The Mediational Role of Effortful Control and Emotional Dysregulation in the Link Between Maternal Responsiveness and Turkish Preschoolers' Social Competency and Externalizing Symptoms

Abstract

This cross-sectional study relied on circumscribed measures of emotion regulation and dysregulation to examine their role in mediating the associations of maternal responsiveness and effortful control with social competency and externalizing symptoms. We examined those associations in an understudied cultural context, Turkey, with 118 preschoolers. Emotion regulation and dysregulation showed differential associations with broad indices of self-regulation such that emotion dysregulation predicted both low social competency and high externalizing symptoms but emotion regulation was only associated with high social competency. Effortful control was unrelated to emotion regulation but was associated with lower levels of emotion dysregulation. Effortful control had both direct and mediated associations with externalizing and social competency (mediated by lower emotion dysregulation). Findings also showed that maternal responsiveness was associated with better social competency and lower externalizing. Those associations were both singly (through effortful control) and doubly mediated (through effortful control and lower emotion dysregulation), similar to US samples. The study contributes to a better understanding of the factors and mechanisms that speak to children's self-regulation.

The Relationship between Maternal Acceptance-Rejection Levels and Preschoolers’ Social Competence and Emotion Regulation Skills

“…Other studies in the literature also show that child's social competence increases as the parental care/warmth increase (Metin-Orta, Çorapçı, Yağmurlu, & Aksan, 2013). However the definition of parental care/warmth may vary according to cultures.…”

“…Researches revealed that children, who recognize and understand emotions better, have more positive social behaviors and they are more popular among peers (Downs & Strand, 2008;Yılmaz & Tepeli, 2013). The review of the studies conducted in Turkey with preschool children showed that emotion regulation skills (Arslan-Yalçın, 2009;Metin-Orta et al, 2013) and emotion comprehension skills (Yılmaz & Tepeli, 2013) are related to social competence.…”

Perceived Maternal Autonomy Support and Early Adolescent Emotion Regulation: A Longitudinal Study

“…Hence, future research on parenting and ER could also include other parenting variables, such as parental sensitivity and structure. Another possibility is that dysregulation would be relatively more strongly determined by temperamental differences (e.g., Orta, Corapci, Yagmurlu, & Aksan, ), a possibility that needs further examination as well.…”

Executive function and theory of mind as predictors of socially withdrawn behavior in institutionalized children

“…All of the measures utilized in the current study had previously been translated into Turkish and used in research conducted with Turkish preschool children. Turkish versions of the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS: Öztürk, ), Social Competence and Behavioral Evaluation Scale (SCBE: Çorapçı, Aksan, Arslan‐Yalçin, & Yağmurlu, ), day–night and peg tapping tasks (Orta, Çorapçı, Yağmurlu, & Aksan, ), and the FBU tasks (Etel & Yağmurlu, ; Kahraman, ; Yağmurlu et al, ) have all been found to be reliable and valid measures for Turkish child samples.…”