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Updated: Jul 8, 2026

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
08:09

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood

Published on: February 11, 2017

Antisocial, angry, and unsympathetic: "hard-to-manage" preschoolers' peer problems and possible cognitive influences

C Hughes1, A White, J Sharpen

  • 1Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. clare.hughes@iop.kcl.ac.uk

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines
|April 6, 2000
PubMed

Insights

Preschoolers with disruptive behavior show more antisocial actions and negative emotions, and less empathy towards friends. This suggests behavioral regulation, not social understanding, is key to their problems.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Child Psychiatry
  • Social Neuroscience

Background:

  • Preschool-aged disruptive children often exhibit social and emotional challenges.
  • Previous research relied on parent/teacher reports, lacking direct behavioral observation.
  • Understanding the social interaction dynamics of these children is crucial for early intervention.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To directly observe and analyze dyadic social interactions of preschool-aged disruptive children with their friends.
  • To investigate the relationship between disruptive behavior, emotional regulation, empathy, and cognitive skills in early childhood.
  • To differentiate the contributions of behavioral regulation versus social understanding to interpersonal problems in disruptive preschoolers.

Main Methods:

  • Filmed 40 disruptive and 40 control preschoolers (mean age 52 months) interacting with a best friend on two occasions.
  • Transcribed and coded videos for antisocial behavior, negative emotions, and empathic/prosocial responses to friend's distress.
  • Assessed executive function skills (planning, inhibitory control) and mental-state understanding (false-belief, affective perspective-taking).

Main Results:

  • Disruptive children displayed significantly higher rates of antisocial behavior and negative emotions compared to controls.
  • Disruptive children showed significantly lower rates of empathic/prosocial responses to a friend's distress.
  • Antisocial behaviors correlated with poorer executive control; mental-state understanding was not significantly linked to observed social behaviors.

Conclusions:

  • Young disruptive children's interpersonal difficulties may stem more from behavioral regulation deficits than from social understanding impairments.
  • Direct observation reveals distinct interaction patterns in disruptive preschoolers, highlighting issues with emotional and behavioral control.
  • Findings suggest a need for interventions targeting behavioral regulation in preschool-aged children exhibiting disruptive behaviors, pending replication with larger samples.

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