Skip to main content

Development of Emotion Regulation Dynamics Across Early Childhood: a Multiple Time-Scale Approach

Affective Science volume 1, pages 28–41 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Children should become more effective at regulating emotion as they age. Longitudinal evidence of such change, however, is scarce. This study uses a multiple-time scale approach to test the hypothesis that the self-regulation of emotion—the engagement of executive processes to influence the dynamics of prepotent emotional responses—becomes more effective as children move through early childhood. Second-by-second time-series data obtained from behavioral observation of 120 children (46% female) during an 8-min frustration-eliciting wait task completed at four ages (24 months, 36 months, 48 months, 5 years) were modeled using bivariate coupled differential equation models designed to capture age-related changes in the intrinsic dynamics and bidirectional coupling of prepotent and executive processes. Results revealed indirect influences of executive processes on the intrinsic dynamics of children’s desire and frustration increased with age but also revealed complex and non-linear age-related changes in how specific aspects of the dynamic interplay between prepotent responses and executive processes influence the effectiveness of regulation at different ages. The findings illustrate the utility of using a dynamics system approach to articulate and study how specific aspects of emotion regulation change with age.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price includes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Data Availability

Data cannot be made freely available due to participant data protection laws, but unidentified data are available from the authors upon request.

References

  • Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Oxford: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arnold, M. B. (1960). Emotion and personality. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, K. C., & Campos, J. J. (1987). Perspectives on emotional development II: A functionalist approach to emotions. In Wiley Series on Personality Processes. Handbook of infant development (2nd ed., pp. 555–578). Oxford: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blair, C., & Raver, C. C. (2015). School readiness and self-regulation: A developmental psychobiological approach. Annual Review of Psychology, 66(1), 711–731.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boker, S. M., & Nesselroade, J. R. (2002). A method for modeling the intrinsic dynamics of intraindividual variability: Recovering the parameters of simulated oscillators in multi-wave panel data. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 37(1), 127–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bolger, N., & Laurenceau, J. (2013). Intensive longitudinal methods. New York: Guilford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brownell, C. A., & Kopp, C. B. (Eds.). (2007). Socioemotional development in the toddler years: Transitions and transformations. Washington: American Psychological Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buss, K. A., & Goldsmith, H. H. (1998). Fear and anger regulation in infancy: Effects on the temporal dynamics of affective expression. Child Development, 69(2), 359–374. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06195.x.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Butner, J. E., Diamond, L. M., & Hicks, A. M. (2007). Attachment style and two forms of affect coregulation between romantic partners. Personal Relationships, 14(3), 431–455.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Calkins, S. D., & Fox, N. A. (2002). Self-regulatory processes in early personality development: A multilevel approach to the study of childhood social withdrawal and aggression. Development and Psychopathology, 14(3), 477–498.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Calkins, S. D., & Johnson, M. C. (1998). Toddler regulation of distress to frustrating events: Temperamental and maternal correlates. Infant Behavior and Development, 21(3), 379–395. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(98)90015-7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chow, S.-M., Bendezú, J. J., Cole, P. M., & Ram, N. (2016). A comparison of two-stage approaches for fitting nonlinear ordinary differential equation models with mixed effects. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 51(2–3), 154–184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cole, P. M. (2016). The role of emotion in the development of psychopathology. In D. Cicchetti (Ed.), Developmental Psychopathology. Vol. 1: Theory and method (3rd ed.) (pp. 265–324). Hoboken: Wiley.

  • Cole, P. M., Zahn-Waxler, C., & Smith, D. K. (1994). Expressive control during a disappointment: Variations related to preschoolers’ behavior problems. Developmental Psychology, 30(6), 835–846. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.30.6.835.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cole, P. M., Martin, S. E., & Dennis, T. A. (2004). Emotion regulation as a scientific construct: Methodological challenges and directions for child development research. Child Development, 75(2), 317–333. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00673.x.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cole, P. M., Tan, P. Z., Hall, S. E., Zhang, Y., Crnic, K. A., Blair, C. B., & Li, R. (2011). Developmental changes in anger expression and attention focus: Learning to wait. Developmental Psychology, 47(4), 1078–1089. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023813.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Cole, P. M., Bendezú, J. J., Ram, N., & Chow, S.-M. (2017). Dynamical systems modeling of early childhood self-regulation. Emotion, 17(4), 684–699. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000268.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Cole, P. M., Ram, N., & English, M. S. (2019). Toward a unifying model of self-regulation: A developmental approach. Child Development Perspectives, 13(2), 91–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12316.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, R. J. (1993). Parsing affective space: Perspectives from neuropsychology and psychophysiology. Neuropsychology, 7(4), 464–475.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Denham, S. A., Bassett, H. H., Zinsser, K., & Wyatt, T. M. (2014). How preschoolers’ social–emotional learning predicts their early school success: Developing theory-promoting, competency-based assessments. Infant and Child Development, 23(4), 426–454. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.1840.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dillon, D. G., & Pizzagalli, D. A. (2007). Inhibition of action, thought, and emotion: a selective neurobiological review. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 12(3), 99–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appsy.2007.09.004.

  • Ekman, P., & Cordaro, D. (2011). What is meant by calling emotions basic. Emotion Review, 3(4), 364–370.

  • Gilliom, M., Shaw, D. S., Beck, J. E., Schonberg, M. A., & Lukon, J. L. (2002). Anger regulation in disadvantaged preschool boys: Strategies, antecedents, and the development of self-control. Developmental Psychology, 38(2), 222–235. https://doi.org/10.1037//0012-1649.38.2.222.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Girard, J. M. (2014). CARMA: Software for continuous affect rating and media annotation. Journal of Open Research Software, 2(1), e5–e5.

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Gottman, J. M., Murray, J. D., Swanson, C. C., Tyson, R., & Swanson, K. R. (2002). The mathematics of marriage: Dynamic nonlinear models. Cambridge: MIT Press.

  • Grolnick, W. S., Bridges, L. J., & Connell, J. P. (1996). Emotion regulation in two-year-olds: Strategies and emotional expression in four contexts. Child Development, 67(3), 928–941. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1996.tb01774.x.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gross, J. J. (2001). Emotion regulation in adulthood: Timing is everything. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(6), 214–219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoeksma, J. B., Oosterlaan, J., & Schipper, E. M. (2004). Emotion regulation and the dynamics of feelings: A conceptual and methodological framework. Child Development, 75(2), 354–360.

  • Kopp, C. B. (1982). Antecedents of self-regulation: A developmental perspective. Developmental Psychology, 18(2), 199–214.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuppens, P., Oravecz, Z., & Tuerlinckx. (2010). Feelings change: Accounting for individual differences in the temporal dynamics of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(6), 1042–1060. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020962.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, M. D. (2005). Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic systems modeling. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(2), 169–194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacCallum, R. C., Kim, C., Malarkey, W. B., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (1997). Studying multivariate change using multilevel models and latent curve models. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 32(3), 215–253. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327906mbr3203_1.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1), 49–100.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morales, S., Ram, N., Buss, K. A., Cole, P. M., Helm, J. L., & Chow, S.-M. (2018). Age-related changes in the dynamics of fear-related regulation in early childhood. Developmental Science, 21(5), e12633. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12633.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Perry, N. B., & Calkins, S. D. (2018). A biopsychosocial perspective on the development of emotion regulation across childhood. In P. M. Cole & T. Hollenstein (Eds.), Emotion regulation: A matter of time (pp. 3–30). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinheiro, J., Bates, D., DebRoy, S., Sarkar, D., & R Core Team. (2016). nlme: Linear and Nonlinear Mixed Effects Models (Version 3.1–124). Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=nlme

  • Potegal, M., Kosorok, M. R., & Davidson, R. J. (2003). Temper tantrums in young children: 2. Tantrum duration and temporal organization. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 24, 148–154. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004703-200306000-00003.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ram, N., & Diehl, M. (2015). Multiple time-scale design and analysis: Pushing towards real-time modeling of complex developmental processes. In M. Diehl, K. Hooker, & M. J. Sliwinski (Eds.), Handbook of intraindividual variability across the lifespan (pp. 308–323). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ramsay, J. O., Hooker, G., & Graves, S. (2009). Functional data analysis with R and MATLAB (1st ed.). New York: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rothbart, M. K., Ziaie, H., & O’Boyle, C. G. (1992). Self-regulation and emotion in infancy. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 1992(55), 7–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/cd.23219925503.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rothbart, M. K., Sheese, B. E., Rueda, M. R., & Posner, M. I. (2011). Developing mechanisms of self-regulation in early life. Emotion Review, 3(2), 207–213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sethi, A., Mischel, W., Aber, J. L., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (2000). The role of strategic attention deployment in development of self-regulation: Predicting preschoolers' delay of gratification from mother-toddler interactions. Developmental Psychology, 36, 767–777. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.36.6.767.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Stansbury, K., & Sigman, M. (2000). Responses of preschoolers in two frustrating episodes: Emergence of complex strategies for emotion regulation. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 161(2), 182–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221320009596705.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, E. A., & Martin, J. A. (1976). Analyses of parent-infant interaction. Psychological Review, 83(2), 141–156. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.83.2.141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2000). Evolutionary psychology and the emotions. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaughn, B. E., Kopp, C. B., & Krakow, J. B. (1984). The emergence and consolidation of self-control from eighteen to thirty months of age: Normative trends and individual differences. Child Development, 55(3), 990–1004. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130151.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

Research reported in this manuscript was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute of Child Health and Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01 HD076994. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Pamela M. Cole

  2. Department of Human Development & Family Studies, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Jessica P. Lougheed

  3. Department of Human Development & Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Sy-Miin Chow & Nilam Ram

  4. German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin, Germany

    Nilam Ram

Authors
  1. Pamela M. Cole
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jessica P. Lougheed
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sy-Miin Chow
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Nilam Ram
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pamela M. Cole.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical Approval

This project was approved by The Pennsylvania State University’s Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research.

Informed Consent

Informed consent for parents, and by parents for their children, was obtained from all participants in accordance with protocols approved by the University’s Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research.

Additional information

Handling editor: Seth D. Pollak

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cole, P.M., Lougheed, J.P., Chow, SM. et al. Development of Emotion Regulation Dynamics Across Early Childhood: a Multiple Time-Scale Approach. Affec Sci 1, 28–41 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-020-00004-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-020-00004-y

Keywords

  • Emotion regulation development
  • Early childhood
  • Dynamic systems modeling
  • Damped oscillator model