About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 4. Cognitive Processes

Abstract

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The ability to generate multiple ideas for managing negative emotion is crucial for successful emotion regulation; the more ideas one has, the more possibility of flexibly deploying them as needed (e.g. Bonano & Burton, 2013; Gross, 1998). Studies show that the ability to verbalize emotion regulation strategies emerges in early childhood (Cole et al, 2010; Davis et al, 2010) and predicts regulation success (Cole et al, 2009). These studies raise the intriguing possibility that facility with idea generation (“emotional fluency”) confers advantages for children’s emotion regulation. As a first step towards answering this question, we explore what happens when we encourage children to generate as many emotion regulation ideas as they can. We look at number of ideas generated in comparison to, and in relationship to, ideas generated in other social and non-social domains.

In Study 1, 67 4- to 6-year-olds (Mage=5.01; SD=0.78) were presented with 3 scenarios (counterbalanced): An Emotion Regulation (ER) scenario (helping themselves feel better), a Social scenario (helping a friend feel better) and an Uncommon Uses task (UU) (ideas for unconventional uses of a tissue, e.g. Guilford, 1970). Children generated an average of 2.52 ideas (SD=2.46, age correlation ns) for regulating emotions, significantly lower than for helping a friend (M= 3.90, SD = 4.90; t(64)=2.40, p=0.019) and for uncommon uses (M= 4.64, SD = 4.60; t(64)= 3.66, p<0.001). Also, children who generated more ER ideas generated more social and non-social ideas (partial correlations controlling for age: ER and Social: r(62)=0.37,p=0.002; ER and UU: r(62)=0.30,p=0.018).

In Study 2 (ongoing, current N=24, planned 50; Mage=6.40, SD=1.04) we extend these findings in several ways. First, we include a verbal fluency task (name many animals as you can in 1 minute) to see if links between ER and idea generation are due to individual differences in verbal ability. Second, we include both First- and Third-Person ER scenarios (how can a friend make themselves feel better) to explore whether ER idea generation benefits from psychological distance (White & Carlson, 2016).

Preliminary findings show children generated ideas at similar rates as in Study 1 (ER first-person: M= 2.83, SD = 2.94; ER third-person: M= 2.75, SD = 3.15). Number of ideas did not differ between first- and third-person scenarios (t(23)=.21, ns) and neither did the types of ideas – children were more likely to generate external regulation processes than internal ones (see Table 1). Critically, controlling for age and verbal fluency, ER ideas correlate across first-and third-person scenarios (partial r(19)=.57, p<.001), and relate to number of UU ideas (partial r(19)=.51, p=.019).

Results suggest that generating multiple emotion regulation ideas is possible (though challenging) for young children, and relates to idea generation in social and non-social domains, even when controlling for verbal ability. Further work is needed to explore whether the content of these ideas, which focuses on external changes such as redirection, relates to successful regulation. These findings suggest emotional fluency - alongside emotion vocabulary and language expressiveness (Cole et al., 2010) - as a contributor to children’s early emotion regulation competencies.

Author information

Author	Role
Eleanor Myers, Duke University	Presenting author
Tamar Kushnir, Duke University	Non-presenting author
Teresa Flanagan, University of Chicago	Non-presenting author

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