Methodological implications of the affect revolution: a 35-year review of emotion regulation assessment in children.

This investigation analyzed the methods used over the past 35 years to study emotion regulation (ER) in children. Articles published from 1975 through 2010 were identified in 42 child clinical, developmental, and emotion psychology journals. Overall, 61.1% of published ER articles relied on one method and 23.6% used two methods. Analyses revealed (a) 82.8% of published ER research occurring within the past decade; (b) higher rates of observational methods with infant and toddler/preschool samples, but more use of self-report methodology with middle childhood and adolescent samples; (c) a longer history of published ER research with samples of infants to 5-year-olds, including the use of more longitudinal design, compared with older samples; and (d) a positive association between journal impact ratings and the use of physiological and observational measurement. Review of the measurement tools used to capture ER revealed great diversity in how emotion processes are understood and evaluated.

[1]  S. Calkins,et al.  Frustration in Infancy: Implications for Emotion Regulation, Physiological Processes, and Temperament. , 2002, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[2]  R. DelCarmen-Wiggins.  Introduction to the Special Section: Transformative Research on Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation , 2008 .

[3]  Shelomo Breznitz,et al.  Handbook of Stress: Theoretical and Clinical Aspects , 1993 .

[4]  B. B. Rossman,et al.  School-age children's perceptions of coping with distress: strategies for emotion regulation and the moderation of adjustment. , 1992, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[5]  C. Saarni.  Children's Understanding of Display Rules for Expressive Behavior. , 1979 .

[6]  M. Hersen,et al.  Handbook of child and adolescent assessment , 1993 .

[7]  Ulrich Müller,,et al.  The anger–distress model of temper tantrums: associations with emotional reactivity and emotional competence , 2010 .

[8]  The regulation of negative reactivity in infancy: function and development , 1995 .

[9]  Stephen W. Porges,et al.  Vagal tone: An autonomic mediator of affect , 1991 .

[10]  E. Diener,et al.  Handbook of Multimethod Measurement in Psychology , 2005 .

[11]  R. Parke,et al.  Display Rule Application in a Disappointing Situation and Children's Emotional Reactivity: Relations with Social Competence. , 2000 .

[12]  K. Grossmann,et al.  Infant-mother attachment at twelve months and style of interaction with a stranger at the age of three years , 1985 .

[13]  S. Hinshaw,et al.  Emotion Regulation and Parenting in AD/HD and Comparison Boys: Linkages with Social Behaviors and Peer Preference , 2000, Journal of abnormal child psychology.

[14]  J. Zeman,et al.  Socialization of children's emotion regulation in mother–child dyads: A developmental psychopathology perspective , 2001, Development and Psychopathology.

[15]  O. John,et al.  Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[16]  Kurt W. Fischer,et al.  Self-conscious emotions: The psychology of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride. , 1995 .

[17]  Coping with background anger in early childhood. , 1987, Child development.

[18]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Brain development during childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal MRI study , 1999, Nature Neuroscience.

[19]  G. Kochanska,et al.  Effortful control in early childhood: continuity and change, antecedents, and implications for social development. , 2000, Developmental psychology.

[20]  N. Haan.  The assessment of coping, defense, and stress. , 1993 .

[21]  G. Caprara,et al.  Indicators of impulsive aggression: Present status of research on irritability and Emotional Susceptibility Scales. , 1985 .

[22]  M. Rothbart,et al.  Temperament and social behavior in childhood , 1994 .

[23]  J. Garber,et al.  Display rules for anger, sadness, and pain: it depends on who is watching. , 1996, Child development.

[24]  E. Stein,et al.  Right hemispheric dominance of inhibitory control: an event-related functional MRI study. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[25]  C. Zeanah,et al.  Relationship assessment in infant mental health , 1997 .

[26]  B. Vohr,et al.  Behavioral responsiveness in preterm infants with intraventricular hemorrhage. , 1988, Pediatrics.

[27]  R. Weiss.  The developmental course of marital dysfunction , 1998 .

[28]  M. Putallaz,et al.  Predicting children's sociometric status from their behavior. , 1983 .

[29]  Tomáš Paus,et al.  Brain Development during Childhood and Adolescence , 2011 .

[30]  C. Zahn-Waxler,et al.  Expressive Control during a Disappointment: Variations Related to Preschoolers' Behavior Problems. , 1994 .

[31]  R. Feldman,et al.  Affect regulation and synchrony in mother—infant play as precursors to the development of symbolic competence , 1997 .

[32]  Christopher P. Niemiec,et al.  The emotional and academic consequences of parental conditional regard: comparing conditional positive regard, conditional negative regard, and autonomy support as parenting practices. , 2009, Developmental psychology.

[33]  E. DeMulder,et al.  Preschool emotional competence: pathway to social competence? , 2003, Child development.

[34]  T. Stengel.  The Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale , 1981 .

[35]  Cornelia Mohr,et al.  Genetic and attachment influences on adolescents' regulation of autonomy and aggressiveness. , 2009, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[36]  B. Compas,et al.  Responses to stress in adolescence: measurement of coping and involuntary stress responses. , 2000, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[37]  C. Zahn-Waxler,et al.  Japanese and United States preschool children's responses to conflict and distress. , 1996, Child development.

[38]  M. Bakermans-Kranenburg,et al.  Stress regulation in adolescents: physiological reactivity during the adult attachment interview and conflict interaction. , 2008, Child development.

[39]  Nancy L. McElwain,et al.  Emotion regulation in context: the jealousy complex between young siblings and its relations with child and family characteristics. , 2002, Child development.

[40]  P. Zelazo,et al.  Changes in the neural bases of emotion regulation associated with clinical improvement in children with behavior problems , 2008, Development and Psychopathology.

[41]  S. Hinshaw,et al.  Peer relationships in boys with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder with and without comorbid aggression , 1995, Development and Psychopathology.

[42]  John M. Gottman,et al.  Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: Theoretical models and preliminary data. , 1996 .

[43]  J. Zeman,et al.  Development and Initial Validation of the Children's Sadness Management Scale , 2001 .

[44]  R. Plomin,et al.  Temperament in early childhood. , 1977, Journal of personality assessment.

[45]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  The relations of children's emotion regulation to their vicarious emotional responses and comforting behaviors. , 1994, Child development.

[46]  K. Kerns,et al.  Emotion regulation as a mediator of associations between mother-child attachment and peer relationships in middle childhood. , 2000, Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association.

[47]  D. Barnett,et al.  Adaptive Emotion Regulation among Low-Income African American Children , 2007 .

[48]  Patrick T. Davies,et al.  Developmental Psychopathology and Family Process: Theory, Research, and Clinical Implications , 2000 .

[49]  Dante Cicchetti,et al.  Emotion and resilience: A multilevel investigation of hemispheric electroencephalogram asymmetry and emotion regulation in maltreated and nonmaltreated children , 2007, Development and Psychopathology.

[50]  H. Goldsmith,et al.  Fear and anger regulation in infancy: effects on the temporal dynamics of affective expression. , 1998, Child development.

[51]  Gian Vittorio Caprara,et al.  Indicators of aggression: The dissipation-rumination scale , 1986 .

[52]  C. B. Frankel,et al.  On the nature of emotion regulation. , 2004, Child development.

[53]  G. Knight,et al.  Introduction to the Special Section: Measurement Equivalence in Child Development Research , 2010 .

[54]  H. Goldsmith.  Studying temperament via construction of the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire. , 1996, Child development.

[55]  Tracy A. Dennis,et al.  Emotion regulation as a scientific construct: methodological challenges and directions for child development research. , 2004, Child development.

[56]  J. Zeman,et al.  Emotional understanding: a comparison of physically maltreating and nonmaltreating mother-child dyads. , 1999, Journal of clinical child psychology.

[57]  D. Cicchetti,et al.  Impact of child maltreatment and interadult violence on children's emotion regulation abilities and socioemotional adjustment. , 2002, Child development.

[58]  S. Hauser,et al.  Familial contexts of adolescent ego development. , 1984, Child development.

[59]  H. Tonyan.  Coregulating distress: Mother–child interactions around children's distress from 14 to 24 months , 2005 .

[60]  Ross A. Thompson,et al.  Reassessing Emotion Regulation , 2008 .

[61]  J. Zeman,et al.  Initial Validation of the Emotion Expression Scale for Children (EESC) , 2002, Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology : the official journal for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, American Psychological Association, Division 53.

[62]  T. Brazelton,et al.  Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale , 1973 .

[63]  S. M. Carlson,et al.  Inhibitory Control and Emotion Regulation in Preschool Children. , 2007 .

[64]  Patricia K. Kerig,et al.  Family Observational Coding Systems : Resources for Systemic Research , 2001 .

[65]  Tracy A. Dennis,et al.  Preschoolers' Emotion Regulation Strategy Understanding: Relations with Emotion Socialization and Child Self-regulation , 2009 .

[66]  M. Terwogt,et al.  Emotion regulation and its effects on mood improvement in response to an in vivo peer rejection challenge. , 2006, Emotion.

[67]  J. Smetana,et al.  Moral Judgment and Moral Neuroscience: Intersections, Definitions, and Issues , 2008 .

[68]  R. Guttentag,et al.  Children's understanding of anticipatory regret and disappointment , 2008 .

[69]  G. Bohlin,et al.  Predictors of middle childhood psychosomatic problems: An emotion regulation approach , 2004 .

[70]  J. Garber,et al.  Affect regulation in depressed and nondepressed children and young adolescents , 1995, Development and Psychopathology.

[71]  S. Feldman,et al.  Mothers' internal models of relationships and children's behavioral and developmental status: a study of mother-child interaction. , 1988, Child development.

[72]  S. Calkins,et al.  Maternal Behavior and Children's Early Emotion Regulation Skills Differentially Predict Development of Children's Reactive Control and Later Effortful Control. , 2010, Infant and child development.

[73]  C. Durbin,et al.  Validity of young children's self-reports of their emotion in response to structured laboratory tasks. , 2010, Emotion.

[74]  M. Gunnar,et al.  Adrenocortical and behavioral responses to limb restraint in human neonates. , 1985, Developmental psychobiology.

[75]  M. Rothbart,et al.  Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire--Revised , 2011 .

[76]  N. Bayley.  Bayley Scales of Infant Development , 1999 .

[77]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  The relations of children's dispositional prosocial behavior to emotionality, regulation, and social functioning. , 1996, Child development.

[78]  John B. Black,et al.  Knowledge structures in the organization and retrieval of autobiographical memories , 1985, Cognitive Psychology.

[79]  A. Buss,et al.  Temperament: Early Developing Personality Traits , 1984 .

[80]  C. Suveg,et al.  Electronic Diaries: A Feasible Method of Assessing Emotional Experiences in Youth? , 2010 .

[81]  John A. Rice,et al.  "Just stop thinking about it": effects of emotional disengagement on children's memory for educational material. , 2007, Emotion.

[82]  B. Kable.  Mental health. , 2005, Australian family physician.

[83]  G. Hajcak,et al.  The late positive potential: a neurophysiological marker for emotion regulation in children. , 2009, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[84]  Carla Tinti,et al.  Appraisals, emotions and emotion regulation: An integrative approach , 2010, Motivation and emotion.

[85]  F. Blanchard-Fields,et al.  The experience of anger and sadness in everyday problems impacts age differences in emotion regulation. , 2008, Developmental psychology.

[86]  Susan C. McDonough,et al.  Emotion Regulation in Context: Situational Effects on Infant and Caregiver Behavior , 2002 .

[87]  Claudio Barbaranelli,et al.  Role of affective self-regulatory efficacy in diverse spheres of psychosocial functioning. , 2003, Child development.

[88]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  Young children's coping with interpersonal anger. , 1992, Child development.

[89]  M. Rothbart,et al.  Investigations of temperament at three to seven years: the Children's Behavior Questionnaire. , 2001, Child development.

[90]  K. Bird,et al.  Simultaneous Multiple Comparison Procedures for Categorical Data , 1986, The Australian and New Zealand journal of psychiatry.

[91]  C. Zahn-Waxler,et al.  Mutual emotion regulation and the stability of conduct problems between preschool and early school age , 2003, Development and Psychopathology.

[92]  Ross A. Thompson,et al.  Emotion regulation: a theme in search of definition. , 1994, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[93]  S. McDevitt,et al.  Assessing temperament in one- to three-year-old children. , 1984, Journal of pediatric psychology.

[94]  J. D. Welsh,et al.  Individual differences in emotion regulation and behavior problems in preschool children. , 1996, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[95]  B. Klimes-Dougan,et al.  Introduction to the Special Issue of Social Development: Emotion Socialization in Childhood and Adolescence , 2007 .

[96]  N. Allen,et al.  Maternal socialization of positive affect: the impact of invalidation on adolescent emotion regulation and depressive symptomatology. , 2008, Child development.

[97]  Elizabeth K. Hughes,et al.  The normative development of emotion regulation strategy use in children and adolescents: a 2-year follow-up study. , 2010, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[98]  P. Spinhoven,et al.  Negative life events, cognitive emotion regulation and emotional problems , 2001 .

[99]  Christopher R. Thomas,et al.  Developmental Psychopathology and Family Process: Theory, Research, and Clinical Implications , 2002 .

[100]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  Parents' reactions to children's negative emotions: relations to children's social competence and comforting behavior. , 1996, Child development.

[101]  Tracy L. Spinrad,et al.  Toward a developmental model of child compliance: the role of emotion regulation in infancy. , 1999, Child development.

[102]  Ma Tallandini,et al.  Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) , 2000 .

[103]  E. Waters,et al.  Induced mood and preschoolers' behavior: isolating the effects of hedonic tone and degree of arousal. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[104]  E. DeMulder,et al.  Preschoolers at play: Co-socialisers of emotional and social competence , 2001 .

[105]  J. Connell,et al.  Emotion regulation in two-year-olds: strategies and emotional expression in four contexts. , 1996, Child development.

[106]  H. E. Cole,et al.  Attachment and emotion regulation during mother-teen problem solving: a control theory analysis. , 1993, Child development.

[107]  C. Suveg,et al.  "I'd rather not talk about it": emotion parenting in families of children with an anxiety disorder. , 2008, Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association.

[108]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  The role of emotionality and regulation in children's social functioning: a longitudinal study. , 1995, Child development.

[109]  L. F. Katz,et al.  Observations of aggressive children during peer provocation and with a best friend. , 2005, Developmental psychology.

[110]  Donald P. Marzolf,et al.  Developmental and temperamental differences in emotion regulation in infancy. , 1995, Child development.

[111]  K. L. Gratz,et al.  Multidimensional Assessment of Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation: Development, Factor Structure, and Initial Validation of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale , 2004 .

[112]  Rejection sensitivity and children's interpersonal difficulties. , 1998, Child development.

[113]  B. Orobio de Castro,et al.  Emotions in Social Information Processing and Their Relations With Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Referred Aggressive Boys , 2005, Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology : the official journal for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, American Psychological Association, Division 53.

[114]  Anna Weinberg,et al.  Measurement of emotion dysregulation in adolescents. , 2009, Psychological assessment.

[115]  J. Cassidy,et al.  Family-peer connections: the roles of emotional expressiveness within the family and children's understanding of emotions. , 1992, Child development.

[116]  L. Levine,et al.  Metacognitive emotion regulation: children's awareness that changing thoughts and goals can alleviate negative emotions. , 2010, Emotion.

[117]  R. Conger,et al.  The Iowa Family Interaction Rating Scales: Instrument summary. , 2000 .

[118]  R. Feldman,et al.  Parenting stress, infant emotion regulation, maternal sensitivity, and the cognitive development of triplets: a model for parent and child influences in a unique ecology. , 2004, Child development.

[119]  T. Beauchaine,et al.  Correspondence between physiological and self-report measures of emotion dysregulation: a longitudinal investigation of youth with and without psychopathology. , 2009, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[120]  D Cicchetti,et al.  Emotion regulation among school-age children: the development and validation of a new criterion Q-sort scale. , 1997, Developmental psychology.

[121]  M. Klinnert,et al.  A multimethod assessment of behavioral and emotional adjustment in children with asthma. , 2000, Journal of pediatric psychology.

[122]  Amanda Sheffield Morris,et al.  Adolescents' emotion regulation in daily life: links to depressive symptoms and problem behavior. , 2003, Child development.

[123]  John M. Gottman,et al.  Meta-Emotion: How Families Communicate Emotionally , 1997 .

[124]  F. Strodtbeck,et al.  Husband-wife interaction over revealed differences. , 1951 .

[125]  Michael Cassano,et al.  Measurement Issues in Emotion Research With Children and Adolescents , 2007 .

[126]  M. Ainsworth,et al.  Origins of the Sense of Security. (Book Reviews: Patterns of Attachment. A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation) , 1978 .

[127]  R. Larsen,et al.  Measuring Emotions: Implications of a Multimethod Perspective. , 2006 .

[128]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  The relations of emotionality and regulation to preschoolers' social skills and sociometric status. , 1993, Child development.

[129]  G. Bohlin,et al.  Emotionality, emotion regulation, and adaptation among 5- to 8-year-old children. , 2003, Emotion.

[130]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  Applying a Multimethod Perspective to the Study of Developmental Psychology. , 2006 .

[131]  J. Zeman,et al.  Relations among Sadness Regulation, Peer Acceptance, and Social Functioning in Early Adolescence: The Role of Gender , 2011 .

[132]  Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda,et al.  Child psychology : a handbook of contemporary issues , 2005 .

[133]  P. Zelazo,et al.  Neurophysiological mechanisms of emotion regulation for subtypes of externalizing children , 2007, Development and Psychopathology.

[134]  C. Saarni.  An Observational Study of Children's Attempts to Monitor Their Expressive Behavior. , 1984 .

[135]  S. Breznitz,et al.  Handbook of stress: Theoretical and clinical aspects, 2nd ed. , 1993 .

[136]  J. Langlois.  Emotion and emotion regulation: from another perspective. , 2004, Child development.

[137]  J. Cohn,et al.  Three-month-old infants' reaction to simulated maternal depression. , 1983, Child development.

[138]  Michael,et al.  The effect of maternal depression on maternal ratings of child behavior , 1993, Journal of abnormal child psychology.

[139]  K. Dodge,et al.  The development of emotion regulation and dysregulation: Early development , 1991 .

[140]  S. Harter,et al.  Coping with anger-provoking situations: Young adolescents' theories of strategy use and effectiveness. , 1993 .

[141]  N. Haan,et al.  Coping and Defending: Processes of Self-Environment Organization , 1977 .

[142]  Qing Zhou,et al.  Relations among positive parenting, children's effortful control, and externalizing problems: a three-wave longitudinal study. , 2005, Child development.

[143]  G. Caprara,et al.  Adolescent Peer Relationships and Emerging Adult Romantic Styles , 2009 .

[144]  J. Eccles.  The emotional brain. , 1980, Bulletin et memoires de l'Academie royale de medecine de Belgique.

[145]  R. Marvin.  An Ethological—Cognitive Model for the Attenuation of Mother—Child Attachment Behavior , 1977 .