Development of Reappraisal in Early Childhood

Abstract

Emotion regulation (ER) is critical for children’s healthy socio-emotional development, in part by enabling the modulation of negative emotions that put children at risk for psychological disorders. Specifically, the cognitive ER strategy of reappraisal, defined as the ability to change one’s interpretation of an event in order to influence its emotional impact, appears to protect children against symptoms of anxiety and depression. Despite an understanding of its potential impact, little is known about the developmental pathways and mechanisms that predict children’s emerging reappraisal abilities. The Stress Acceleration Hypothesis offers a neurobiological explanation for how the early environment may influence the emergence of ER abilities like reappraisal. Specifically, this hypothesis posits that exposure to adversity, such as maternal psychopathology or SES, may trigger a pattern of accelerated maturation of the biological systems that support the ability to reappraise. In the current study, I used data from an existing prospective longitudinal study of emotional development in early childhood (N = 122) to test whether family socioeconomic status at 3 and 4 years of age moderated children’s ability to reappraise, as evidenced by the LPP, by age 5. Results suggested that, on average, the ability to reappraise was not visible as reductions in the LPP effect across passive view and reappraisal conditions (F(2,100) = 1.42, p = 0.24, n2 over p = 0.02). However, a significant interaction among trial type, condition and family SES suggested that differences in the LPP effect across conditions was moderated by family SES (F(2,100) = 3.89, p = 0.02, n2 over p = 0.06). At high SES, the LPP effect was reduced in the reappraisal relative to the passive view condition (F(2,100) = 3.06, p = 0.05, n2 over p = 0.05). In contrast, at low SES there were no differences in the LPP effect across the passive view and reappraisal conditions (F(2,120) = 1.90, p = 0.15, n2 over p = 0.03), suggesting the absence of a reappraisal effect on LPP.