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Updated: Aug 23, 2025

Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
Changes in children's anger, sadness, and persistence across blocked goals: Implications for self-regulation
Lin Tan1, Eunkyung Shin2, Kenyon Page3
1Department of Health Behavior and Health Systems, The University of North Texas Health Science Center, Fort Worth, Texas, USA.
Abstract:
The current study took a person-centered approach to examine the heterogeneity of changes in children's emotions and persistence during a goal-blocking task and examined how different profiles of emotions and persistence related to children's self-regulation. Children's anger, sadness, and persistence were rated in a goal-blocking task in toddlerhood (T1; N = 140, 72 boys, Mage = 2.67 years, 90.7% White) and preschool (T2). Children's self-regulation, specifically sustained attention and engagement, was assessed at T1, T2, and early school-age (T3) from 2005 to 2012. Growth mixture modeling revealed two classes of children at T1 and three classes at T2 with different patterns of anger, sadness, and persistence. Children's classification at T2, but not T1, significantly predicted their sustained attention and engagement both concurrently and longitudinally.
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