Abstract
Children with early developmental delays are at heightened risk for behavior problems and comorbid psychopathology. This study examined the trajectories of regulatory capabilities and their potentially mediating role in the development of behavior problems for children with and without early developmental delays. A sample of 231 children comprised of 137 typically developing children and 94 children with developmental delays were examined during mildly frustrating laboratory tasks across the preschool period (ages 3–5). Results indicated that children with delays had greater use of maladaptive strategies (distraction, distress venting) and lower use of adaptive strategies (constructive coping) than typically developing children. For both groups, strategies had similar rates of growth across time; maladaptive strategies decreased and adaptive strategies increased. The intercept of strategy use, but not the slope, was found to mediate the relation between developmental risk and externalizing behaviors. Findings support that dysregulation, rather than the developmental risk, may be responsible for the high levels of comorbid psychopathology.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Achenbach, T. M. (1991). Intergrative guide for the 1991 Child Behavior Checklist/4–18. Burlington: University of Vermont Department of Psychiatry.
Baker, B. L., Blacher, J., Crnic, K. A., & Edelbrock, C. (2002). Behavior problems and parenting stress in families of three-year-old children with and without developmental delays. American Journal of Mental Retardation, 107, 433–444.
Baker, J. K., Fenning, R. M., Crnic, K. A., Baker, B. L., & Blacher, J. (2007). Prediction of social skills in 6-year-old children with and without developmental delays: Contributions of early regulation and maternal scaffolding. American Journal of Mental Retardation, 112(5), 375–391.
Baker, B. L., McIntyre, L. L., Blacher, J., Crnic, K., Edelbrock, C., & Low, C. (2003). Pre-school children with and without developmental delay: Behaviour problems and parenting stress over time. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 47(4/5), 217–230.
Baker, B. L., Neece, C. L., Fenning, R. M., Crnic, K. A., & Blacher, J. (2010). Mental disorders in five-year-old children with or without developmental delay: Focus on ADHD. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 39(4), 492–505.
Bayley, N. (1993). Bayley Scales of Infant Development. San Antonio: Psychological Corporation.
Bekman, S. K. (2009). Emergence of preschoolers’ self-regulatory competence under risk and non-risk conditions. Tempe: Unpublished dissertation, Arizona State University.
Calkins, S. D., & Dedmon, S. E. (2000). Physiological and behavioral regulation in two-year-old children with aggressive/destructive behavior problems. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 28(2), 103–118.
Calkins, S. D., Gill, K. L., Johnson, M. C., & Smith, C. L. (1999). Emotional reactivity and emotional regulation strategies as predictors of social behavior with peers during toddlerhood. Social Development, 8, 310–334.
Cole, P. M., & Hall, S. E. (2008). Emotion dysregulation as a risk factor for psychopathology. In T. P. Beauchaine & S. P. Hinshaw (Eds.), Child and adolescent psychopathology (pp. 265–298). Hoboken: Wiley.
Cole, P. M., Luby, J., & Sullivan, M. W. (2008). Emotions and the development of childhood depression: Bridging the gap. Child Development Perspectives, 2(3), 141–148.
Cole, P. M., Martin, S. E., & Dennis, T. A. (2004). Emotion Regulation as a Scientific Construct: Methodological Challenges and Directions for Child Development Research. Child Development, 75(2), 317–333.
Cole, P. M., Michel, M. K., & Teti, L. O. (1994). The development of emotion regulation and dysregulation: A clinical perspective. Monographs for Research in Child Development, 59, 73–100.
Contreras, J. M., Kerns, K. A., Weimer, B. L., Gentzler, A. L., & Tomich, P. L. (2000). Emotion regulation as a mediator of associations between mother-child attachment and peer relationships in middle childhood. Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 111–124.
Crnic, K., Hoffman, C., Gaze, C., & Edelbrock, C. (2004). Understanding the emergence of behavior problems in young children with developmental delays. Infants Young Child, 17(3), 223–235.
Crnic, K., Pedersen y Arbona, A., Baker, B., & Blacher, J. (2009). Mothers and fathers together: Contrasts in parenting across preschool to early school age in children with developmental delays. International Review of Research in Mental Retardation, 37, 3–30.
Duncan, T. E., Duncan, S. C., Stycker, L. A., Fuzhong, L., & Alpert, A. (1999). An introduction to latent variable growth curve modeling: Concepts, issues, and applications. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Dykens, E. M., & Hodapp, R. M. (2007). Three steps toward improving the measurement of behavior in behavioral phenotype research. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 16(3), 617–630.
Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., Spinrad, T. L., Fabes, R. A., Shepard, S. A., Reiser, M., et al. (2001). The relations of regulation and emotionality to children’s externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Child Development, 72, 1112–1134.
Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., & Eggum, N. D. (2010). Emotion-related self-regulation and its relation to children’s maladjustment. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 6, 495–525.
Eisenberg, N., Zhou, Q., Spinrad, T. L., Valiente, C., Fabes, R. A., & Liew, J. (2005). Relations among positive parenting, children’s effortful control, and externalizing problems: A three-wave longitudinal study. Child Development, 76, 1055–1071.
Enders, C. K., & Bandalos, D. L. (2001). The relative performance of full information maximum likelihood estimation for missing data in structural equation models. Stuctural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 8, 430–457.
Gilliom, M., Shaw, D. S., Beck, J. E., Schonberg, M. A., & Lukon, J. L. (2002). Anger regulation in disadvantaged preschool boys: Strategies, antecedents, and the development of self-control. Developmental Psychology, 38, 222–235.
Kannass, K. N., Oakes, L. M., & Shaddy, D. J. (2006). A longitudinal investigation of the development of attention and distractibility. Journal of Cognitive Development, 7, 381–409.
Kochanska, G., Coy, K. C., & Murray, K. T. (2001). The development of self-regulation in the first four years of life. Child Development, 72(4), 1091–1111.
Kochanska, G., Murray, K. T., & Harlan, E. T. (2000). Effortful control in early childhood: Continuity and change antecedents and implications for social development. Developmental Psychology, 36, 220–232.
Konstantareas, M. M., & Stewart, K. (2006). Affect regulation and temperament in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 143–154.
MacKinnon, D. P. (2008). Introduction to statistical mediation analysis. New York: Lawrence Earlbaum.
Murray, K. T., & Kochanska, G. (2002). Effortful control: Factor structure and relation to externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 30, 503–514.
Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. (2007). Mplus user’s guide (5th ed.). Los Angeles: Muthén & Muthén.
Nigg, J. T. (2006). Temperament and developmental psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47, 395–422.
Odom, S. L., Homer, R. H., Snell, M. E., & Blacher, J. (2007). The construct of developmental disabilities. In S. L. Odom, R. H. Homer, M. E. Snell, & J. Blacher (Eds.), Handbook of developmental disabilities (pp. 3–14). New York: Guilford Press.
Olson, S. L., Sameroff, A. J., Kerr, D. C. R., Lopez, N. L., & Wellman, H. M. (2005). Developmental foundations of externalizing problems in young children: The role of effortful control. Development and Psychopathology, 17, 25–45.
Rydell, A. M., Berlin, L., & Bohlin, G. (2003). Emotionality, emotion regulation, and adaptation among 5—to 8-year-old children. Emotion, 3, 30–47.
Sobel, M. E. (1982). Asymptotic confidence intervals for indirect effects in structural equation models. In S. Leinhardt (Ed.), Sociological Methodology 1982 (pp. 290–312). Washington DC: American Sociological Association.
Thompson, R. A. (1994). Emotion regulation: A theme in search of definition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2–3), 25–52.
Thompson, R. A., Lewis, M. D., & Calkins, S. D. (2008). Reassessing emotion regulation. Child Development Perspectives, 2(3), 124–131.
Weems, C. F., & Pina, A. A. (2010). The assessment of emotion regulation: Improving construct validity in research on psychopathology in youth—An introduction to the special section. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 32, 1–7.
Wilson, B. J. (1999). Entry behavior and emotion regulation abilities of developmentally delayed boys. Developmental Psychology, 35, 214–222.
Wu, W., West, S. G., & Taylor, A. B. (2009). Evaluating model fit for growth curve models: Integration of fit indices from SEM and MLM frameworks. Psychological Methods, 14, 183–201.
Acknowledgement
Data collection for this study was funded through the Collaborative Family Study, supported with a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, # 34879-1459 (Keith Crnic, Principal Investigator; Bruce Baker, Jan Blacher, and Craig Edelbrock, co-Principal Investigators). The first author was also supported by a National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, #5-F31-MH087033.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gerstein, E.D., Pedersen y Arbona, A., Crnic, K.A. et al. Developmental Risk and Young Children’s Regulatory Strategies: Predicting Behavior Problems at Age Five. J Abnorm Child Psychol 39, 351–364 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-010-9471-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-010-9471-5