Emotion and Self Regulation
Naomi Ekas
9/28/09
Self-Regulation


Children do not come into this world
with all of the skills necessary to
regulate their behavior
It is around 2 years that we really start
to see children monitoring behavior
Self-Regulation

Ability to comply with a request, initiate and
cease activities according to situational
demands, to modulate the intensity,
frequency, and duration of verbal and motor
acts in social and educational settings, to
postpone acting upon a desired object/goal,
and to generate socially approved behavior in
the absence of external monitors (Kopp,
1982)
Self-Regulation

Neurophysiological modulation


Birth to 2-3 months
Reflexes
Self-Regulation

Sensorimotor modulation



3 months - 9 months +
Engage in voluntary motor acts (reach &
grab, hand to mouth, etc.) and change that
act in response to environmental demands
No awareness of meaning of situation
Self-Regulation

Control



9-12 months to 18 + months
Emerging ability of children to show
awareness of social or task demands and
modulate behavior/emotions
E.g. compliance to demands
Self-Regulation

Emergence of self-control and the
progression to self-regulation




24 + months
Compliance, delay an act on request
Representational thinking and recall
memory
Limited flexibility
Self-Regulation

Self-regulation


36 + months
Flexibility!!!
Emotion Regulation


In addition to regulating behaviors,
children must also regulate emotional
experiences
Development of emotion regulation
abilities follows Kopp’s description of
emergence of self-regulation

Reflexes to flexible management
Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation consists of the
extrinsic and intrinsic processes
responsible for monitoring, evaluating,
and modifying emotional reactions,
especially their intensive and temporal
features, to accomplish one’s goals
Emotion Regulation

Monitoring, evaluating, modifying


Not only negative emotions
Not only dampening emotions, but also
increasing
Emotion Regulation

Extrinsic influences



Parents!!!
Critical in the early months
Intrinsic influences

temperament
Emotion Regulation

Intensive and temporal features




Intensity - subdue or enhance
Speed or slow onset or recovery
Reduce or increase lability (range)
Limit or enhance persistence over time
Emotion Regulation

Accomplish one’s goals


Must be regarded functionally
What are regulator’s goals for that
situation?
Emotion Regulation

What is regulated?

Control of underlying arousal processes
through maturing systems of
neurophysiological regulation



Diffuse excitatory processes decline in lability
during first year
Cortical inhibitory controls emerge gradually
during infancy
Nervous system reactivity
Emotion Regulation

Attention processes

Emotion can be regulated by managing the
intake of emotionally arousing information


Redirecting attention
As they get older can do things like internal
redirection of attention (e.g. thinking of
something pleasant during unpleasant
situation)
Emotion Regulation

Other components of information
processing

Alter interpretations


“He didn’t really die, he just got frightened and
ran away”
“It’s just pretend”
Emotion Regulation


Increase access to coping resources
Regulating emotional demands of
familiar situations
Emotion Regulation

Importance of social interaction

Others can help regulate our emotions
(e.g. mothers soothing young infant)



Importance of attachment relationship
Others can help us with our interpretations
of situations
Modeling behavior of those around us
Emotion Regulation

Individual differences




Temperament
Attachment
Parenting
Others???
Emotion Regulation

Problems with the construct and
research area
Emotion regulation…
• …viable scientific construct?
• …proposes to account for how and why
emotions
• organize, facilitate other physiological processes (e.g.,
promote problem solving)
– and/or
• have detrimental effects (harm relationships)
• …integrates an understanding of typical and
atypical development
– emotions relate to cognition and behavior -->
developmental outcomes
Fernandez
• Concerns
– Use the term without a definition
• define emotion & emotion regulation
– Do not distinguish between emotion and emotion regulation
• emotions are inherently regulatory
• physiological systems aren’t clearly distinct from
emotions
– Use valence to provide information about emotion regulation
without evidence of regulatory process
• regulating & regulated
• intra/interdomain
– Optimal functioning only or includes maladaptive regulation
– Emotions understood in context
Fernandez
• Areas of Research
– Infant Temperament
• Reactivity (speed & intensity of initial activity)
• Self-regulation (ability to modify the intensity & duration
by engaging in behavioral strategies)
– Mother-Child Interactions
• regulated and regulating in social interactions
• quality of emotional exchanges related to child’s ability to
regulate own behavior
– Early Emotional Self-Regulation
• emergence of new (more complex) use of objects and
interactions (ages 2-4)
• manner of self-regulation is predictive of later outcomes
Fernandez
• Direction for New Research
– Independent measures of emotion & regulation
• Avoid confounding valence with regulation
• Use of multiple measures
– Analysis of temporal relations between emotion & regulation
• Demonstration of change over time
– Comparison of emotion & regulation in contrasting conditions
• Help the researcher infer emotion when its barely detectible
• Disentangle activation of emotion & regulatory process
– Multiple converging measures
• Self-report, expressive behavior, and physiological change
• Heightens inferencing
Fernandez
Feldman, R. (2009). The
development of regulatory functions
from birth to 5 years: Insights from premature infants. Child
Development, 80(2), 544-561.

Different perspectives of regulation





Common assumptions




Posner & Rothbart (1998) – interplay of b/mechanisms of excitation and
inhibition
Calkins & Fox (2002) – integration of physiological, emo, attn, cog
processes
Neuroscience – relations b/ brainstem, limbic, and cortex to produce
behavior
Fogel (1993) – coregulatory function of early relationships
Integrated , hierarchically ordered system of multiple components of
functioning
Synchronized in time
Plastic interplay b/ coregulated and autoregulated processes in
development
Hierarchical-integrative course of regulation development

1st year: Emotion regulation of external and internal stresses

2nd



Based in brain-stem function (sleep-wake cycle, vagal tone)
year: Attention regulation to achieve goals
Based in both physiological and emotional regulation processes
Preschool years: Self-regulation of behavior and cognition

Behavior adaptation, Executive functions, Conscience
Current Study
Premature infants from birth to 5 yrs

Difficulties in physiological and behavioral regulation
Brainstem
Limbic
Cortex
Core Systems
32
wks
Neonate
Physiological
oscillators


Emotion regulation
3
mos
6
mos
12
mos



Attention regulation
Self-regulation
Goals
1) Describe expression of multiple regulatory processes in at-risk pop
2) Describe longitudinal pattern of associations across levels
- Unique and interactive effects of levels 1-3 on 4
3) Test causal paths to self-regulation
- Vagal tone  Attn regulation & behavior adaptation
- Sleep-wake cyclicity  Attn regulation

24
mos
5
yrs


Current Study

High vs. Low Medical Risk





Correlations between levels of regulation


Mild – moderate correlations among levels
Predicting self-regulation at age 5



Neonates: less organized sleep-wake cycle, higher neg emotion (boys also at
risk)
1 year: worse emotion reg, higher neg emotion
2 years: worse attn reg
5 years: poorer EF, no differences in behavior adaptation or self-restraint
Vagal tone, sleep-wake, emo reg, attn reg predicted EF
All but sleep-wake predicted behavior problems & self-restraint
Structural modeling
Results & conclusions

High vs. Low Medical Risk





Neonates: less organized sleep-wake cycle, higher neg emotion (boys also at risk)
1 year: worse emotion reg, higher neg emotion
2 years: worse attn reg at 12 but not 24 mos, worse delayed response at 24 mos
5 years: poorer EF only, no differences in behavior adaptation or self-restraint

Vulnerability but effects diminish over time due to other protective factors
Correlations between & within levels of regulation


Mild – moderate correlations between levels

Regulation construct is continuous across time

Physiological measures capture basic feature of orientation to environment

Most variance not shared – suggests malleability in development
Consistent relationship between low neg emotionality and regulatory functions
(e.g. sleep-wake cyclicity & less cry states)

Bidirectional influence between development of negative affect and regulatory
functions
Reactivity
Reactivity
Regulation
Environmental
stressors
Fuccillo
Negative
Emotionalit
y
Regulation
Results & conclusions (cont.)
• Predicting self-regulation at age 5

Structural model
Sig better fit when indirect paths
included
Consistent with hierarchical-integrative
model of brain maturation



Unanswered questions


Physiological & emotional
regulatory processes across time
Need for person-centered analysis
& study of predictors of resilience
Fuccillo