title: Positive and negative emotionality: trajectories across six years and relations with social competence.
abstract: The goals of the present study were to examine (1) the mean-level stability and differential stability of children's positive emotional intensity, negative emotional intensity, expressivity, and social competence from early elementary school-aged to early adolescence, and (2) the associations between the trajectories of children's emotionality and social functioning. Using four waves of longitudinal data (with assessments 2 years apart), parents and teachers of children (199 kindergarten through third grade children at the first assessment) rated children's emotion-related responding and social competence. For all constructs, there was evidence of mean-level decline with age and stability in individual differences in rank ordering. Based on age-centered growth-to-growth curve analyses, the results indicated that children who had a higher initial status on positive emotional intensity, negative emotional intensity, and expressivity had a steeper decline in their social skills across time. These findings provide insight into the stability and association of emotion-related constructs to social competence across the elementary and middle school years.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104, USA. julie.vaughan@asu.edu
authors.forename: Julie Vaughan
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Sallquist
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Eisenberg
authors.forename: Tracy L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Spinrad
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reiser
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hofer
authors.forename: Qing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liew
authors.forename: Natalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Eggum
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019964:Mood Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D015588:Observer Variation; D012737:Sex Factors; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors