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Updated: May 31, 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

Self-regulation of negative affect at 5 and 10 months

Katherine C Morasch1, Martha Ann Bell

  • 1Department of Psychology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA.

Developmental Psychobiology
|July 16, 2011
PubMed

Insights

Infant attentional control impacts negative emotion regulation. By 10 months, behavioral, cardiac, and parent-reported attention predicted reduced negative affect after stress, indicating developing regulatory mechanisms.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Infant Behavior

Background:

  • Cognition-emotion integration is crucial for infant development.
  • Attentional control plays a key role in regulating negative affect.
  • Understanding these processes informs early childhood development and interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore how attentional control affects negative affect regulation in infants.
  • To examine developmental changes in this relationship from 5 to 10 months.
  • To investigate the predictive power of different attentional control measures.

Main Methods:

  • Longitudinal study of 106 infants.
  • Behavioral (looking time), physiological (cardiac reactivity), and parent-report measures of attentional control.
  • Assessment before and after a mild stressor at 5 and 10 months.

Main Results:

  • At 5 months, only cardiac reactivity changes predicted negative affect.
  • By 10 months, behavioral, cardiac, and parent-report attentional control measures uniquely predicted post-distress negative affect.
  • Early attentional control at 5 months did not predict later negative affect at 10 months.

Conclusions:

  • Attentional control's role in negative affect regulation emerges and solidifies between 5 and 10 months.
  • Development of frontally mediated regulatory mechanisms is implicated.
  • Findings highlight the dynamic interplay between cognitive and emotional development in infancy.

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