Connections between preschoolers' temperament traits and social behaviors as observed in a preschool setting

A growing literature has focused on the role children's temperament traits play in social behavior, but associations have traditionally been explored through informant report. We utilized a longitudinal, observational approach to (a) examine how children's traits related to their social behaviors when aggregated across the school year; (b) explore how traits and social behavior relate to children's age and sex; and (c) test how prior traits predicted subsequent change in solitary, reticent, and social play, above and beyond mean‐level change in play behavior over the course of the year. Fifty‐three children were observed in their preschool classroom, where coders rated children's traits and social behaviors over the course of one school year (N = 26,673 observations). Results found positive age‐related associations for positive emotionality (PE) and social play. In addition, aggregated traits explained a significant amount of the variance for every social behavior. Prior levels of lower PE, higher negative emotionality (NE), and higher effortful control (EC) predicted more subsequent time spent in reticent play, while NE and EC approached significance as predictors of solitary play. These results emphasize the role of early disposition on mean levels and rates of change in social behavior in a classroom.     

Longitudinal patterns of anger reactivity and risk‐taking: The role of peer‐context

The current study examined the interplay between children's dispositional anger and susceptibility to peers' influence in increasing children's risk‐taking behaviors. Participants in the current study were children from a larger study of temperament and social–emotional development who were followed across 9, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months. Dispositional anger was measured using mothers' reports across 9 and 48 months. At 60 months, children played a risk‐taking computer game in presence of an unfamiliar peer who watched the child play. The child's risk‐taking was assessed during the game as the unfamiliar peers' reactions were coded based on comments that were peer directed, reflective of praising the target child's performance, or object directed, indicative of excitement toward the game. A latent profile analysis revealed three longitudinal anger profiles across infancy to early childhood: high stable, average stable, and low stable anger. Results suggested that as peers' object‐directed comments predicted risk‐taking independent of children's anger, the association between peer‐directed comments and risk‐taking was dependent on children's dispositional anger. Specifically, when peers praised the target child's performance, children in the high stable anger profile showed increased risk‐taking propensity. Findings are discussed based on the importance of considering both temperamental characteristics and aspects of the peer context in relation to children's risk‐taking.     

Predicting Children's Prosocial and Co‐operative Behavior from Their Temperamental Profiles: A Person‐centered Approach

The goal of this study was to examine how aspects of self‐regulation and negative emotionality predicted children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior concurrently and longitudinally using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Mothers completed measures of children's temperamental proneness to negative emotionality and self‐regulation at 54 months. Teachers and parents completed measures of children's co‐operative and prosocial behavior at 54 months, first grade, and third grade. A latent profile analysis of the temperamental variables revealed four profiles of children: those high in regulation and low in negative emotionality, those moderate in regulation and moderate in negative emotionality, those low in regulation and high in negative emotionality, and finally those who were very low in regulation but high in anger emotionality. Generally, children with profiles that were high or moderate in terms of regulation and low or moderate in terms of negative emotionality were rated as the most prosocial and co‐operative. Children with profiles that were less well regulated and who were high in negative emotionality (particularly anger proneness) were rated as less co‐operative and prosocial by parents and teachers.     

The Role of Child Emotionality in Child Behavior and Maternal Instruction on Planning Tasks

This study explored the relation of children's emotional functioning to children's behavior during individual planning and mother's and children's behaviors during joint planning. Participants were 118 mothers and their second‐grade children. Mothers rated children on their emotional intensity and children rated themselves on their use of emotion regulation strategies. Children and mother–child dyads were videotaped during planning tasks and independent observers rated their behavior. Child emotional intensity was directly related to children being less engaged in the task and to an emphasis in maternal instruction on regulatory behaviors. Some types of emotion regulation strategies modified these relations. Findings suggest that child emotionality may play an important role in the early school years in children's opportunities to learn during social‐cognitive activity.     

Self‐report of emotional experience and peer nominations of expressivity: Predictability of change in teacher‐rated social behavior

We investigated individual differences in self‐reported emotional experience and peer‐perceived expressivity among children in mid‐ to late‐elementary school years. Specifically, we examined the constructs’ correspondence and temporal stability and also compared the degree to which each predicts change in classroom social behavior over 2 years. Participants were 199 children (Mage = 10 years, Time 1) and their classroom teachers who have participated in two times of assessment. We used self‐report of emotional experience and peer nominations of expressivity regarding happiness, anger, and sadness. Teachers rated children's social skills, externalizing problems, and internalizing problems. The correspondence was generally small in magnitude between self‐reported experience and peer nominations of expressivity. The stability of peer nominations of emotional expressivity was medium and comparable to that of self‐reported experience with the exception of happiness. The predictability of change in social behavior was more robust for peer nominations of expressivity than for self‐reported experience. We discussed the relevance of different dimensions of emotionality as well as informants in understanding the predictability of social behavior from emotionality. We also discussed the role of sociodemographic variables in emotional experience and expressivity and offered practical implications of peer nominations in the assessment of children's emotionality.     

Parent emotion socialization and children's socioemotional adjustment: when is supportiveness no longer supportive?

Parents' supportive emotion socialization behaviors promote children's socioemotional competence in early childhood, but the nature of parents' supportiveness may change over time, as children continue to develop their emotion‐related abilities and enter contexts that require more complex and nuanced social skills and greater autonomy. To test whether associations between parents' supportiveness of children's negative emotions and children's socioemotional adjustment vary with child age, 81 parents of 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children completed questionnaires assessing their responses to children's negative emotions and their children's emotion regulation, lability, social competence, and behavioral adjustment. As predicted, child age moderated the associations between parents' supportiveness and children's socioemotional adjustment. For younger children, parents' supportiveness predicted better emotion regulation and less anxiety/internalizing and anger/externalizing problems. However, for older children, these associations were reversed, suggesting that socialization strategies which were supportive for younger children may fail to foster socioemotional competence among 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children. These results suggest the importance of considering emotion socialization as a dynamic, developmental process, and that parents' socialization of children's emotions might need to change in response to children's developing emotional competencies and social demands.     

Parasympathetic Regulation and Parental Socialization of Emotion: Biopsychosocial Processes of Adjustment in Preschoolers

Variations in parents' emotion socialization have been linked to children's social competence (SC) and behavior problems, but parental influences do not act independently of children's characteristics. A biopsychosocial model was tested, in which children's parasympathetic regulation of cardiac function and paternal and maternal socialization of negative emotions were examined as joint predictors of young children's SC and behavior problems at daycare and preschool. Mothers and fathers responded differently to children's emotions, and cardiac vagal tone moderated the relations between parents' emotion socialization and children's behavior in early childcare settings. Both maternal and paternal emotion socialization strategies were more strongly associated with preschool adjustment for children with relatively less parasympathetic self‐regulatory capacities than for more self‐regulated children. Paternal reactions to children's anger, and maternal responses to children's sadness and fear, were particularly closely tied to variations in SC and internalizing and externalizing problems.     

Mothers' and Children's Positive Emotion: Relations and Trajectories across Four Years

The goals of this study were to examine the relations between and trajectories of mothers' and children's social positive expressivity (PE). Mothers' and children's PE were observed annually for four years beginning when children were approximately 18 months old (N = 247; 110 girls). Based on correlations, there was evidence of rank‐order stability in children's and mothers' PE. Based on growth curve analyses, mothers' and children's PE followed curvilinear trajectories; thus, mean‐level instability was found. Children's PE during a free‐play interaction with their mothers increased then decreased slightly whereas mothers' affect during the same task decreased then stabilized. Children's PE during a joy‐inducing situation (i.e., bubbles) with an experimenter slightly decreased and then increased. In panel models, there was no evidence of prediction over time across children's and mothers' PE when taking stability into account. These unique trajectories and relations provide insight into the developmental pattern of young children's and their mothers' PE elicited within social contexts.     

Relation between young children's anger and fathers' mental health during the COVID-19 epidemic: Moderating role of gender and child number

The father–child interaction deserves attention during the COVID-19 epidemic. This study administrated the Child Anger Questionnaire and the SCL-90 Symptom Checklist to collect primary data from 1862 fathers of Chinese young children during the COVID-19 outbreak, examined the relation between young children's anger and their fathers' mental health, and verified whether the relation was moderated by the gender or the child number. The results demonstrated that the detection rate of anger among Chinese young children was 60.08%, the scores of SCL-90 factors of their fathers were significantly lower than the Chinese normal adult male norms and those of infant parents, and the anger of young children had a significant effect on their fathers' mental health. Gender and child number moderated this relation. It is of great significance to strengthen the attention to the anger of young children and the mental health of fathers during the period of public health emergencies, and to promote the harmonious interpersonal relationship between young children and their fathers.     

Preschool Children's Negative Emotionality and Peer Acceptance: The Moderating Role of Sleep

Preschool children's sleep was examined as a moderator of the association between negative emotionality and both peer acceptance and peer rejection. Participants were 115 children (47 percent girls, M age = 4.29 years, SD = .63). Preschool teachers reported on children's negative emotionality (anger/frustration, sadness, and fear). Sleep was measured objectively using actigraphy in the child's home for seven consecutive nights. Peer acceptance and rejection were assessed using children's choices in sociometric interviews. Controlling for potential confounds, moderation analyses revealed that negative emotionality predicted peer acceptance and rejection only among children with poorer sleep quality (lower sleep efficiency, more frequent wake episodes, longer sleep latency), but not better sleep quality. Findings suggest that sleep is important not only for predicting child functioning but also for moderating the adverse effects of negative emotionality on a salient indicator of interpersonal functioning for preschool age children.     

Children's awareness concerning emotion regulation strategies: Effects of attachment status

The current study evaluated the effects of preschoolers' attachment status on their awareness concerning emotion regulation strategies. A total of 212 children between 3 and 5 years participated in this study and completed two self‐report tasks. The first was the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT), which assessed children's internal working models concerning parent–child attachment; the second evaluated children's ability to generate emotion regulation strategies in relation to three negative emotions (anger, sadness, and fear). Statistical analyses involved a mixed models multilinear regression approach controlling for age and gender. The results consistently revealed that the insecure avoidant group was significantly less likely than securely attached children to generate both comforting and self‐regulatory strategies. Surprisingly, the insecure ambivalent group showed no deficits across measured outcomes. When the analyses were conducted separately for each negative emotion, findings for co‐regulatory strategies for fear, and self‐regulatory strategies for anger also suggested that avoidantly attached children exhibited the lowest levels of awareness compared with children from the secure attachment group. These findings stress the importance of children's attachment status, and implicitly, the quality of the parent–child interactions for children's awareness of emotion regulation strategies related to negative emotions.     

Relations over Time among Children's Shyness,Emotionality, and Internalizing Problems

Data regarding children's shyness and emotionality were collected at three time points, two years apart (T1: N = 214, M = 6.12 years; T2: N = 185, M = 7.67 years; T3: N = 185, M = 9.70 years), and internalizing data were collected at T1 and T3. Relations among parent‐rated shyness, emotionality [parent‐ and teacher‐rated anger, sadness, and positive emotional intensity (EI)], and mother‐rated internalizing were examined in panel models. In some cases, shyness predicted emotionality two years later (teacher‐rated anger, parent‐rated sadness, and teacher‐rated positive EI) and emotionality sometimes predicted shyness two years later (teacher‐rated sadness, parent‐rated positive EI, and teacher‐rated positive EI). Parent‐rated shyness and/or emotionality (parent‐rated anger and parent‐rated sadness) predicted internalizing at T3. Results shed light on developmental relations between emotionality and shyness, as well as processes of risk for, or protection against, the development of internalizing problems.     

Parental Reactions to Toddlers' Negative Emotions and Child Negative Emotionality as Correlates of Problem Behavior at the Age of Three

Parent‐reported reactions to children's negative emotions and child negative emotionality were investigated as correlates of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Children (N = 107) and their parents participated in a short‐term longitudinal study of social development. Mothers and fathers independently completed questionnaires assessing parental reactions to their child's negative emotions and child negative emotionality at Time 1 (33 months) and child behavior problems at Time 2 (39 months). Child negative emotionality was significantly related to greater internalizing and externalizing behavior. Maternal and paternal punitive reactions were related to greater internalizing behavior, but only for boys with high levels of negative emotionality. Results indicate that child temperament and child gender may be important moderators of the relation between parental emotion socialization and child internalizing problems during the toddler and early preschool years.     

The Impact of Clique Membership on Children's Social Behavior and Status Nominations

The impact of children's clique membership on their peer nominations for social behaviors and status was examined in a sample of 455 third‐ through fifth‐grade children. Social identity theory (SIT) and children's peer group affiliation and context served as primary conceptual frameworks for this investigation. As suggested by SIT, results indicated that children displayed favorable views toward their own cliquemates, nominating cliquemates more often for positive characteristics (e.g., prosocial, cool) and high status indicators (like‐most, most‐popular) than for negative characteristics (e.g., aggression) and low status indicators (like‐least, least‐popular). At the same time, children's views toward their cliquemates were commensurate with the clique's normative reputations as determined by the broader peer group (i.e., grade). This suggests that children's perceptions toward their cliquemates, albeit favorable, are also regulated by the overall clique context. Meaningful gender and grade effects on children's cliquemate nomination patterns were found. Findings also were discussed regarding the impact of clique size on a peer‐based assessment of social reputations and status.     

The relation between parents' mental state talk and children's social understanding: A meta‐analysis

Though there is empirical support for the relation between parents' mental state talk to children and children's social understanding, including false belief understanding (FBU) and emotion understanding (EU), effect sizes range widely. The current meta‐analysis focused on the relation between parents' mental state talk and children's social understanding and moderators of this relation: parents' mental state talk content (e.g., cognitive vs. emotion talk), quality (e.g., appropriate vs. inappropriate), and context (e.g., book vs. reminiscing). Data from 22 studies examining FBU and 18 examining EU were examined. Participants included 2,298 children (<7 years). Analyses yielded a significant effect size for parents' mental state talk and children's FBU and EU. These relations were stronger under certain circumstances, particularly for children's FBU. For example, in terms of content, cognitive state talk was a stronger predictor of FBU and EU compared to talk about desires and emotions. For FBU, the strongest relations were present when parents' mental state talk was: (a) appropriate and explanatory compared to inappropriate and (b) in a book or self‐report context compared to reminiscing. The results of this study further refine the social constructivist view of social understanding and point to future avenues for research aimed at improving children's social understanding.     

Emotion Socialization in the Context of Risk and Psychopathology: Maternal Emotion Coaching Predicts Better Treatment Outcomes for Emotionally Labile Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

We examined whether maternal emotion coaching at pretreatment predicted children's treatment response following a 12‐week program addressing children's oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms. A total of 89 mother–child dyads participated. At pretreatment, mothers and children engaged in an emotion talk task. Mothers also reported their beliefs about emotions at pretreatment and their child's disruptive behavior symptoms, emotion regulation, and emotion lability/negativity at pre‐, mid‐, and post‐treatment. Clinicians reported children's symptom severity at pre‐ and post‐treatment. Children's emotion lability/negativity moderated effects of maternal emotion coaching on children's post‐treatment ODD symptoms, with stronger benefits of emotion coaching for children high in emotion lability/negativity. Results suggest that emotion coaching may promote treatment response for children with ODD who are especially at risk due to their emotionality.     

‘Did you see that,Mom?’: Social Looking in Three‐Year‐Old Boys

This study examined social looking, defined as child‐initiated looking to a caregiver's face, in a sample of three‐year‐old boys and their mothers: 59.6% of boys looked to their mothers at least once over the course of emotion‐eliciting puppet show vignettes. Social looking occurred more often during puppet show events that were child‐focused and positive in valence. Boys’ social looking was related to their concurrent affective state, with more expressions of positive emotion looking associated with more social looks. Patterns of family emotionality predicted children's use of social looking. Specifically, a history of positive family expressiveness was associated with children's less frequent use of social looking, whereas a history of negative family expressiveness was associated with children's more frequent use of social looking.     

Gene‐environment correlations in the cross‐generational transmission of parenting: Grandparenting moderates the effect of child 5‐HTTLPR genotype on mothers' parenting

Evidence suggests that parenting is associated cross‐generationally and that children's genes may elicit specific parenting styles (evocative gene‐environment correlation). This study examined whether the effect of children's genotype, specifically 5‐HTTLPR, on mothers' parenting behaviors was moderated by her own parenting experiences from her mother. Two independent samples of three‐year‐olds (N = 476 and 405) were genotyped for the serotonin transporter gene, and observational measures of parenting were collected. Mothers completed measures of the parenting they received as children. The child having a short allele on 5‐HTTLPR was associated with more maternal hostility (Samples 1 and 2) and with less maternal support (Sample 1), but only if the mother reported lower quality grandmothers' parenting (abuse and indifference in Sample 1 and lower levels of grandmother care in Sample 2). Results support the possibility of a moderated evocative gene‐environment correlation.     

Cumulative Risk,Negative Emotionality,and Emotion Regulation as Predictors of Social Competence in Transition to School: A Mediated Moderation Model

The goals of this study were to examine the additive and interactive effects of cumulative risk and child negative emotionality on children's social competence in the transition from preschool to school and to test whether these associations were mediated by child emotion regulation within a sample of 310 low‐income, ethnically diverse boys. Multiple informants and methods were used to measure contextual risk factors and negative emotionality at the ages of 1.5 and two, emotion dysregulation at the age of 3.5, and social competence in the home at the age of five and in school at the age of six. Results indicated that the relation between cumulative risk and emotion dysregulation was amplified for children with higher levels of negative emotionality. In turn, emotion dysregulation predicted lower social competence across both the home and the school contexts. This study represents an early effort to develop an integrative model of social competence by considering joint contributions of contextual risk, negative emotionality, and emotion regulation.