Indirect effects of cognitive self-regulation on the relation between emotion knowledge and emotionality

ABSTRACT

Between three and five years of age, both emotional competence (EC) and cognitive self-regulation (CSR) have been documented as undergoing remarkable growth and as being strong predictors of concurrent and future positive outcomes. EC encompasses three interrelated and progressively developing skills: emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and emotional expression and experience (i.e. emotionality). Whereas associations between CSR and emotion regulation are often documented, the current study explored whether CSR exerted a significant indirect effect in the emotion knowledge-emotionality relation. Path analysis results supported our hypotheses that emotion knowledge was associated with more positive emotionality and that CSR had a significant indirect effect between these facets of EC. This study is one of the first to examine CSR as a conduit for EC development in young children, further bridging the divide in understanding the emotion–cognition relation and how it is translated into what one experiences and expresses.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional competence
• self-regulation
• emotion knowledge
• emotionality
• early childhood
• longitudinal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

David E. Ferrier, Ph.D., is an Applied Developmental Psychologist whose research centers around the social, emotional, and cognitive development in children, particularly early childhood. His applied work focuses on how parents, peers, and particularly teachers can act as important socializers of these social, emotional, and cognitive skills which are strongly related to both concurrent and enduring social and academic success. Dr. Ferrier's background in both developmental and school psychology are particularly useful as he helps bridge the gap between research, practice, and policy. Dr. Ferrier is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, in Chattanooga, TN, USA.

Samantha P. Karalus, Ph.D., is an Applied Developmental Psychologist, whose research interests focus on young children's social-emotional development. Particularly, Dr. Karalus is interested in toddler social-emotional development, the socialization of the social and emotional skills, peer relationships and behaviors, and social relationships in familial and educational contexts. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship for the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral & Social Sciences, Dr. Karalus is currently a program evaluation specialist for the Fairfax County Public School system, in Falls Church, VA, USA.

Susanne A. Denham, Ph.D., is an Applied Developmental Psychologist with particular expertise in the social and emotional development of children. She has authored articles and two books on varying topics, from emotional and social competence in preschoolers and older children, to developmental psychopathology. Since “retiring” from George Mason University in 2016, Dr. Denham, now a professor emeritus, continues to educate the world on the importance of social-emotional learning in young children. In her spare time, Dr. Denham is also enjoying time with her adorable grandchildren in Richmond, VA, USA.

Hideko H. Bassett is an Applied Developmental Psychologist specializing in children's social and emotional development. Dr. Bassett received her M.S. from the University of Memphis and her doctorate from George Mason University. After earning her Ph.D., Dr. Bassett became a research assistant professor at George Mason University. Her research interests focus on parental influences on children's social and emotional development (e.g., parenting style, parental socialization of emotion, attachment), children's forgiveness development, and social and emotional aspects of young children's school readiness (e.g., preschool teachers' role in young children's socialization of emotion). Dr. Bassett resides in Rockville, MD, USA.

ORCID

David E. Ferrier http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0106-2698

Notes

1. Within the MPlus programme, the MODEL INDIRECT function was applied to specifically assess the indirect effect of emotion knowledge on emotionality via CSR. Consistent with Hayes (2009), BOOTSTRAP = 5000 was utilized to repeatedly resample the sampling distribution of the indirect effect to obtain accurate point estimates. In addition, a standalone regression model was run to assess our secondary research question, examining the direct effect of emotion knowledge on later emotionality. Bias-corrected confidence intervals (CIs) were obtained for all analyses through the CINTERVAL (BCBOOTSTRAP) command. Missing data was accounted for through the maximum likelihood estimator.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Institute for Education Sciences [ED-GRANTS-020410-002] and Grant number [R305A110730].