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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

Child temperament moderates effects of parent-child mutuality on self-regulation: a relationship-based path for

Sanghag Kim1, Grazyna Kochanska

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. sanghagkim@uiowa.edu

Child Development
|June 8, 2012
PubMed

Insights

Infants' negative emotionality influences how parent-child relationships affect self-regulation. Highly negative infants thrive in responsive relationships, while others show no effect, supporting the differential susceptibility model.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Child Psychology
  • Behavioral Science

Background:

  • Parent-child relationships significantly impact child development.
  • Mutually responsive orientation (MRO) is a key aspect of positive parent-child interactions.
  • Infants' individual differences, such as negative emotionality, may moderate these effects.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if infants' negative emotionality moderates the association between parent-child MRO and children's self-regulation.
  • To differentiate between the diathesis-stress and differential susceptibility models in this context.

Main Methods:

  • Longitudinal study of 102 infants.
  • Negative emotionality assessed at 7 months.
  • MRO coded at 15 months.
  • Self-regulation measured at 25 months using effortful control tasks and compliance.

Main Results:

  • Negative emotionality moderated the mother-child MRO-self-regulation link.
  • Highly negative infants showed better self-regulation with high MRO and poorer with low MRO.
  • Infants low in negative emotionality did not show a link between MRO and self-regulation.
  • No moderation effect was found for father-child MRO.

Conclusions:

  • Infants' negative emotionality is a crucial factor in understanding the impact of MRO on self-regulation.
  • Findings support the differential susceptibility model, indicating sensitive periods where environmental influences are amplified by individual traits.
  • The findings highlight the importance of sensitive parenting for infants prone to negative emotionality.

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