Emotion Regulation in Early Years: The Developmental Foundations

Introduction

Emotion regulation, which starts to develop from the first years of life, is closely associated with the psychosocial adaptation of children and has a crucial role for healthy social-emotional development. The concept is based on a child's ability to comprehend and integrate information related to emotions while managing their behaviors according to their interpersonal/social and personal goals (Zeman et al., 2006).

Emotion regulation can be defined as “external and internal processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating and modifying emotional responses, particularly intense and temporal characteristics, in order to achieve goals” (Thompson, 1994). This conceptualization involves regulatory processes, including the cognitive, physiological, and behavioral management of emotion. During childhood, the development of emotional response regulation skills is related to the neurophysiological systems which enable them to reach different organizational levels in cognitive, physiological and behavioral dimensions, and is a process in which the social context is highly effective (Zeman et al., 2006; Sabatier et al., 2017). Children's emotional regulation abilit depends on their interactions and experiences with their environment (i.e. socialization processes, child-caregiver relationship, and peer interactions), as well as the development and maturation of their emotional systems (Zeman et al., 2006). Emotion regulation develops in a gradual and continuous progression until adulthood, where individuals gain responsibility and autonomy in their own emotional regulation processes, starting with a complete dependence on the caregiver from birth (Cole 2014; Sabatier et al., 2017).

Effective emotion regulation is seen as a great level of development in childhood, which has a lasting effect on the individual throughout life, as emotion regulation skills form the basis of emotional and social competencies and buffer against the risk of emotional psychopathologies (Waters & Thompson, 2014). Numerous longitudinal studies have revealed the negative effects of dysregulated emotional expressions in childhood and adolescence in terms of psychological adjustment of individuals in the short and long term (Maughan et al., 2007; Kim-Spoon et al., 2013; McLaughlin et al., 2011, Blair et. al., 2014). In studies conducted, deficits in regulation of emotions in childhood have been found to play a role in many forms of childhood psychopathologies such as externalization problems (Frick & Morris, 2004; Eisenberget al., 2017), anxiety (Eisenberg, Cumberland, et al., 2001; Carthy et al., 2010) and depressive symptoms (Zeman et al., 2002; Silk et al., 2003).

On the other hand, effective emotion regulation skills in childhood were found to be related to social competence and adaptation (Eisenberg, Fabes et al., 1995; Blair et al., 2015; Seçer, 2017). The diversity of systems that affect the maturation of emotion regulation skills and the fact that these skills are closely related to social and psychological functionality in childhood reveal the importance of emotion regulation in terms of child development. Therefore, supporting the development of emotion regulation skills in childhood is crucial in terms of supporting the psychological, emotional and social development of children and healthy social and psychological functionality in adulthood. In this context, the conceptualization of emotion regulation, the factors affecting emotion regulation in childhood, the developmental process of emotion regulation skills, and the social and psychological consequences of emotion regulation in children are discussed in this section.