Article
Behavioral strategies for emotion regulation in toddlers: associations with maternal involvement and emotional expressions

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Abstract

Ninety-four mothers and their 18- or 24-month-old children participated in four laboratory episodes designed to elicit fear or anger. Mothers’ behavior was constrained for the first part of each episode; mothers were then instructed to help their children. Toddlers’ behavioral strategies differed as a function of maternal involvement and as a function of the emotion-eliciting context. Only some of the behavioral strategies assumed to minimize expressions of distress truly did so; other behaviors showed maintenance effects on fear and anger expressions. The different pattern of results for the fear and frustration episodes highlights the importance of examining behavioral strategies across contexts designed to elicit different emotions.

Section snippets

Participants

Ninety-four mothers and their 18- (N = 50; M = 18 months, 13 days; SD = 9 days) and 24-month-old (N = 44; M = 24 months, 14 days; SD = 9 days) children were recruited through birth announcements published in the newspaper in Champaign–Urbana and surrounding areas. Twenty-four of the 18-month-olds and 18 of the 24-month-old children were boys. Thirty-three percent of the children were first-born. Mothers ranged in age from 24 to 45 years (M = 33 years; SD = 4.5 years). Ninety-three percent of

Results

Initial analyses examined birth order effects on emotion expressed and behavioral strategies. There were no significant effects of birth order; thus, analyses were collapsed across birth order. Next, we examined the emotions expressed within each episode, and the extent to which these emotions varied as a function of maternal involvement and the type of emotion episode. These analyses were conducted mainly as a manipulation check for the emotion-eliciting nature of the stimuli. Third, the main

Importance of context on behavioral strategies

This study adds to the growing body of research indicating the importance of contextual effects on behavioral strategies. As predicted, children exhibited differences in behavioral strategies across the emotion eliciting situations as a function of maternal involvement. For example, children enlisted their mothers’ support more when their mothers were not helping them. These attempts at enlisting mothers’ help may be based on past experiences in which mothers intervened on the infants’ behalf

Conclusion

In summary, by the middle of their second year, toddlers possess a large repertoire of behavioral strategies. In this investigation, the effectiveness of these strategies varied as a function of maternal involvement and emotion-eliciting context. The results of this investigation also serve to highlight the importance of examining the effects of behavioral strategies on emotional expression. We cannot assume that behavioral strategies minimize negative affect simply because they occur in

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a University of Illinois Graduate College Dissertation Grant and was conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree in Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 1996. Portions of these data were presented at the annual meeting for the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, May 1996, and at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, April 1997.

The authors wish to thank the

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