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Updated: Apr 11, 2026

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
What enhances the development of emotion understanding in young children? A longitudinal study of interpersonal
Silja B Kårstad1,2, Lars Wichstrøm1,2,3, Trude Reinfjell1
1Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Abstract:
We studied potential determinants of the development of children's emotion understanding (EU) from age 4 to 6 in a Norwegian community sample (N = 974) using the Test of Emotion Comprehension. Interpersonal predictors included the accuracy of parental mentalization, parental emotional availability, and teacher-reported child social skills. Intrapersonal child factors were child gender and verbal skills. Overall, children's EU increased significantly over time. After adjusting for child gender, age-4 EU, and parental socio-economic status, greater child verbal and social skills and greater parental mentalization each uniquely predicted growth in EU. Results are discussed in terms of theory and research on children's EU and parents' emotion socialization.
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