Executive Function and Trajectories of Emotion Dysregulation in Children with Parent-Reported Behavior Problems.

This study focused on 199 3-year-old children with parent-reported behavior problems who took part in a larger longitudinal study. Results revealed that response inhibition and working memory were not predictive of later emotion dysregulation. Gender differences emerged for delay aversion and attentional control. Boys who performed better on delay aversion tasks exhibited lower emotion dysregulation related to threat 2 years later, whereas girls who performed better on delay aversion tasks exhibited higher threat-related emotion dysregulation 2 years later. Better performance on a visual attention task significantly predicted decreasing threat-related emotion dysregulation slopes for boys but not for girls. Finally, girls who made more omission errors on a continuous performance task exhibited higher emotion dysregulation related to frustrative-nonreward 2 years later. Results suggest that specific facets of executive function may play an important role in difficulties with emotion dysregulation during the preschool years and that this pattern may differ across boys and girls.
PMID: 31907714 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology - January 5, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Binder AS, Brown HR, Harvey EA Tags: J Abnorm Child Psychol Source Type: research