo, attn, cog
processes
 Neuroscience – relations b/ brainstem, limbic, and cortex to produce
behavior
 Fogel (1993) – coregulatory function of early relationships
 Common assumptions
 Integrated , hierarchically ordered system of multiple components of
functioning
 Synchronized in time
 Plastic interplay b/ coregulated and autoregulated processes in
development
 Hierarchical-integrative course of regulation development
 1st
year: Emotion regulation of external and internal stresses

Based in brain-stem function (sleep-wake cycle, vagal tone)
 2nd
year: Attention regulation to achieve goals

Based in both physiological and emotional regulation processes
 Preschool years: Self-regulation of behavior and cognition

Behavior adaptation, Executive functions, Conscience

27. Current Study
Premature infants from birth to 5 yrs
 Difficulties in physiological and behavioral regulation
Core Systems
32
wks
Neo-
nate
3
mos
6
mos
12
mos
24
mos
5
yrs
Brain-
stem
Physiological
oscillators
 
Limbic
Emotion regulation   
Attention regulation  
Cortex Self-regulation 
Goals
1) Describe expression of multiple regulatory processes in at-risk pop
2) Describe longitudinal pattern of associations across levels
- Unique and interactive effects of levels 1-3 on 4
1) Test causal paths to self-regulation
- Vagal tone  Attn regulation & behavior adaptation
- Sleep-wake cyclicity  Attn regulation

28. Current Study
 High vs. Low Medical Risk
 Neonates: less organized sleep-wake cycle, higher neg emotion (boys also at
risk)
 1 year: worse emotion reg, higher neg emotion
 2 years: worse attn reg
 5 years: poorer EF, no differences in behavior adaptation or self-restraint
 Correlations between levels of regulation
 Mild – moderate correlations among levels
 Predicting self-regulation at age 5
 Vagal tone, sleep-wake, emo reg, attn reg predicted EF
 All but sleep-wake predicted behavior problems & self-restraint
 Structural modeling

29. Results & conclusions
 High vs. Low Medical Risk
 Neonates: less organized sleep-wake cycle, higher neg emotion (boys also at risk)
 1 year: worse emotion reg, higher neg emotion
 2 years: worse attn reg at 12 but not 24 mos, worse delayed response at 24 mos
 5 years: poorer EF only, no differences in behavior adaptation or self-restraint

Vulnerability but effects diminish over time due to other protective factors
 Correlations between & within levels of regulation
 Mild – moderate correlations between levels

Regulation construct is continuous across time

Physiological measures capture basic feature of orientation to environment

Most variance not shared – suggests malleability in development
 Consistent relationship between low neg emotionality and regulatory functions
(e.g. sleep-wake cyclicity & less cry states)

Bidirectional influence between development of negative affect and regulatory
functions
Reactivity
Regulation
Negative
Emotionalit
y
Regulation
Reactivity
Environmental
stressors
Fuccillo

30. Results & conclusions (cont.)
 Structural model
 Sig better fit when indirect paths
included
 Consistent with hierarchical-integrative
model of brain maturation
 Unanswered questions
 Physiological & emotional
regulatory processes across time
 Need for person-centered analysis
& study of predictors of resilience
• Predicting self-regulation at age 5
Fuccillo