Jessica M. Dollar

Temperamental surgency and emotion regulation as predictors of childhood social competence.

The primary aims of the current study were to longitudinally examine the direct relationship between childrens temperamental surgency and social behaviors as well as the moderating role of childrens emotion regulation. A total of 90 4.5-year-old children participated in a laboratory visit where childrens temperamental surgency was rated by experimenters and childrens emotion regulation abilities were assessed. The summer before entry into first grade, childrens social behaviors with unfamiliar peers were observed in the laboratory and mothers completed a questionnaire about childrens social behaviors. Supporting our hypotheses, results revealed that children high in temperamental surgency developed more negative peer behaviors, whereas children low in temperamental surgency were more likely to develop behavioral wariness with peers. Emotion regulatory behaviors were found to moderate the relation between temperamental surgency and aggression, where high-surgent children who showed high levels of social support seeking were less likely to be rated by their mothers as high in aggression. Furthermore, results revealed that low-surgent children who showed high levels of distraction/self-soothing were more likely to show behavioral wariness around unfamiliar peers, whereas high-surgent children who used more distraction/self-soothing behaviors were rated by their mothers as lower in social competence.

Exuberant and Inhibited Children: Person-Centered Profiles and Links to Social Adjustment.

The current study aimed to substantiate and extend our understanding regarding the existence and developmental pathways of 3 distinct temperament profiles—exuberant, inhibited, and average approach—in a sample of 3.5-year-old children (n = 121). The interactions between temperamental styles and specific types of effortful control, inhibitory control and attentional control, were also examined in predicting kindergarten peer acceptance. Latent profile analysis identified 3 temperamental styles: exuberant, inhibited, and average approach. Support was found for the adaptive role of inhibitory control for exuberant children and attentional control for inhibited children in promoting peer acceptance in kindergarten. These findings add to our current understanding of temperamental profiles by using sophisticated methodology in a slightly older, community sample, as well as the importance of examining specific types of self-regulation to identify which skills lower risk for children of different temperamental styles.

Emotion: commentary. A biopsychosocial perspective on maternal psychopathology and the development of child emotion regulation.

In this commentary, the authors note that Gratz and colleagues (2014) have made an important step in understanding the effect of maternal borderline personality (BP) pathology on childrens developing emotion regulation. The emphasis on mechanisms of transmission in their article has implications for our understanding of the relationships between parental mental health and child functioning more generally. The authors of the commentary argue that using a biopsychosocial framework to understand the multiple levels that characterize the developmental system will push this kind of focus on behavioral mechanisms a step further. A biopsychosocial framework implies that a set of hierarchically organized, but reciprocally interacting, processes, from the genetic to the environmental, provide the essential elements of development (Gottlieb, 2007). Thus, in studying the effects of maternal BP pathology on child outcomes, consideration may also be given to the role of underlying biological processes that are influenced by maternal functioning and may alter child outcomes. Challenges to using this general approach in studying the effects of parental psychopathology are discussed.

Rationale, design and methods for the RIGHT Track Health Study: pathways from childhood self-regulation to cardiovascular risk in adolescence

BackgroundCardiovascular risk factors during adolescence—including obesity, elevated lipids, altered glucose metabolism, hypertension, and elevated low-grade inflammation—is cause for serious concern and potentially impacts subsequent morbidity and mortality. Despite the importance of these cardiovascular risk factors, very little is known about their developmental origins in childhood. In addition, since adolescence is a time when individuals are navigating major life changes and gaining increasing autonomy from their parents or parental figures, it is a period when control over their own health behaviors (e.g. drug use, sleep, nutrition) also increases. The primary aim of this paper is to describe the rationale, design and methods for the RIGHT Track Health Study. This study examines self-regulation as a key factor in the development of cardiovascular risk, and further explores health behaviors as an explanatory mechanism of this association. We also examine potential moderators (e.g. psychosocial adversities such as harsh parenting) of this association.Method/designRIGHT Track is a longitudinal study that investigates social and emotional development. The RIGHT Track Health Study prospectively follows participants from age 2 through young adulthood in an effort to understand how self-regulatory behavior throughout childhood alters the trajectories of various cardiovascular risk factors during late adolescence via health behaviors. Individuals from RIGHT Track were re-contacted and invited to participate in adolescent data collection (~16.5, 17.5 and 18+ years old). Individuals completed assessments of body composition, anthropometric indicators, fitness testing (via peak oxygen consumption), heart rate variability during orthostatic challenge, 7-day accelerometry for physical activity and sleep, 24-h dietary recalls, and blood analysis for biomarkers related to metabolic syndrome, inflammatory status and various hormones and cytokines. Individuals also completed extensive self-report measures on diet and eating regulation, physical activity and sedentary behaviors, sleep, substance use, medical history, medication use and a laboratory-day checklist, which chronicled previous day activities and menstrual information for female participants.DiscussionInsights emerging from this analysis can help researchers and public health policy administrators target intervention efforts in early childhood, when preventing chronic disease is most cost-effective and behavior is more malleable.

Self-regulation as a predictor of patterns of change in externalizing behaviors from infancy to adolescence

We examined associations between specific self-regulatory mechanisms and externalizing behavior patterns from ages 2 to 15 (N = 443). The relation between multiple self-regulatory indicators across multiple domains (i.e., physiological, attentional, emotional, and behavioral) at age 2 and at age 5 and group membership in four distinct externalizing trajectories was examined. By examining each of these self-regulatory processes in combination with one another, and therefore accounting for their shared variance, we aimed to better understand which specific self-regulatory skills were associated most strongly with externalizing behavioral patterns. Findings suggest that behavioral inhibitory control and emotion regulation are particularly important in distinguishing between children who show normative declines in externalizing behaviors across early childhood and those who demonstrate high levels through adolescence.

Temperamental Anger and Positive Reactivity and the Development of Social Skills: Implications for Academic Competence During Preadolescence

ABSTRACT Research Findings: This study examines whether the development of social skills during childhood serves as a mechanism through which temperamental anger and positive reactivity in toddlerhood influence children’s academic competence during preadolescence (N = 406). Temperamental anger at age 2 was negatively associated with children’s social skills at age 7; in turn, children’s social skills at age 7 were positively associated with teacher reports of academic performance and negatively associated with child and teacher reports of school problems at age 10. All 3 indirect effects were significant, which suggests that children’s social skills at age 7 is one mechanism through which temperamental anger at age 2 is associated with age 10 child- and teacher-reported school problems. Temperamental positive reactivity was not associated with children’s social skills or academic competence. Practice or Policy: Results provide support for early entry points to teach toddlers, especially those high in anger reactivity, the skills to engage in socially appropriate interactions with classmates and teachers, which may lessen subsequent academic challenges.

Childhood self-regulation as a mechanism through which early overcontrolling parenting is associated with adjustment in preadolescence.

We examined longitudinal associations across an 8-year time span between overcontrolling parenting during toddlerhood, self-regulation during early childhood, and social, emotional, and academic adjustment in preadolescence (N = 422). Overcontrolling parenting, emotion regulation (ER), and inhibitory control (IC) were observed in the laboratory; preadolescent adjustment was teacher-reported and child self-reported. Results from path analysis indicated that overcontrolling parenting at age 2 was associated negatively with ER and IC at age 5, which, in turn, were associated with more child-reported emotional and school problems, fewer teacher-reported social skills, and less teacher-reported academic productivity at age 10. These effects held even when controlling for prior levels of adjustment at age 5, suggesting that ER and IC in early childhood may be associated with increases and decreases in social, emotional, and academic functioning from childhood to preadolescence. Finally, indirect effects from overcontrolling parenting at age 2 to preadolescent outcomes at age 10 were significant, both through IC and ER at age 5. These results support the notion that parenting during toddlerhood is associated with child adjustment into adolescence through its relation with early developing self-regulatory skills.