کنترل مهاری و تنظیم احساسات در کودکان پیش دبستانی

This research investigated the relation between individual differences in inhibitory control and emotion regulation. Preschool children (N = 53) ages 4–6 (M = 5; 0) were assessed on brief batteries of inhibitory control of prepotent responses and emotion regulation. Individual differences in inhibitory control were significantly correlated with children's ability to regulate their emotions. This relation held up even after controlling for age and verbal ability, and persisted for both Emotion Understanding and “online” control of emotional expressions that were negative (Disappointing Gift) or positive (Secret Keeping). Parent report of children's self-control and emotion regulation corroborated the behavioral results. These findings suggest that executive control of attention, action, and emotion are skills that develop in concert in the preschool period. However, there was also evidence of a quadratic relation in which emotion regulation was optimal at intermediate levels of inhibition, highlighting the interplay of both cognitive control and temperament in socio-emotional functioning.

The ability to control potentially interfering thought processes and actions develops rapidly in the preschool period. Children of age 3 years have difficulty on tasks that require inhibitory control of attention and motor responses, such as suppressing a dominant response in accordance with rules. By 5 years of age they are much more proficient at these tasks (for a summary see Carlson, 2005). At the same time, children improve in the ability to regulate the experience of emotions by monitoring their expressive behavior. Saarni (1984) found that young children made an attempt to inhibit negative expressions upon receiving an undesirable gift, but they had trouble neutralizing their expressions. Older children were more likely to attempt to feign positive expressions of emotion, although there were individual differences in these skills at all ages. Explaining individual differences in emotion regulation that appear early in childhood is an important undertaking because older children who have difficulty managing emotions (e.g., anger) are at risk for developing behavioral disorders (Cole, Michel, & Teti, 1994; Dodge & Garber, 1991). Both the control of attention and action in relatively unemotional “cool” contexts and the control of emotional expressions in affectively charged “hot” contexts appear to have key requirements in common: prevention of an impulsive response and carrying out an opposite act. Furthermore, deficits in attention and emotion regulation tend to co-occur in certain atypical and at-risk populations, such as children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (Barkley, 1997). Surprisingly, however, little research has examined the relation between children's regulation of action and emotion. Zelazo and Müller (2002) described potentially separate and shared neuroanatominal pathways for executive function in cool and hot task paradigms, but the question remains as to whether inhibitory control of prepotent responses and online emotion regulation in a social context are overlapping or independent skills at the level of individual differences. The aim of the present study was to assess the relation between individual differences in the deliberate control over actions and emotional expressions in typically developing preschool children.