title: Measuring children's regulation of emotion-expressive behavior.
abstract: Emotion regulation has become a pivotal concept in developmental and clinical research. However, the measurement of regulatory processes has proved extremely difficult, particularly in the context of within-subject designs. Here, we describe a formal conceptualization and a new experimental procedure, the Balloons Game, to measure a regulatory component of emotion-expressive behavior. We present the internal consistency and stability of the indices derived from the Balloons Game in a sample of 121 kindergarten children. External validation against measures that have been associated with emotion regulation processes is also provided. The findings suggest that the Balloons Game provides a reliable tool for the study of regulation of emotion expression in young children.
authors.affiliation: The Adler Center for Research in Child Development and Psychopathology, Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. yair1@post.tau.ac.il
authors.forename: Yair
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bar-Haim
authors.forename: Gali
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bar-Av
authors.forename: Avi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sadeh
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004562:Electrocardiography; D056348:Emotional Intelligence; D019260:Expressed Emotion; D005260:Female; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D011581:Psychological Tests