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including being high in negativity and low in attention control, had smaller vocabularies and fewer grammar skills than toddlers who were not tempera- mentally difficult (Salley & Dixon, 2007). Similarly, 12-month-olds who were high in emotional distress in unfamiliar situations had relatively low language skills at 16 months, even if their mothers were highly responsive. In contrast, infants who were low on emotional distress showed high language skills when mothers were responsive (Karrass & Braungart-Rieker, 2003). Infants’ negative emotional expressions predict being late versus early talkers, likely because distress makes it difficult to process language information and interferes with Consider how important it is for a child to sit still and listen while in school. Emotional outbursts and problems with behavioral control do not fare well in environments that require self-regulation. As a result, poor emotional regula- tion and reactivity in infancy can interfere with later school performance if those tendencies persist over time, which they often do. Problems in effortful con- trol in the first years of life interfere with children’s later task persistence, aca- demic achievement, moral maturity, and positive relationships with peers and adults (Eisenberg, 2010; Posner & Rothbart, 2009; Valiente, Lemery-Chalfant, & Swanson, 2010). As one example, researchers assessed infant emotion regula- tion using various tasks that we learned about in previous sections (e.g., arm restraint). Infants low on emotion regulation had difficulties as preschoolers in the responsiveness of caregivers (Kubicek & Emde, 2012). Emotion Regulation and Preschool Learning

controlling their attention and behaviors (Ursache et al., 2013). Emotion Regulation and Later Social Functioning

Emotion regulation predicts more than language and academic performance. Problems in emotion regulation during infancy can lead to withdrawing from social situations in childhood at one extreme to engaging in aggressive and delinquent behaviors at the other, what researchers refer to as externalizing behaviors . Consider first how negative reactivity in infancy can snowball to later inhi- bition and social withdrawal. In one study, about half of infants who showed high levels of negative reactivity withdrew from unfamiliar peers at later ages (Fox et al., 2001). For example, behavioral inhibition in infancy and early childhood predicts teenagers’ sensitivity to angry faces and social withdrawal at 15 years of age (e.g., Pérez-Edgar et al., 2010). Moreover, early negative reactivity may amplify the bias to attend to potential social threats, such as the anger in a parent’s face, which then places children at risk for later anxiety, mood disorders, and withdrawal from social interactions (e.g., Pérez-Edgar et al., 2014; Burris et al., 2019). At the other extreme, early problems in self-regulation can cascade to behavior problems of acting out. In a longitudinal study, inhibitory control and emotion regulation skills starting at 2 years of age predicted externalizing behaviors through 15 years of age (Perry et al., 2018). But, perhaps the stron- gest evidence for stability of emotion regulation comes from a longitudinal study that spanned several decades. Three-year-old children who displayed high anger/frustration and poor attention skills reported less satisfaction in social relationships and displayed more antisocial behaviors during ado- lescence and adulthood than children without this early behavioral profile (Caspi & Silva, 1995). Attachment and Later Adjustment Like emotional development, infant attachment is not fleeting. Patterns of interac- tionbetween infants andcaregivers solidifyandextend toother relationships—from environment, such as physical aggression, disobeying rules, and destroying property PROPERTY OF OXFORD externalizing behaviors  Problem behaviors directed to the external

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