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The Mediational Role of Effortful
Control and Emotional
Dysregulation in the Link Between
Maternal Responsiveness and Turkish
Preschoolers’Social Competency and
Externalizing Symptoms
Irem Metin Orta
a
, Feyza Corapci
b
, Bilge Yagmurlu
a
and
Nazan Aksan
a,
*
a
Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey
b
Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
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 effort-
ful 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 compe-
tency. 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 responsive-
ness was associated with better social competency and lower exter-
nalizing. Those associations were both singly (through effortful
control) and doubly mediated (through effortful control and lower
emotion dysregulation), similar to US samples. The study contrib-
utes to a better understanding of the factors and mechanisms that
speak to children’s self-regulation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley &
Sons, Ltd.
*Correspondence to: Nazan Aksan, Dept of Neurology, UIHC, Iowa City IA 52242.
E-mail: nazan-aksan@uiowa.edu
Infant and Child Development
Inf. Child. Dev. (2013)
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/icd.1806
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Key words: emotion regulation; emotion dysregulation; effortful
control; social competency; externalizing; maternal responsiveness
Recent reviews place emotion regulation as the central mediating factor that links fa-
milial influences and child characteristics on the antecedent side to broad indices of
self-regulation such as social competency and adjustment difficulties on the outcome
side (Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers, & Robinson, 2007). The overarching goal of this
cross-sectional study was to rely on circumscribed measures of emotion regulation
and dysregulation in mediating the associations of maternal responsiveness and effort-
ful control with social competency and externalizing symptoms. The second broad
goal was to examine those associations in an understudied culture, Turkey, and ex-
plore if the associations fundamental to our thinking on the development of children’s
self-regulation apply to other cultural contexts.
Maternal Responsiveness
Maternal responsiveness, a sensitive, warm, supportive, and accepting orientation to
child signals (Darling & Steinberg, 1993), has shown both concurrent and longitudinal
associations with broad indices of children’s self-regulation including social compe-
tency (Eisenberg, Gershoff et al., 2001; Eisenberg et al., 2003, 2005; Spinrad et al.,
2007) and externalizing symptoms (Chang, Olson, Sameroff, & Sexton, 2010;
Eisenberg, Gershoff, et al., 2001; Eisenberg et al., 2005; Mintz, Hamre, & Hatfield,
2011; Spinrad et al., 2007). However, the mechanisms that explain links between
responsiveness and those broad indices of self-regulation are poorly understood.
In a recent review, Morris et al. (2007) suggested that children’s emotional
regulatory abilities (ER)
1
may be particularly important in mediating the links
from family contextual variables to self-regulatory outcomes such as social compe-
tency and adjustment difficulties. This is a particularly reasonable hypothesis for
the links from maternal responsiveness to social competency and externalizing.
Responsive parenting is linked with secure attachment (DeWolff & Van
Ijzendoorn, 1997). We would expect security to foster the development of inner
resources to cope effectively with negative emotions and experiences when they
arise, down-regulating and modulating difficult emotional experiences appropri-
ately during social interactions with family, peers, and teachers (Sroufe, 1995).
Conversely, low maternal responsiveness may expose children to an environment
that fails to provide support to deal with negative experiences, leading to greater
frustration, acting out, and adjustment difficulties (Power, 2004). Responsive par-
enting also models emotional competencies such as reading social partners’affec-
tive cues accurately and responding empathetically, critical to development of
social competencies (Eisenberg et al., 1996).
Evidence supports associations between maternal responsiveness and ER skills
generally. For example, mothers’prompt and appropriate responses to infants’crying
promotes infants’proximity and contact seeking, and decreases crying (Bell & Ains-
worth, 1972; Fish, Stifter, & Belsky, 1991), and maternal responsiveness has been
associated with good cardiac vagal tone, a biological marker of ER (Haley & Stansbury,
2003). In older children, responsiveness to distress is associated with better regulation
of negative emotions (Davidov & Grusec, 2006).
Studies have also shown that effortful control, ‘the ability to inhibit a dominant
response to perform a subdominant response’(Rothbart & Bates, 2006, p. 129),
mediates the effects of maternal responsiveness on greater social competency and
lower externalizing (Eisenberg, Gershoff et al., 2001; Eisenberg et al., 2005; Spinrad
et al., 2007). In this framework, effortful control is viewed as an inner resource,
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DOI: 10.1002/icd
enabling the focusing and shifting of attention, inhibiting or activating behaviours in
situationally appropriate ways that should assist ER skills (Derryberry & Rothbart,
1997; Rothbart & Sheese, 2007; Zelazo & Cunningham, 2007). Consistent with that
hypothesis, observed effortful control predicts children’s ability to mask negative affect
in accordance with display rules in the disappointing gift paradigm (Carlson & Wang,
2007; Kieras, Tobin, Graziano, & Rothbart, 2005). However, effortful control measures
do not involve emotional responses. Hence, we do not know whether effortful
control’s associations with better social competency and lower externalizing are in fact
mediated through better ER skills.
One of the central goals of the current study was to rely on circumscribed measures
of ER and effortful control, and test whether associations of maternal responsiveness
with better social competency and lower adjustment difficulties were mediated by
effortful control, which may in turn facilitate better emotion regulation and lower
emotion dysregulation. Figure 1 depicts the hypothesized links from maternal respon-
siveness to social competency and externalizing. Following a delineation of our
conceptualization of ER, we will summarize evidence supporting hypothesized links.
Emotion Regulation
Despite being an intense focus of attention, the construct of ER continues to present
difficulties in both definition and measurement (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004; Gross
& Thompson, 2007; Thompson & Meyer, 2007). Most adopt the following definition:
‘emotion regulation consists of intrinsic and extrinsic processes responsible for
monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions, especially their intensive
and temporal features to accomplish one’sgoals’(Thompson, 1994, pp. 27–28). The
measurement of extrinsic sources of influence such as guidance by parents is not
problematic (e.g. Fox & Calkins, 2003; Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1996; Kopp, 1989).
In contrast, measurement of intrinsic sources of influence has been debated in many
special sections (e.g. Cole et al., 2004; Tamir, 2011). A consensus that emerges from
special sections devoted to ER in recent years is that it may not be possible to
differentiate ER from emotional reactivity or the emotion process itself (Calkins,
2010; Goldsmith, Pollak, & Davidson, 2008; Rothbart & Sheese, 2007; Thompson,
2011). This consensus leads some to reject the notion of ER in favour of emotional
reactivity (Lewis, Zinbarg, & Durbin, 2010) and leads others to view emotional
reactivity and its regulation as part of a dynamic system that unfolds (Campos, Walle,
Dahl, & Main, 2011; Rothbart & Sheese, 2007; Thompson, 2011).
In this study, we adopt the latter perspective that reactivity in an emotional system
such as anger or fear, including its latency, duration, and intensity, simultaneously
reflects both the generation and the regulation of an emotional response. Consistent
with this perspective, we adopt the view that emotion dysregulation results when
emotional responses, both positive and negative, have high intensity, rapid rise, and
Figure 1. The hypothesized associations among maternal responsiveness, effortful control,
emotion regulation, social competency, and externalizing.
Emotion Regulation
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
arise in a number of situations that they fail to meet contextual demands and/or
expectations (Campos et al., 2011; Cole et al., 2004; Dunsmore, Booker, & Ollendick,
2012). In contrast, emotion regulation results when emotional responses, both pos-
itive and negative, are contextually appropriate and well-modulated in intensity.
Also consistent with this dynamic process perspective, the relative rank-order of a
child on a temperament scale reflects individual differences in both that child’s
emotional reactivity and ER. However, temperament instruments do not direct
the rater to evaluate whether the response is appropriate and fits with the
prevailing contextual demands and expectations. In this sense, measures of
temperamental emotional reactivity are ill-suited measures of ER.
In contrast, the item content of Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields &
Cicchetti, 1997) directs the rater to evaluate the appropriateness of the emotional
response given contextual demands. We relied on ERC to measure children’sERand
selected only the subset of items that asked raters to explicitly evaluate emotional
reactions along desirability or appropriateness given contextual demands and expec-
tations. Emotion dysregulation items capture contextually inappropriate expressions
of negative and positive emotions (e.g. taking pleasure from another’splightand
displaying negative emotions while trying to include others in play) and inability to
modulate emotional intensity (e.g. being disruptive in expressions of enthusiasm
and having temper tantrums for minor disappointments). Emotion regulation items
capture the ability to easily transition from one activity to another, easily recovering
from negative emotions, reading friendly/neutral approaches of adults and peers
accurately, and responding positively, in addition to emotional awareness.
Previous research has shown ERC’s emotion regulation and dysregulation
subscales to be moderately correlated. Some have formed a composite considering
regulation and dysregulation as ends of a continuum (e.g. Batum & Yagmurlu, 2007;
Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002; Yagmurlu & Altan, 2010), whereas others have noted their
distinct associations with predictors and outcomes (Dunsmore et al., 2012; Lukenheimer,
Shields, & Cortina, 2007; Miller et al., 2006; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997, 1998). For
example, emotion knowledge predicted better emotion regulation but was unrelated
to emotion dysregulation (Miller et al., 2006). Emotion coaching, a specificfacetof
positive parenting (Gottman et al., 1996), was associated with better emotion
regulation skills but not lower emotion dysregulation (Dunsmore et al., 2012). In this
same study, emotion regulation predicted adaptive skills including positive peer
relations but not adjustment difficulties, whereas emotion dysregulation was
associated with both adjustment difficulties and adaptive skills.
Those findings are consistent with the view that reactivity and regulation are part of
a dynamic process such that a child low in emotion dysregulation need not be high in
emotion regulation, as low standing emotion dysregulation could reflect generally low
reactivity in emotions and hence less demand to modulate and alter the experience of
emotions, that is, less risk for dysregulation (e.g. Eisenberg, Cumberland, Spinrad,
Fabes, Shepard, Reiser et al., 2001; Eisenberg & Fabes, 2006). In addition, those
findings raise the possibility that effects of maternal responsiveness on emotion regu-
lation and dysregulation may be distinct. Responsive mothers may foster resources
such as effortful control (e.g. Kochanska & Knaack, 2003) that help their children
down-regulate emotional experiences effectively, lowering emotion dysregulation
and in turn fostering greater competency and lower externalizing. However, respon-
sive parents may not at the same time adopt a proactive attitude such as that found
in emotion coaching to foster explicit emotional awareness, direct instruction about
emotion language, and coping strategies (Gottman et al., 1996) that are shown to foster
emotion regulation (Dunsmore et al., 2012). Once emotions are down-regulated appro-
priately and/or responsive parenting renders the environment predictable enough to
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DOI: 10.1002/icd
lower stress exposure and emotional reactivity (Power, 2004), proactive strategies such
as that found in emotion coaching may not be necessary.
On the basis of previous evidence, we would also expect regulation and
dysregulation to have distinct associations with social competency and adjustment
(Dunsmore et al., 2012; Graziano, Keane, & Calkins, 2007). Social competency, skills
and abilities that enable effective social interaction, including ability to cooperate
and function well in peer groups (Rose-Krasnor, 1997), subsumes effective and efficient
ER (Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore, 2011; Saarni, 1990). A socially competent
child needs to read nonverbal and often affective cues of his or her peers accurately
while managing his or her own emotional arousal to cooperate and function effectively
in the peer group. Children who are both low in emotion dysregulation and high in
emotion regulation are likely to meet those dual challenges and function effectively
in peer groups (Eisenberg & Fabes, 2006).
In contrast, emotion dysregulation or failure to regulate emotional reactivity is often
acriticalaspectofmanychildbehaviourproblems. High reactivity in the fear system is
often synonymous with anxiety disorders (Lewis et al., 2010). Poorly regulated
reactivity in anger often results in a constellation of behaviours that includes reactive
aggression, disruptive behaviour, defiance, and impulsivity, a central symptom cluster
in externalizing behaviour problems (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Not
surprisingly, emotion dysregulation has been linked with higher externalizing symp-
toms (e.g. Batum & Yagmurlu, 2007; Blandon, Calkins, Grimm, Keane, & O’Brien,
2010; Kim & Cicchetti, 2010). Hence, in this study, we examined regulation and
dysregulation as overlapping but distinct aspects of ER in relation to maternal respon-
siveness and effortful control on the predictor side and social competency and
externalizing on the outcome side.
Culture
The majority of evidence supporting maternal responsiveness in an emotion-regula-
tion and self-regulation promoting role is based on Western samples. The few studies
from ‘non-Western’sociocultural contexts suggest that maternal responsiveness
predicts attachment security in Chile (Valenzuela, 1997), Colombia (Posada et al.,
2002) and Turkey (Sumer, Selcuk, Gunaydın, Salman, & Harma, 2008) and that the
magnitude of associations is similar to Western samples (DeWolff & van Ijzendoorn,
1997). Evidence also suggests that maternal responsiveness may have similar bivariate
associations with broad measures of children’s self-regulation in non-Western contexts.
Keller and colleagues showed that maternal responsiveness in infancy predicted
toddler age compliance in Cameroon, Costa Rica, and Greece (Keller et al., 2004),
and self-reported maternal responsiveness predicted Turkish preschoolers’emotion
regulation (Yagmurlu & Altan, 2010).
It is possible that cultural differences are more subtle and evident in the mechanisms
that link parental factors with children’s self-regulation. In US samples, effortful
control mediates the effects of maternal responsiveness/warmth on social competency
and low externalizing (Eisenberg, Gershoff et al., 2001; Eisenberg et al., 2005; Spinrad
et al., 2007). Effortful control has also been examined as a mediator of the influence of
parenting practices on children’ssocialcompetencyandexternalizinginnon-US
samples including China, Indonesia, and France(Eisenberg,Chang,Ma,&Huang,
2009; Eisenberg, Liew & Pidada, 2001; Eisenberg, Pidada & Liew, 2001; Hofer,
Eisenberg, & Reiser, 2010; Zhou, Eisenberg, Wang, & Reiser, 2004). While those studies
have generally supported a mediating role for effortful control, parenting dimensions
included parenting styles (Eisenberg et al., 2009; Zhou et al., 2004), emotion
Emotion Regulation
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DOI: 10.1002/icd
expressiveness (Eisenberg, et al., 2001), and broadly conceived positive and negative
parenting practices (Hofer et al., 2010). Because those studies vary in both studied
dimensions of parenting and child ages, it is difficult to judge similarity in the
processes that link maternal responsiveness with self-regulation in US versus non-
US samples. In this study, we asked whether the associations of observed maternal
responsiveness and effortful control with better competency and lower externalizing
in Turkish preschoolers were mediated by emotion regulation and dysregulation.
Present Study
In this study, we examined the associations of observed effortful control with teacher
reported social competency and externalizing, and tested the extent to which those
associations could be accounted by effortful control’s ER promoting role. Figure 1
depicts the hypothesized associations we tested using concurrent data in a sample of
Turkish preschoolers. Previous evidence has not examined the associations depicted
in Figure 1 to permit a disambiguated understanding of how effortful control
promotes broad indices of self-regulation such as low externalizing and high social
competency, and whether those associations arise from effortful control’snarrowly
ER promoting role (Morris et al., 2007).
We also evaluated the possibility of both singly and doubly mediated links from
maternal responsiveness to children’s social competency and externalizing (as
depicted in Figure 1). In the single mediation case, associations of maternal responsive-
ness with social competency and externalizing may reflect its role in promoting
children’s effortful control similar to patterns found in US samples. In the double
mediation case, maternal responsiveness may be associated with better effortful
control, which in turn predicts better ER, and better ER may in turn be associated with
better adjustment (e.g. Morris et al., 2007). Double mediation has been supported in
samples of French adolescents’peer relationships (Hofer et al., 2010). Alternatively,
effortful control may also moderate the effects of maternal responsiveness on self-reg-
ulation (not depicted in Figure 1). Responsiveness may be particularly relevant to
promoting ER for children low in effortful control.
Finally, because the associations were examined in an understudied culture, we can
gauge the extent to which common assumptions about the roles of central constructs in
human development generalize across cultural contexts. Those questions were
addressed with a cross-sectional sample relying on multiple methods and raters. We
relied on extensive observations to capture children’s effortful control and maternal
responsiveness and teacher reports of ER, social competency, and externalizing
symptoms.
METHOD
Participants
The participants included 118 Turkish preschoolers (68 boys), their mothers, and
preschool teachers. Children were recruited from three private daycare centres and
kindergartens in Istanbul. The mean age for children was 4 years 6months (SD = .92).
Mothers’mean age was 36 years (SD = 3.59; ranging from 27 to 44 years), 33% were
homemakers, and the remaining 67% worked full or part-time. Fathers’mean age
was 40 years (SD =5.71; ranging from 31 to 71 years), and majority (99%) worked
full-time. Both parents were highly educated; 76% of the mothers and 82% of the
fathers had college degree or higher. Majority of the children (89%) came from intact
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families. Monthly gross family income (converted to US dollars) was distributed as
follows: 18% less than 2000 USD, 42% between 2000 and 4447 USD, and 40% more
than 4447 USD. Overall, the families represented middle-income to high-income
backgrounds.
Overview of Procedure
Mothers and their children were observed during a 2
1/2
to 3-h session in a research
laboratory decorated like a typical living room. Maternal responsiveness was observed
during six dyadic interactive contexts that lasted about an hour cumulatively.
Children’s effortful control was also measured with standard observational batteries.
The sessions were conducted by a female experimenter (E) and videotaped from
behind a one-way mirror for later coding. Inter-rater reliability was established on
20% of the cases, and the coders periodically aligned to prevent drift. Finally, preschool
teachers rated children’s ER, social competency, and externalizing symptoms. The
ratings were provided by teachers who had interacted with the child for at least
3months.
Measures
Maternal responsiveness
Procedure. Following previous research (Kochanska & Aksan, 2004), maternal re-
sponsiveness was observed in six everyday contexts, cumulatively lasting 56min: (i)
warm up/adaptation to the room (6 min); (ii) mother-is-busy episode (i.e. completing
a packet of questionnaires, 15 min); (iii) snack time (10 min); (iv) free play (5 min); (v)
clean-up time (10 min); and (vi) teaching task (10 min).
Coding and reliability. The macroscopic coding system adapted from Ainsworth, Bell,
and Stayton’s (1971) by Kochanska (1998) was used in this study. Maternal responsive-
ness was defined along sensitivity–insensitivity, cooperation–interference, and accep-
tance–rejection dimensions. Sensitivity describes how aware the parent is of the
child’s needs/feelings/whereabouts, and how promptly and appropriately the parent
responds to the child’s cues or signals. Cooperation describes parent’srespectforthe
child as an autonomous individual, appropriate to the circumstances. Acceptance
describes how genuine versus perfunctory a parent’s enjoyment and interest is when
interacting with the child. On the basis of previous work (Kochanska, 1998), two
coders rated maternal behaviours along these three dimensions on a 7-point scale
separately in each of six dyadic contexts. Intraclass correlations among coders ranged
from .65 to .85. The coders who rated maternal responsiveness were different from
those that rated children’seffortfulcontrol.
Data reduction. A composite score of maternal responsiveness was formed relying on
previous work (Kochanska & Aksan, 2004). First, scores were averaged across the
dyadic contexts to form overall sensitivity, acceptance, and cooperation composites.
Next, those overall scores for sensitivity, acceptance, and cooperation were standard-
izedandaveragedtoformaresponsiveness composite,alpha =.81.
Effortful control
Procedure. Six tasks that measure ability to slow down motor activity (Walk-a-Line
and Turtle–Rabbit), to delay (Snack Delay and Gift), and to suppress a dominant re-
sponse in favour of a subdominant response (Bear–Dragon and Day–Night) were used
to assess inhibitory control (Diamond & Taylor, 1996; Kochanska, Murray, & Harran,
2000; Kochanska, Murray, Jacques, Koenig, & Vandegeest, 1996). Walk-a-Line required
Emotion Regulation
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the child to walk down a line affixed to the floor as slowly as possible for two trials.
Turtle–Rabbit required the child to draw a straight line either as slowly as a turtle or
as fast as a rabbit. Snack Delay required the child to keep hands on a mat and wait
for the bell ring in order to eat an M&M placed under a transparent cup for six trials
with delays ranging from 10 to 40 s. Gift task required the child to sit with his or her
back toward the E and not peek while a gift was being wrapped for 60 s in the first
phase, and in the second phase, the child was asked to wait seated for the bow without
touching the wrapped gift left within arms’reach for 3 min. Day–Night required the
child to point to a moon picture on E’s‘day’prompts and point to a sun picture on
E’s‘night’prompts. Bear–Dragon required the child to carry out commands of the
friendly bear hand puppet (e.g. ‘touch your nose’) but suppress acting on the com-
mands of the mean dragon hand puppet (six trials for each puppet).
Measures of children’s attentional regulation were obtained from two contexts: an
M&M search task (Anderson et al., 2007) and attentional persistence during the
administration of a standardized receptive language test (Berument & Güven, 2010).
During the M&M search task, the child was asked to search for a hidden M&M in a
miniature doll house for three 90-s trials while suppressing the temptation to play with
the figures. During the receptive language test, the child was presented with words
and asked to pick the picture that best corresponded to the word.
Coding and reliability. In Walk-a-Line and Turtle–Rabbit tasks, the time to complete
slow and fast trials was recorded. In Snack Delay task, trials were coded on a 4-point
Likert scale (1 = eats candy before the bell is lifted; 2= reaches for the candy but the bell
ringsbefores/hecaneatit;3=removeshandsoffthemat,touchesplatecupbutdoesn’t
eat M&M; 4 =keeps his or her hands on the mat as asked and waits for the bell). In ad-
dition, for each trial, latencies for fidgeting were noted. In the wrapping phase of the
Gift task, child’s peeking was coded with a scale from 0 to 4 (0= fully peeks and does
not turn around; 1 =peeks but turns away around; 2 = peeks over the shoulder;
3 =turns head less than 90 degrees toward the present; 4 = does not try to peek), and
latency to each peek score was noted. In the bow phase of the Gift task, touching was
codedfrom1to4(1=opensgift;2=liftsboxbut does not open gift; 3 = touches but does
not lift gift; 4 = does not touch); the latency to each touch score and latency to leave seat
were noted. Day–Night task was coded with a scale from 0 to 3 (0 = fails to point, 1 =
incorrect response 2 = self-corrects, 3 = correct response). The dragon trials were coded
with a scale from 0 to 3 (0 = performs full movement/does not inhibit behaviour,
1 =performs a different movement than indicated; 2 = self-corrects; 3 = does not
move/fully inhibits behaviour). The Kappa for categorical scales ranged from .89 to
.91, and intraclass correlations for latency and duration scores ranged from .84 to .99.
All of the inhibitory control episodes were coded by two coders.
Each 5-s epoch of the M&M search task was coded for the presence/absence of fo-
cused attention as well as positive affect. Kappa’s ranged from .80 to .95. During the
receptive vocabulary test, the total number of items, total number of correct items,
and total duration of the test from beginning to completion were noted. Two coders,
different from those who rated inhibitory control, rated attention focusing episodes.
Data reduction. In Walk-a-Line task, scores of the two slow trials were averaged. In
Turtle–Rabbit task, time for rabbit trial was subtracted from time for turtle trial. In
Snack Delay, trial scores were averaged, and in Gift task, all latency, touch, and peek
scores were z-transformed and averaged. In Day–Night task, scores were summed
across 10 trials, and in Bear–Dragon task, scores for the Dragon trials were summed.
Those raw scores from each of six tasks were z-transformed and averaged to form
inhibitory control composite, alpha = .71.
TherelativefrequencyoffocusedattentionontheM&Msearchtaskwithoutany
explicit displays of discrete positive affect was pooled together with latency to
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disengage attention from the search, and the relative frequency of off-task behaviour
(reversed) into a focused attention composite,alpha =.76. The pace with which children
completed the items in the receptive vocabulary test (attentional persistence) was com-
puted by dividing the total number of items to the total number of minutes elapsed.
This ratio score was not correlated with the number of correct responses (receptive
vocabulary) on the test, r(110) = .04, ns. The attentional persistence ratio score during
the receptive vocabulary test and the focused attention score from the M&M search
task were positively correlated, r(109) = .33, p<.001. Thus, the latter two scores were
standardized and pooled into a composite score of attention focusing.
The inhibitory control composite showed moderate correlations with attention
focusing composite, r(118) = .41, p<.001. The two scores were averaged to form
a composite measure of observed effortful control.
Emotion regulation
The ERC (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997) was used to measure the extent of children’s
emotion regulation and dysregulation. This 24-item checklist was rated by preschool
teachersonaLikertscalefrom1(never)to4(always).TheoriginalformoftheERC
(Shields & Cicchetti, 1997, 1998) and its parent and teacher forms in Turkish version
have been shown to have high internal consistency and discriminant validity in previ-
ous research (Batum & Yagmurlu, 2007; Yagmurlu & Altan, 2010). To better reflect ER
as defined in this study, we examined ERC item content and removed all items that did
not ask the rater to evaluate the appropriateness of the emotional response given
contextual demands/expectations. This process eliminated items such as ‘is a cheerful
child’and items tapping impulsivity and abilitytodelay.Itemstappingemotional
reactions that were inadequately modulated, which failed to meet contextual
expectations, were averaged into Emotion Dysregulation subscale,alpha =.71.
2
Items
tapping emotional reactions that were socially and contextually appropriate including
emotional awareness, ability to transition between activities easily, and soothability
were averaged and pooled into Emotion Regulation subscale,alpha =.72.Thetwo
subscales were moderately negatively intercorrelated in our sample (r=.35, p<.01).
Social competency and externalizing symptoms
Preschool teachers also completed two subscales of the Social Competence
Behavior Evaluation—Preschool Edition, Short Form (LaFreniere & Dumas,
1996). This instrument has been translated into and validated in Turkish samples
(Corapcı, Aksan, Arslan-Yalcin, & Yagmurlu, 2010). Ten items of the Social Compe-
tency subscale showed satisfactory reliability, alpha = .85. Two items tapping reac-
tivity to anger (e.g. quick to get angry and gets angry when asked to switch to
another activity) were removed from the Anger–Aggressiveness subscale to
prevent artificially inflated correlations between ERC items and externalizing.
The remaining eight items tapping peer bullying, oppositional conduct toward
adults, physical aggression, and frequent disagreements with peers were averaged
to form Externalizing subscale,alpha =.78.
Statistical Analyses
The analyses proceeded in three stages. First, intercorrelations were examined
among all measures in the study. Second, hierarchical regression analyses were
conducted to test whether effortful control acted as a moderator of the associations
of maternal responsiveness with ER subscales, social competency, and externaliz-
ing. If moderation effects were present, we would modify Figure 1 to include the
Emotion Regulation
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DOI: 10.1002/icd
interaction term between effortful control and maternal responsiveness. Third, we
relied on observed variable structural models with maximum likelihood to test the
hypothesized links in Figure 1. Models were parameterized to permit nested com-
parisons in fit associated with the specific constraints of focus. Model fitting began
with a highly constrained baseline, null model, in which only the following two
correlations were freely estimated: the intercorrelation between social competency
and externalizing, and the intercorrelation between emotion regulation and
dysregulation subscales. As recommended by Judd and Kenny (1981), models
with several mediated links among variables, as Figure 1, are tested starting from
the most endogenous end of the model. We progressively introduced the hypoth-
esized links in a sequence of nested models.
Asymptotic variance–covariances were submitted to LISREL 8 (Jöreskog & Sörbom,
1993) with robust maximum likelihood estimation (RML). The adequacy of overall
model fit was examined with both Satorra–Bentler scaling and ordinary ML chi-square
in addition to overall model fit indices (Satorra & Bentler, 2001). Satorra–Bentler scal-
ing permits robust ML estimation when normal-theory assumptions of chi-square
are probably violated. There are several ways in which model fit indices can be classi-
fied. Here, we adopted Kaplan’s framework (Kaplan, 2000) and chose one index from
each of three classes of alternatives to model chi-square. Those indices were as follows:
root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and its 90% confidence interval
(CI), expected cross-validation index (ECVI) and its 90% CI, and the comparative fitin-
dex (CFI). When the model is well-specified in the population of interest, we expect
RMSEA to range from .05 to .08 and CFI to take on values .90 and higher. The values
for the ECVI are evaluated relative to the value this index takes for the saturated model
that necessarily has a perfect fit. When the value of the ECVI in the target model is
lower relative to its value for the saturated model, we have greater confidence in our
ability to validate the results in an independent sample of the same size. In addition,
we examined a summary index of standardized residuals, standard root mean resid-
ual. In well-fitting models, we expect this index to take on values around .08. All indi-
rect effects from the final model with adequate fit were examined with empirical
bootstrapping (Hayes, 2012; Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008).
RESULTS
Intercorrelations
Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics and the intercorrelations among the study
variables. The descriptive statistics for all variables indicate adequate variability in
the sample. Distributions were generally normal, and no outliers were identified.
Table 1 shows that children were relatively high in regulating their emotions and social
competency but low in emotion dysregulation and externalizing symptoms. We also
examined sex differences in all the measures with independent sample t-tests.
Those tests showed significant differences in observed maternal responsiveness,
t(116) = 2.74, p<.05, and social competency, t(103) = 2.05, p<.05. Girls were
higher in social competency (M=5.06, SD =.58) than boys (M= 4.71, SD =.97),
and girls (M=.28,SD = .71) were observed to have more responsive mothers than
boys (M=.20, SD = 1.07).
Bivariate correlations showed that effortful control was moderately and positively
correlated with maternal responsiveness, indicating that responsive mothers tended
to have children with high effortful control scores. Teacher ratings of emotion regula-
tion and dysregulation were moderately negatively correlated. Emotion regulation
showed strong correlations with social competency and moderate correlations with
I.M. Orta et al.
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
externalizing. In contrast, emotion dysregulation showed strong correlations with
externalizing and moderate correlations with social competency, observer ratings of
effortful control, and maternal responsiveness.
Hierarchical Regression Analyses
Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to test whether effortful control
acted as a moderator of the associations of maternal responsiveness with ER sub-
scales, social competency, and externalizing. We controlled for child age and sex in
the first step in all four regressions. None of those hierarchical regressions
supported a significant effect for the interaction between maternal responsiveness
and effortful control, b=.02, ns for emotion regulation, b=.09, ns for emotion
dysregulation, b=.05, ns for social competency, and b= .02, ns for externalizing.
This is not surprising in that the two variables were moderately intercorrelated as
shown in Table 1, making it highly difficult to uncover a moderation effect with
the current sample size.
Model Fitting Analyses
Table 2 presents the overall fit statistics associated with each of the models. We first fita
baseline, null model that only included the correlation between social competency and
externalizing, and the correlation between the two ERC subscales.
3
The overall fitof
this model was highly inadequate. Model 1 imposed the constraint that emotion reg-
ulation and dysregulation had differential effects on children’s social competency
andexternalizing.Allthreepathsweresignificant, and their addition improved over-
all model fit, Δw
2
(3) = 99.25, p<.001 and Δw
2
sb
(3) = 15.13, p<.001. The standardized re-
sidual and modification index associated with the fixed path from emotion regulation
to externalizing was not significant, supporting the hypothesis that emotion regulation
and dysregulation have distinctive associations with children’s social competency and
externalizing. Model 2 tested two additional hypotheses implied in Figure 1. The first
hypothesis was that effortful control has direct effects on both emotion regulation and
dysregulation, and the second hypothesis was that effortful control had no direct
Table 1. Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations among the measures
12 34567
1. Age
2. Effortful control .50**
3. Maternal responsiveness .10 .40**
T ratings on the ERC
4. Emotion dysregulation .04 .25** .28**
5. Emotion regulation .09 .01 .01 .35**
T ratings on SCBE
6. Social competency .10 .31** .26** .49** .61**
7. Externalizing .39** .36** .15 .60** .25** .47**
Mean 4.52 .02 .00 1.64 3.35 4.84 1.59
SD .94 .79 .96 .41 .43 .85 .56
Min 2.19 3.84 3.64 1.0 2.22 2.10 1
Max 6.19 1.10 1.45 2.78 4.0 6.0 3
ERC = Emotion Regulation Checklist; SCBE = Social Competence Behavior Evaluation.
Note.
+
p<.10; *p<.05; **p<.01 or better. Minimum N= 105.
Emotion Regulation
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
effects on social competency and externalizing; that is, its effects on the latter two
variables were fully mediated by ER. The addition of the two paths from effortful con-
trol to emotion regulation and dysregulation improved overall model fit, Δw
2
(2) = 7.48,
p<.01 and Δw
2
sb
(2) = 13.61, p<.001; however, the path from effortful control to
emotion regulation was not significant; thus, it was removed. The overall model fit
statistics when the path from effortful control to emotion regulation subscale was fixed
are shown in Model 2a. The standardized residuals and the modification indices
associated with the constraint that effortful control had no direct effects on social
competency (i.e. full mediation) were elevated. This elevation indicates that partial
mediation was appropriate only in the case of social competency. Model 3 includes the sig-
nificant direct effect of effortful control on social competency, and the addition of this path
improved fitsignificantly over Model 2a, Δw
2
(1) = 7.57, p<.01 and Δw
2
sb
(2) = 3.9, p<.05.
Model 4 included the path from maternal responsiveness to effortful control
but, consistent with full double mediation, constrained the paths from maternal
responsiveness to ERC outcomes, social competency, and externalizing. The path
from maternal responsiveness to effortful control was significant. The nested
model comparisons between Models 4 and 3 when relying on normal-theory chi-
square was significant, Δw
2
(1) = 15.29, p<.001 and marginally significant when
relying on Satorra–Bentler scaling, Δw
2
sb
(1) = 3.17, p<.078. Examination of several
aspects of overall and component fit led us to accept Model 4 as the final model.
Those were as follows: (i) robust ML estimate for the path from maternal
responsiveness to effortful control was significant; (ii) overall fit of Model 4 using
both normal-theory chi-square and Satorra–Bentler scaling was adequate; and (iii)
component fit indices (standardized residuals and modification indices) from
Model 4 were better than those from Model 3. Finally, considering partial
mediation (freeing paths from maternal responsiveness to emotion dysregulation,
social competency, and/or externalizing) led to overfitting, for example chi-square
values less than model df (Bollen, 1989). Together, those findings indicate that
evidence for partially mediated effects of maternal responsiveness on endogenous
variables was weak in this sample. Hence, we accepted Model 4 as the best-fitting
model, depicted in Figure 2.
Indirect effects
In order to estimate the indirect effects implied in the best-fitting Model 4, depicted
in Figure 2, we relied on empirical bootstrapping (Hayes, 2012; Preacher & Hayes,
Table 2. Overall model fit statistics
Model df w
2
pw
2
sb
p
sb
RMSEA
90% CI
ECV
90% CI CFI sRMR
Baseline
model
13 141.53 .000 57.83 .000 .14–.23 .52–.98 .76 .28
Model 1 10 42.28 .000 34.83 .000 .10–.21 .41–.76 .86 .16
Model 2 8 34.80 .000 25.23 .002 .08–.21 .39–.68 .91 .13
Model 2a 9 35.04 .000 26.61 .002 .079–.20 .38–.68 .90 .13
Model 3 8 27.47 .006 18.53 .018 .045–.18 .35–.59 .94 .12
Model 4 7 12.18 .095 12.10 .097 .00–.16 .34–.52 .97 .066
w
2
sb
= Satorra–Bentler scaling of the overall chi-square; p
sb
=p-value associated with Satorra–Bentler scal-
ing of the overall chi-square. RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation; CI = confidence inter-
val; CFI = comparative fit index; sRMR = standardized root mean square residual. Note. Saturated
model expected cross-validation index = .41.
I.M. Orta et al.
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
2004, 2008). The PROCESS module written and available for download from Hayes
website was used to estimate the indirect effects, bootsrapped standard errors, and
bias corrected 95% CIs. Table 3 presents the indirect effect estimates for each path that
map to the focused hypotheses of interest in the final best-fitting Model 4.
AscanbeseenfromTable3,effortfulcontrol’s indirect effects on both social
competency and externalizing through lower levels of emotion dysregulation were sig-
nificant. In addition, all singly and doubly mediated effects of maternal responsiveness
on social competency and externalizing were significant. Maternal responsiveness was
associated with increased social competency and lower externalizing through its
positive association with children’s effortful control. Its mediated effects on lower exter-
nalizing can be attributed to ER promoting role of effortful control (double mediation).
DISCUSSION
We relied on circumscribed measures of emotion regulation and emotion
dysregulation to test whether these ER skills mediated the associations of maternal
responsiveness and children’s effortful control on social competency and externalizing
symptoms in an understudied cultural context, Turkey. Our overarching goal was to
disambiguate the meaning of previously reported associations among overlapping
but distinct dimensions of self-regulation by relying on circumscribed measures of
ER. For example, we tested the extent to which effortful control’sassociationwith
social competency and externalizing reflected its hypothesized role in promoting ER
and whether the associations of maternal responsiveness with social competency
and externalizing were mediated by effortful control. Furthermore, because we tested
those associations in an understudied culture, we informed the extent to which associ-
ations fundamental to our thinking on the development of children’sself-regulation
apply to other cultural contexts.
Observed maternal responsiveness showed significant associations with observed
effortful control, teacher ratings of children’s emotion dysregulation, and social
competency in the expected direction. Those results extend earlier findings to show
that observed maternal responsiveness is negatively associated with circumscribed
measures of emotion dysregulation (e.g. Eisenberg, Gershoff et al., 2001; Eisenberg
Figure 2. The final best-fitting model, robust maximum likelihood estimates of the direct effects.
SCBE = Social Competence Behavior Evaluation.
Emotion Regulation
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DOI: 10.1002/icd
Table 3. The indirect effects, standard errors obtained from empirical bootstrapping, and bias corrected 95% confidence intervals for the effects of
maternal responsiveness and effortful control on emotion dysregulation, social competency, and externalizing
Indirect effect (SE) 95% CI
Path specification LL UL
1. Effortful control !Emotion dysregulation !Social competency .109 (.050) .042 .240
2. Effortful control !Emotion dysregulation !Externalizing .163 (.062) .318 .064
3. M responsiveness !Effortful control !Emotion dysregulation .024 (.015) .067 .003
4. M responsiveness !Effortful control !Social competency .174 (.064) .073 .324
5. M responsiveness !Effortful control !Emotion dysregulation !Social competency .028 (.018) .005 .084
6. M responsiveness !Effortful control !Emotion dysregulation !Externalizing .044 (.274) .121 .006
Note. The values were obtained from PROCESS module to generate empirically bootstrapped standard errors and bias corrected 95% confidence intervals relying on
5000 random samples (Hayes, 2012).
I.M. Orta et al.
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
et al., 2005; Kochanska & Knaack, 2003; Kochanska et al., 2000). Model fitting analyses
indicated that maternal responsiveness was associated with better social competency
and lower externalizing in part because of its positive association with effortful con-
trol. Children with highly responsive mothers were observed to be high in effortful
control. And children high in effortful control were also perceived by their teachers
to be high in social competency and low in externalizing. Evidence also indicated that
those associations were further mediated by effortful control’sassociationswithlow
emotion dysregulation. Findings supported both single and double mediation.
Effortful control predicted lower emotion dysregulation but was unrelated to
emotion regulation. This finding suggests that effortful control is associated with
children’s ability to modulate the intensity of emotional arousal and select emotional
responses in ways that do not violate contextual demands and expectations. How-
ever, effortful control does not appear, in parallel, to be associated with increased
emotional awareness, ability to transition easily between activities, and the expres-
sion of other contextually appropriate emotional responses. This interpretation is
consistent with the suggestion that a child low in emotion dysregulation need not
be high in emotion regulation, as low standing in emotion dysregulation could re-
flect generally low reactivity in emotions and hence less risk for dysregulation
(Eisenberg, Cumberland et al., 2001).
More importantly, this is the first study to our knowledge to demonstrate
that effortful control predicts ER when the latter is measured in a circumscribed
manner. Previous studies had shown that effortful control is associated with the
ability to mask disappointment, a very narrow sampling of functioning from the
domain of ER (Carlson & Wang, 2007; Kieras et al., 2005). Furthermore, findings
from model fitting analyses indicated that effortful control’s association with so-
cial competency was both direct and indirect. Children high in effortful control
were rated higher in social competency partly because they were also rated
lower in emotion dysregulation. In contrast, effortful control’s association with
externalizing was indirect and fully mediated by lower emotion dysregulation.
This finding provides the first direct evidence that is consistent with earlier inter-
pretations that effortful control’s effects on externalizing symptoms speak to its
ER-related functions (e.g. Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000; Eisenberg,
Gershoff et al., 2001; Eisenberg et al., 2003, 2005; Spinrad et al., 2006, 2007).
Despite shared method variance, emotion regulation and dysregulation subscales
of the ERC had differential associations with social competency and externalizing.
Emotion dysregulation was associated with high externalizing and low social
competency, whereas emotion regulation was associated with high social compe-
tency, replicating the pattern of distinctive associations in earlier studies (Dunsmore
et al., 2012; Miller et al., 2006). The findings support the suggestion that children who
are both high in emotion regulation and low in dysregulation are likely to meet the
challenges of effective social interactions, managing their own affective arousal while
reading peer cues accurately. In contrast, emotion dysregulation was more relevant
to prediction of externalizing symptoms.
The surprising lack of associations between emotion regulation and all other
constructs with the exception of social competency may have important implica-
tions for future research. It is possible the antecedents of emotion regulation are
highly specific both in terms of children’s profile in temperamental reactivity
and in terms of the parenting factors that foster it. Specific facets of maternal emo-
tion socialization and parental emotional communication styles including emotion
coaching and dismissive attitudes (Dunsmore et al., 2012; Lukenheimer et al.,
2007) may help elucidate the processes that foster emotion regulation. Research
that speaks to interrelations between temperamental reactivity profiles and skills
Emotion Regulation
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DOI: 10.1002/icd
pertinent to emotion understanding including recognition and knowledge may
also help us better specify sources of variability in emotion regulation that is dis-
tinct from emotion dysregulation.
Collectively, the findings suggest that the processes through which respon-
siveness may come to promote overlapping but distinct dimensions of chil-
dren’s self-regulation may be similar to both single mediation processes
reported in previous studies (Eisenberg, Gershoff et al., 2001; Eisenberg et al.,
2003, 2005; Spinrad et al., 2007) from North American samples and double
mediation processes reported for French adolescents (Hofer et al., 2010). While
some researchers have questioned the cross-cultural similarity in the meaning of
maternal sensitivity (Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake, & Morelli, 2000) or
authoritative–authoritarian parenting (e.g. Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997),
our findings highlighted similarities rather than differences between the Turkish
culture and the industrialized North American countries. Direct behavioural
observations of maternal responsiveness used in the present study pertained
to maternal sensitivity, acceptance, and cooperation dimensions. These dimen-
sions included maternal behaviours that are believed to promote children’s
autonomy. It is important to note that the significant change in the traditional
family system from being an agricultural, rural society into an increasingly
urban, industrial, modern, and egalitarian one (Kagitcibasi, 2007) is leading to
a gradual shift toward promotion of autonomy, while retaining a strong empha-
sis on emotional interdependence in urban, middle-class Turkish families.
Relatively high levels of maternal responsiveness observed in this sample are
consistent with the SES make-up of the sample. The findings are also consistent
with other studies that indicate that Turkish mothers increasingly promote
autonomy and self-expression of the child seen in the North American and
European societies (Nacak, Yagmurlu, Durgel, & van de Vijver, 2011).
Strengths and Limitations
The cross-sectional design was a limitation that prevents causal conclusions. In ad-
dition, children in this study were recruited from preschools serving middle to
high socioeconomic backgrounds and therefore represent a restricted sampling of
the Turkish population, limiting generalizability of the associations to the larger
Turkish population. An important strength of the study was reliance on observa-
tional measures of both effortful control and maternal responsiveness that were col-
lected in multiple tasks and situations with varying demands, permitting a robust
assessmentoftheconstructsofcentralinterest, comparable with the best practices
in the field (e.g. Eisenberg, Gershoff et al., 2001; Kochanska et al., 2000; Spinrad
et al., 2007). Another strength of the study was reliance on multiple methods
andmeasuresofconstructstominimizeinflated associations because of shared
method variance, in particular with respect to associations among maternal
responsiveness, effortful control, and teacher ratings (ERC, social competency,
and externalizing).
Implications and Future Directions
The findings inform the central role afforded to ER as mediating the links be-
tween familial and child factors on the antecedent side and indices of broad
self-regulation such as social competency and externalizing symptoms on the
outcome side (Morris et al., 2007). When circumscribed measures of ER are
I.M. Orta et al.
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2013)
DOI: 10.1002/icd
used, the results showed that emotion dysregulation rather than emotion regu-
lation appeared to mediate associations of maternal responsiveness and effortful
control on the antecedent side with children’s social competency and adjustment
difficulties on the outcome side. In fact, emotion regulation was only associated
with better social competency and appeared unrelated to either effortful control
or maternal responsiveness. Those findings encourage both a separate examina-
tion of dysregulation and regulation, and careful selection of ER measures to
permit a disambiguated understanding of the processes of self-regulation.
Given that emotion regulation showed highly specific associations with social
competency, factors that foster those skills need to be explored more broadly in
future studies. Nevertheless, the findings support the growing conviction that
intervention and prevention programmes need to include modules that specifi-
cally target improved ER skills as findings both from this study and others
clearly show that emotion dysregulation plays a role in adjustment difficulties
(Batum & Yagmurlu, 2007; Dunsmore et al., 2012; Miller et al., 2006). Findings
join others in the literature (e.g. Eisenberg et al., 2009; Yaman, Mesman, van
IJzendoorn & Bakermans-Kranenburgh, 2010), suggesting that programmes that
invest in increasing maternal responsiveness will have positive effects on child
functioning in non-Western contexts.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study is based in part on the MA thesis of the first author. Irem Metin is
currently at the Atilim University, and Nazan Aksan is currently at the University
of Iowa. The data were drawn from a larger project funded in part by TUBITAK
109K016 (PI: Nazan Aksan) and Koc University. We would like to thank the
parents who participated in the assessments, and the undergraduate and graduate
students who assisted with both data collection and coding: Senay Cebioglu, Akif
Yerlioglu, Pelin Kılıc, Goksin Erdemli, Gozde Gokozan, and Oya Sakiroglu.
Note
1. Please note that we use the abbreviation ER throughout the manuscript to refer
to the umbrella construct of emotion regulation. To refer to specific meanings
such as emotion regulation and emotion dysregulation, we do not rely on any
abbreviations.
2. One item pertaining to flat affect was removed from dysregulation subscale, as
it lowered subscale alpha.
3. Age was residualized from effortful control and externalizing (the only vari-
ables that showed significant correlations with age) during LISREL model
fitting analyses.
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