The authors examined the relations of maternal supportive parenting to effortful control and internalizing problems (i.e., separation distress, inhibition to novelty), externalizing problems, and social competence when toddlers were 18 months old (n = 256) and a year later (n = 230). Mothers completed the Coping With Toddlers' Negative Emotions Scale, and their sensitivity and warmth were observed. Toddlers' effortful control was measured with a delay task and adults' reports (Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire). Toddlers' social functioning was assessed with the Infant/ Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment. Within each age, children's regulation significantly mediated the relation between supportive parenting and low levels of externalizing problems and separation distress, and high social competence. When using stronger tests of mediation, controlling for stability over time, the authors found only partial evidence for mediation. The findings suggest these relations may be set at an early age. Keywordstoddlers' effortful control; maternal socialization; social functioning; problem behaviors A major goal of current research has been to understand individual differences in young children's problem behaviors and social competence. Although researchers have identified parenting and children's temperament as factors that play an important role in children's socioemotional functioning Kochanska & Knaack, 2003;Rothbart & Bates, 2006), few efforts have been made to study these links in very young children. Despite the lack of attention to this issue, there is some evidence that internalizing and externalizing problems in toddlerhood are stable (Keenan, Shaw, Delliquadri, Giovannelli, & Walsh, 1998;Smith, Calkins, Keane, Anastopoulos, & Shelton, 2004) and may have implications for later maladjustment (Campbell, Shaw, & Gilliom, 2000;Keenan et al., 1998). The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of toddlers' temperamental effortful control and maternal socialization to social functioning at 18 months of age (Time 1 [T1]) and a year later (Time 2 [T2]). Effortful ControlThere is a growing body of research on the construct of emotion regulation as it pertains to children's social functioning. Although the definition of emotion regulation varies, some NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript researchers have conceptualized emotion regulation in terms of children's effortful or voluntary control as opposed to more reactive forms of control Rothbart & Bates, 2006). Effortful control has been defined as "the efficiency of executive attention, including the ability to inhibit a dominant response and/or to activate a subdominant response, to plan, and to detect errors" (Rothbart & Bates, 2006, p. 129). Effortful control is characterized by the ability to voluntarily focus and shift attention and to voluntarily inhibit or initiate behaviors, and includes behaviors such as delaying; these processes are integral to emotion regulation (Caspi & Shiner, 2006;Kieras, Tobin...

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. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptEmotion. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 September 29. Published in final edited form as:Emotion. 2009 February ; 9(1): 15-28. doi:10.1037/a0013970. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptDevelopmental scientists have increasingly acknowledged the importance of the experience and expression of emotion in every-day life and its potential role in social competence. However, our understanding of developmental trajectories in children's intensity of emotion and their implications for social competence is limited. The first major goal of the present study was to examine the degree of stability of children's emotional intensity, expressivity, and social competence. Another major goal (which was dependent on the analyses pertaining to the first goal) was to examine associations between the trajectories of emotion and social functioning as children moved into early adolescence. Notions of StabilityGiven the goal of investigating children's emotionality across time, the stability of these constructs was examined in two ways: (1) the rank-order of variables and (2) the mean level across time (Fraley & Roberts, 2005). Rank-order stability provides information about differential continuity (i.e., degree to which individual differences remain stable across time) whereas mean-level stability refers to change in the average level of a variable across time (De Fruyt et al., 2006). Both types of stability are useful for understanding development. Positive and Negative EmotionalityResearchers typically view positive and negative emotionality as dimensions of temperament (Aksan et al., 1999;Rothbart & Bates, 2006), defined as a set of constitutionally based traits that are the core of personality and influence the direction of development (Rothbart & Bates, 2006). Even though temperament is usually de...

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The developmental trajectories of attention focusing (parents' and teachers' reports) and attentional and behavioral persistence (observed during a laboratory task) --two indexes of effortful control --and externalizing problems from age 5 to 10 years were examined for 356 children combined from two three-wave (two years apart) longitudinal studies. We identified clusters of children with distinct trajectories for these variables and examined the links between the effortful control trajectories and the externalizing problem trajectories. Although attention focusing remained relatively stable, attentional and behavioral persistence continued to show mean-level changes (especially among the children with less optimal persistence). Children with high and stable trajectories of effortful control tended to exhibit low and stable trajectories of externalizing problems, whereas those with lower and/or less stable trajectories of effortful control showed more elevated and/or fluctuating trajectories of externalizing problems.

Data were collected when children were 42, 54, and 72 months of age (Ns=210, 191, and 172 for T1, T2, and T3, respectively). Children's emotion understanding (EU) and theory of mind (ToM) were examined as predictors of children's prosocial orientation within and across time. EU positively related to children's sympathy across 2.5 years, and T1 EU positively related to parent-reported prosocial orientation concurrently and across 1 year (T2). T2 ToM positively related to parents' reports of sympathy and prosocial orientation concurrently and 18 months later (T3); in contrast, T3 ToM did not relate to sympathy or prosocial orientation. T2 ToM accounted for marginally significant variance (p<0.058) in T3 mother-reported prosocial orientation over and above that accounted for by T2 prosocial orientation. Fostering the development of EU and ToM may contribute to children's prosocial orientation.