title: Put on a happy face! Inhibitory control and socioemotional knowledge predict emotion regulation in 5- to 7-year-olds.
abstract: Children's developing capacity to regulate emotions may depend on individual characteristics and other abilities, including age, sex, inhibitory control, theory of mind, and emotion and display rule knowledge. In the current study, we examined the relations between these variables and children's (N=107) regulation of emotion in a disappointing gift paradigm as well as their relations with the amount of effort to control emotion children exhibited after receiving the disappointing gift. Regression analyses were also conducted to identify unique predictors. Children's understanding of others' emotions and emotion display rules, as well as their inhibitory control skills, emerged as significant correlates of emotion regulation and predicted children's responses to the disappointing gift even after controlling for other relevant variables. Age and inhibitory control significantly predicted the amount of overt effort that went into regulating emotions, as did emotion knowledge (albeit only marginally). Together, findings suggest that effectively regulating emotions requires (a) knowledge of context-appropriate emotions along with (b) inhibitory skills to implement that knowledge.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4J1, Canada. Electronic address: a.hudson@dal.ca.
authors.forename: Amanda
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hudson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4J1, Canada. Electronic address: sophie.jacques@dal.ca.
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jacques
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D056348:Emotional Intelligence; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D007389:Internal-External Control; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D066107:Social Skills; D012951:Socialization; D056345:Theory of Mind
keywords: Disappointing gift paradigm; Display rule knowledge; Emotion knowledge; Emotion regulation; Inhibitory control; Theory of mind