Effortful control and spontaneous regulation of emotional behavior in children

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to digital@library.tamu.edu, referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 23-24).The development of Effortful Control and Regulation of Emotion in children was examined in this study. Of particular interest was the relationship between self-regulation and responses to social norms. Participants were between ages three and five and their parents. Regulation of emotion was measured by observational coding of children's reactions to receiving gifts of varied desirability. Effortful control functions included slowing down motor activity, and suppressing/initiating motor response to signal. A linear regression revealed a significant relationship between Effortful Control scores and Emotional Regulation after receiving an undesirable gift. Furthermore, this relationship was stronger when only the tasks involving suppressing/initiating motor response to signal were used to measure Effortful Control