Internalization of Emotion Co-regulatory Support in Children with ASD

Adaptive emotion regulation involves the ability to understand, monitor, and modify internal states in order to achieve one’s goals (Thompson 1994). Although infants demonstrate certain behaviors thought to assist with the regulation of arousal (e.g., gaze aversion, thumb-finger sucking), it is generally agreed that very young children are primarily “co-regulated” by their caregivers (Cole et al. 1994; Kopp 1982). Over the first few years of life, more direct co-regulation (e.g., responsive comforting, instrumental support, emotion contagion) gradually gives way to parental efforts aimed at helping children become more autonomous in their regulatory abilities (Cole et al. 1994; Grolnick and Farkas 2002; Kopp 1982; Morris et al. 2007). Although more general patterns of parent or family behavior continue to contribute to the development of children’s emotion regulation throughout childhood, parents increasingly engage in more didactic socialization strategies, such as intentional...