دانلود مقاله ISI انگلیسی شماره 38817
ترجمه فارسی عنوان مقاله

بازی سرد: خو، تنظیم احساسات و رفتار اجتماعی در کودکان پیش دبستانی

عنوان انگلیسی
Playing it cool: Temperament, emotion regulation, and social behavior in preschoolers
کد مقاله سال انتشار تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی
38817 2004 25 صفحه PDF
منبع

Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)

Journal : Journal of School Psychology, Volume 42, Issue 6, November–December 2004, Pages 419–443

ترجمه کلمات کلیدی
توسعه عاطفی - عاطفی کنترل - روانی توسعه - پیش دبستانی آموزش و پرورش - عاطفی - شخصیت - توسعه به دوران کودکی
کلمات کلیدی انگلیسی
Emotional-development; Emotional-control; Psychosocial-development; Preschool-education; Emotionality; Personality; Early-childhood development
پیش نمایش مقاله
پیش نمایش مقاله  بازی سرد: خو، تنظیم احساسات و رفتار اجتماعی در کودکان پیش دبستانی

چکیده انگلیسی

Abstract The contributions of temperamental styles and emotional coping strategies to the development of preschoolers' social competence and behavior problems were investigated. The ability to cope with emotion was found to be more important than temperament alone in the development of prosocial behavior. Our results indicate that the use of passive coping strategies may play a significant role in the development of maladaptive behaviors in young children. Specifically, the use of passive coping strategies was found to moderate the relationship between temperament dimensions in predicting externalizing and internalizing maladaptive behaviors. When combined with extremely negative temperamental dispositions, just facing the problems was discovered to be beneficial for preschoolers, which encourages the use of preventative or interventional strategies in the classroom to develop constructive emotion regulation skills in young children.

مقدمه انگلیسی

Introduction A key task in early childhood is the development of social competence, learning how to manage social situations with individuals inside and outside of the family system, especially during interactions with peers. Social competence is important for children in that it predicts both social and academic outcomes, such as school readiness (Carlton & Winsler, 1999) and positive attitudes toward school, which can lead to higher achievement (Ladd, 1990, Ladd et al., 1999 and Ladd et al., 1996). In the study of preschoolers' social competence, the emergence of emotion regulation is vital to the creation and maintenance of positive relationships with peers (Denham et al., 2003); children who thrive in social interactions with peers, particularly those who succeed in negative interactions, effectively regulate their own emotions and subsequent emotion-related behaviors (Denham, Blair, Schmidt, & DeMulder, 2002). Temperament also exerts a strong influence on emotional development during early childhood as “research is revealing the large extent to which the task of learning how to manage one's emotions … is a different challenge for children with different temperaments…” (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000, p. 114). Emotion regulation has been linked to numerous aspects of social functioning in preschoolers, including socially appropriate behavior, popularity with peers, adjustment, shyness, and sympathy (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2002). Emotion regulation accounts for complex processes beyond the simple expression of emotion; it accounts for how and why emotions direct or disrupt psychological processes, such as the ability to focus attention, promote problem solving, and support relationships (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004). A growing research base lends support to the possibility of emotion regulation as a—perhaps the—critical component of emotional competence necessary for effective interactions with others in the most stressful situations. How children learn to cope with stressful, negative interactions includes not only dealing with their own feelings of distress and anger, but also with their reactivity to the negative emotions of others ( Eisenberg & Fabes, 1992), which is vital to the development and maintenance of social relationships. Cole, Michel, and O'Donnell-Teti (1994) take the position that individual variations in the characteristics of emotion regulation become qualities of an individual's personality. It is understood that individual differences in emotion regulation are normal. However, these authors also point out that when certain basic patterns of emotion regulation compromise or interfere with emotional and social functioning, these patterns may contribute to or become symptoms of psychopathology. There are a number of consistent emotional dysregulatory characteristics associated with various clinical disorders, including inappropriate affect, anxiety, blunted or restricted affect, sustained sorrow, dejection or fear, mood swings, or the predominance of one emotion and the relative absence of another (Cole et al., 1994). In terms of children's everyday behavior that can begin a trajectory toward such clinical disorder, aggression is, for example, a maladaptive means of coping with one's own and/or others' anger that potentially can result in disastrous consequences. Although many children are oppositional and defiant during the preschool years, when such behaviors are frequent, intense, or persistent beyond the normal developmental course, they are symptomatic of an externalizing disorder. Behavioral problems of preschool children that include aggressive behavior toward people, animals, or property may be reflective of an externalizing disorder with early onset, as opposed to later onset, is also more likely to predict antisocial behavior into adolescence and adulthood (Loeber, Lahey, & Thomas, 1991). Haapasalo and Tremblay (1994) and Tremblay, Boulerice, Arseneault, and Niscale (1995) have found that disruptive behavior problems in kindergarteners are powerful warning signs for future antisocial behavior. Beiderman, Mick, Faraone and Burback (2001) have also found that persistent forms of conduct disorder may have a greater biological basis, and when combined with problems with inhibitory control or ADHD have a poorer prognosis. Exploring the process through which children successfully or unsuccessfully regulate their anger and subsequent behavior enables the identification of those patterns of behavior that may be reflective of maladjustment or potential emotional disorders. The importance of emotional adjustment and regulation on child outcomes goes beyond the ability to predict or prevent emotional disorders. A growing research base indicates that early emotional adjustment plays a significant part in children's success in academic contexts (e.g., Raver, 2004). Raver (2004) describes several ways in which children with emotional difficulties are likely to suffer academically. First, it is difficult to teach disruptive children, they spend less time on task and receive less feedback and instruction. Emotionally maladjusted children also appear less likely to benefit from cooperative learning experiences with peers. As a result of having fewer rewarding experiences with teachers and peers, these children may ultimately exhibit less interest in and motivation for school success. School psychologists developing interventions for these children would benefit from a clearer understanding of how adaptive and maladaptive emotional coping skills emerge. Although there is a growing amount of new research investigating the influence of emotion regulation on a variety of potential social–emotional outcomes, there is still debate as to the precise definition of emotion regulation. Thompson (1994) recommended the following definition of emotion regulation, “… the extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions … to accomplish one's goals” (pp. 27–28). Thompson also identified a broad range of loosely related processes associated with emotional regulation, including aspects of emotionality or temperament (i.e., internal cues) present in early development, as well as neurological processes, information processing, external supports, and prior experiences which shape emotion regulation over the course of development. Cole et al. (2004) have recently defined emotional self-regulation as “…the dynamic interaction of multiple behavioral, psychophysiological, attentional, and affective systems that allow young children to participate effectively in their social world”. Gross (1998) defined emotion regulation as the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions. In this definition, emotion regulation includes coping, mood regulation, mood repair, defense, and affect regulation. Here, coping is differentiated from global emotion regulation by its principal concentration on reducing negative emotional experiences. Each of these definitions suggests that emotion regulation includes not only affective experiences, but cognitive and behavioral processes as well. Research focused on different combinations of temperamental characteristics and regulatory behaviors, and their prediction of quality of social functioning over time, is limited (Eisenberg et al., 2002). The role of specific types of negative emotionality in combination with various approaches to regulation in predicting social competence and adjustment is a subtopic of this line of inquiry that is also in the rudimentary stages of investigation (Eisenberg et al., 2002). Given the association of temperament with definitions of emotion regulation and the strong influence of temperament on behavior during early childhood (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000), it is important to further explore how predispositions toward different types of temperament may interact with the ability to regulate or cope with negative emotional experiences in predicting social outcomes for young children. From both an academic and mental health perspective, understanding interactions between biologically based temperament and emotion regulation skills is important for two reasons. First, a better understanding could assist in the identification of precisely what may cause an individual child to be aggressive or prosocial, adjusted or maladjusted. Second, it could assist in the development of strategies to aid the child who may be having difficulties in social and emotional competence. Temperament Among the various models of temperament (see Buss & Plomin, 1984, Derryberry & Rothbart, 1988 and Thomas & Chess, 1977), some commonalities in defining early temperament dimensions have emerged: positive emotionality, negative emotionality, and effortful control (see Rothbart & Bates, 1998). The dimension of effortful control can be described as proneness toward attentional focusing and/or perceptual sensitivity (Compas, Connor-Smith, & Jaser, 2004). In the extensive work of Rothbart and Bates (1998), studies of temperament in school-age children, the dimension of negative emotionality includes irritability and frustration combined with fearfulness, tendencies to discomfort, and sadness. In other studies, including those investigating younger children, two forms of negative emotionality emerged as separate factors: fear/anxiety and irritability/frustration. As the dimensions of temperament have become more accurately defined, research exploring the associations between temperament and behavioral adjustment has also advanced; clear associations have been found between temperament and both immediate and later adjustment (for reviews, see Rothbart & Bates, 1998, Bates, 1989 and Rothbart et al., 1995). Negative emotionality, in particular, appears to frequently be predictive of externalizing adjustment problems, but often with some prediction of internalizing problems as well (Seifer, 2000). More specific dimensions of negative emotionality may relate differently to varying forms of behavior problems (Eisenberg et al., 2002 and Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Inhibitory dimensions of negative emotionality (e.g., emotions such as sadness and fear) are more predictive of socially withdrawn behavior; in contrast, overt dimensions of negative emotionality (e.g., emotions such as anger, frustration) are more predictive of either externalizing problems or a combination of internalizing or externalizing problems (Eisenberg et al., 2002 and Rothbart & Bates, 1998). The relation between temperament dimensions and the development of socially competent behavior has received much less attention than associations with maladaptive behavior; however, temperament dimensions have been found to predict future prosocial behavior. The vast majority of the literature reports direct linear effects of temperament on social competence (for recent reviews, see Rothbart & Bates, 1998, Sanson et al., 2002 and Seifer, 2000). For example, preschoolers with soothable, persistent, or “easy” temperaments are more likely to display socially competent behavior (Farver & Branstetter, 1994, Kochanska, 1997 and Youngblade & Mulvihill, 1998) than their less “easy” peers. Studies including both socially competent and socially incompetent outcomes have, however, found consistently stronger direct associations of temperament characteristics with problematic behaviors, as compared to prosocial outcomes (e.g., Billman & McDevitt, 1980 and Nelson et al., 1999). Additional research has found that specific temperament dimensions may relate in a differentiated way to the development of social competence; there may be other factors interacting with characteristics of temperament in predicting socially competent behavior (Rothbart & Bates, 1998 and Thomas et al., 1968). Many researchers believe that temperament conditions a developmental process that determines adjustment (Rothbart & Bates, 1998). One explanation of this prediction can be represented as a vulnerability or predisposition model; early temperamental differences may be transformed through developmental processes into more complex forms of adjustment (Rothbart & Bates, 1998). Early temperament may predispose an individual to certain outcomes; nonetheless, other developmental processes may play a significant role in predicting adjustment. Association between temperament and emotion regulation Emotion regulation may be a potential candidate as a developmental process influenced by temperamental predispositions and that predicts a more complex form of adjustment. Researchers addressing the link between temperament and emotion regulation have found temperament and regulation jointly predict numerous aspects of social functioning, including socially skilled behaviors, prosocial behavior, adjustment, and peer acceptance (Eisenberg et al., 2002). For example, emotion regulation has been found to be a better predictor than temperament of low rates of problem behavior for children high in negative emotionality; conversely, regulation is a poorer predictor of outcomes for children who are not prone to negative emotions (Eisenberg et al., 2000, Eisenberg et al., 1996 and Eisenberg et al., 2002). Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, et al. (1996) and Eisenberg, Fabes, Murphy, et al. (1996) also discovered that negative temperament predicted increasingly greater problem behavior as levels of self-regulation declined. These findings suggest that, although temperament and regulation provide some unique prediction of social competence and problem behavior, the effects of their interaction appear to predict the quality of children's social functioning more accurately than direct linear effects (Eisenberg et al., 2002). Eisenberg and Fabes' (1992) and Eisenberg et al.'s (2002) model of emotion regulation outlines how temperament and three styles of regulation (highly inhibited, undercontrolled, optimally regulated) can produce adaptive or maladaptive social functioning. According to the Eisenberg et al. model, undercontrolled children are considered generally low in prosocial behavior overall and utilize nonconstructive means of regulating with emotions. Children in this group whose temperament is characterized by moderately high levels of emotional intensity are viewed as impulsive and active, easily frustrated, and most likely to exhibit reactive aggression. It is expected that these children are less popular with peers due to their impulsivity, lack of social skills, and tendency toward aggression. Those children who are described as highly inhibited are more likely to demonstrate socially withdrawn behavior and more likely to experience temperament that is predisposed toward unhappiness and regulatory styles that are highly controlled and lack flexibility. Children who are optimally regulated exhibit the most positive, adaptive behavior. These children are flexible and use adaptive means of coping with emotions. They are seen as sociable, relatively popular, and socially competent. In this model, prosocial, socially competent behavior is associated with individual variations in optimal regulation and temperament that is characterized by a tendency to experience highly intense positive, rather than negative, emotions. The present study This study proposed to further explore the development of social competence and incompetence, including externalizing and internalizing behavior, as related to interactions between patterns of temperament (as defined by Rothbart & Bates, 1998) and emotion regulation. As emotion regulation does not yet have a universally agreed upon definition, the study focuses on emotion regulatory coping, which is defined as the modification of emotional reactions when confronted with an emotionally arousing problem situation ( Denham, 1998, Gross, 1998 and Losoya et al., 1998), and includes the use of emotional and cognitive strategies. Three types of specific emotional coping patterns were investigated, as described by Eisenberg et al. (1993): constructive coping (use of cognitive problem-solving strategies), passive coping (avoidance and/or denial of the problem), and emotional venting (emotional release of frustration). Emotion regulation has been shown to be significantly related to behavioral outcomes (see Eisenberg et al., 2002); therefore, a significant relationship between styles of emotion regulatory coping and social competence and behavior problems was expected. Additionally, emotion regulation has been found to be a stronger predictor than temperament of low rates of problem behavior for children high in negative emotionality and a weaker predictor of outcomes for children low in negative emotionality (Eisenberg et al., 2000, Eisenberg et al., 1996 and Eisenberg et al., 2002). For example, the child who is predisposed to having a highly negative temperament, if the use of constructive regulation skills is also high, he or she may still become socially competent. In this case, regulation skills may moderate the effects of the child's biologically based temperament on his or her social behavior. Therefore, it was expected that emotion regulation strategies would moderate the influence of temperament on social behavior, allowing for prosocial behavior in the preschool classroom, even if children are highly negative temperamentally. It was also expected that emotion regulatory strategies would moderate the influence of temperament on the development of problem behaviors. Specifically, it was believed that there would be an interaction between temperament and emotion regulatory coping strategies in predicting both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems in the classroom.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

Conclusions The study of the intricate relations between aspects of temperament and emotion regulation and their prediction of quality of social functioning over time is in the early stages of exploration. Most of the previous research investigating temperament–emotion regulation associations has focused on predicting social competence and externalizing problems. Our results indicate that the use of passive coping strategies may play a significant role in how temperament influences the development of both externalizing and internalizing behaviors in young children. The results of the present study may be an important step in explaining how different negative emotions, in combination with regulation, may predict problems in social–emotional adjustment. Future research will include lines of study that extend our understanding of temperament and emotion regulation, and the prediction of quality of social functioning while addressing some of the current limitations. It will be important to explore temperament–emotion regulation interactions across more diverse demographic groups, as research indicates socialization practices may differ across racial, cultural, and socioeconomic groups. Upcoming research will also need to continue to define the construct of emotion regulation, how it differs from other constructs of emotional development, and how it can best be measured. Although valuable, most research currently relies on parent and teacher reports of emotional and behavioral processes in children and it will be necessary to identify new ways in which to validly measure emotion regulation. In addition, the study of early emotional development will be most useful when it affords us opportunities for early identification and intervention; longitudinal studies that more conclusively connect early processes to later processes will facilitate our ability to more accurately identify and intervene with those children who are most at risk. Our findings also support the wealth of information available in the current early childhood curricula on how to promote the development of social and emotional competence. For a comprehensive review on the current state of early childhood social and emotional prevention and intervention programming and recommendations for making programming work, see Denham and Burton (2003). By using evidence-based research to inform a team approach to teaching emotion regulation skills that includes both parents and teachers, children can better learn to skillfully navigate social interactions.