Pamela W. Garner

Emotion Regulation in Low‐income Preschoolers

The present study was concerned with identifying the causes of low-income preschoolers’ negative emotions and their most common regulation responses. The relations of family socialization practices and temperament to the children’s emotion regulation skills were also examined. Ninety predominantly minority low-income preschoolers (46 boys) and their mothers participated. During visits to the children’s preschools, observers watched for expressions of anger and sadness, and recorded the causes of the displays and the children’s reactions. Mothers reported on their emotion socialization and discipline practices and their children’s temperament. Although the children expressed more anger than sadness, they used more constructive reactions in response to sadness and more non-constructive reactions in response to anger. Maternal reports of appropriate family emotion were associated with low levels of non-constructive regulation responses to anger and sadness whereas reports of inconsistent parental discipline were generally associated with non-constructive regulation responses. All in all, the findings of this study are in accord with findings on middle-income children and indicate that low- and middle-income children are more alike than different with regard to the regulation of negative emotion in the peer environment.

The relations of emotional role taking, affective/moral attributions, and emotional display rule knowledge to low-income school-age children's social competence

Numerous studies have shown that emotional knowledge is positively related to peer competence and prosocial behavior in early childhood. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether emotional understanding continues to impact childrens social competence once they reach middle childhood. Thirty-nine low-income third and fourth graders were administered three emotional knowledge tasks: (a) emotional role taking, (b) knowledge of affective attributions, and (c) knowledge of emotional display rules. The children also reported on the quality of their peer relations and teachers provided ratings of the childrens prosocial behavior. Results revealed that childrens attributions of aggression and denial were positively related to their reports of negative peer interactions. Childrens prosocial behavior was positively predicted by emotional role-taking ability and knowledge of prosocial display rules. This study identifies the affective variables that are most relevant for the development of healthy peer relationships and responsible prosocial behavior for school-age children. These findings underscore the importance of emotional knowledge for childrens social functioning across early and middle childhood.