Emotionality, Emotion Regulation, and School Performance in Middle School Children

doi:10.1016/S0022-4405(02)00108-5

Journal of School Psychology

Volume 40, Issue 5, September–October 2002, Pages 395-413

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-4405(02)00108-5 Get rights and content

Abstract

This research investigated the connections of middle school students' emotional dispositions and academic-related affect with their school performance. One hundred three 6th–8th grade students completed three self-rated assessments regarding: (a) their academic competency; (b) affective tendencies (both mood and emotion regulation); and (c) negative emotions experienced during school-related tasks. Teachers assessed students' positive and negative moods, and schools provided achievement test results and student grades as measures of cognitive ability/achievement and school performance, respectively. Results indicated that although students' emotion regulation, general affective dispositions, and academic affect were related to each other, each of these variables also made a unique significant contribution to students' GPA, over and above the influence of other cognitive contributors. Overall, these results provide support for the role of socio-emotional factors in students' school performance, while also clarifying some of the uniquely affective contributors (rather than relationships or goals) to that performance.

Section snippets

Participants

The 103 middle school (6th to 8th grade) young adolescents who participated in this study (51 girls and 52 boys) attended one of two Jewish affiliated day schools in a major Northeastern city. This particular age group (11–14 years, M=12.1 years) was selected because the emergence of formal operational reasoning in children of this age has been linked with an increasingly abstract ability to understand and reflect on previous affective experiences (Piaget, 1981). More specifically, the

Negative academic affect scale

The Negative Academic Affect Scale (NAAS) (Gumora, 1993) was developed to assess students' perceptions of the frequency of negative affect that they experience while engaged in school-related tasks. The 39-item NAAS was created to measure the degree of anxiety, frustration, and anger that students feel while engaged in a variety of academic tasks ranging from homework, to class participation, to engagement in class projects. Some questions focus on students' abilities to organize and synthesize

RESULTS

Preliminary analyses revealed that there was no pattern of significant differences in the study variables as a function of either gender or grade level (only 1 of 16 analyses was significant). There were also no pattern of significant differences in the magnitude of any of the correlations among the measures (using Fisher Z tests) as a function of students' gender, grade level, or the school they attended. Consequently, correlations among the study measures (see Table 1) are shown for the

DISCUSSION

This study provides additional support for the role of socio-emotional factors in students' school performance Birch & Ladd, 1997, Pianta et al., 1995, Wentzel, 1996, Wentzel, 1999, while also clarifying some of the uniquely affective contributors (rather than relationships or goals) to that performance. More specifically, the present results indicate that both middle school children's emotional dispositions and their academically related affect are connected with their school success. Even

Acknowledgements

This article is based on a dissertation by Gail Gumora submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctoral degree at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University. We would especially like to thank the children and teachers who made this research possible. A version of this paper was presented at the 2001 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Minneapolis, MN.

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Emotionality, Emotion Regulation, and School Performance in Middle School Children

Abstract

Section snippets

Participants

Negative academic affect scale

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

Acknowledgements

Journal of School Psychology

Temperament, development, and the big five

Affective predictors of preschoolers' aggression and peer acceptance: direct and indirect effects

Developmental Psychology

Preschoolers' conflict-related emotions during peer disputes

Early Education and Development

Multidimensional self concept scale

Mood and the mundane: relations between daily events and self-reported mood

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

The development of emotion regulation and dysregulation: a clinical perspective

The intrinsic motivation to learn in classrooms

Emotional development in young children

Emotion, regulation, and the development of social competence

The relations of emotionality and regulation to preschoolers' social skills and sociometric status

Child Development

The role of emotionality and regulation in children's social functioning: a longitudinal study

Child Development

Contemporaneous and longitudinal prediction of children's social functioning from regulation and emotionality

Child Development

Young children's coping with interpersonal anger

Child Development

Motivating humans: goals, emotions, and personal agency beliefs

Meta-Emotion: how families communicate emotinally

Iowa test of basic skills: forms G and H