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Regulating Emotions  259

CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING 7.6 1. What is social referencing and why is it considered adaptive? 2. What methods do developmental researchers use to examine infant social referencing? Regulating Emotions ✓

Most everyone is familiar with the “terrible twos,” the frequent emotional eruptions of toddlers when they don’t get what they want. Imagine a common grocery-store scenario: A father and his 2-year-old daughter are in line to pay for their groceries. The toddler pulls a bag of candy off the shelf. The father abruptly removes the candy and places it back on the shelf. His daughter again pulls the candy from the shelf. After several repeats of their tug-of-war, the father warns “No candy!” His daughter arches her back, kicks her legs, and screams. This scene illustrates the immense difficulty that infants and toddlers have in self- regulation , the ability to control attention, emotions, thinking, and behavior. In the next section, we examine the emotional component of self-regulation. Development of Infant Emotion Regulation LEARNING OBJECTIVE 7.7  Describe the development of emotion regulation in the first years of life. Emotion regulation refers to the monitoring, evaluating, and moderating of emotional responses, particularly under stressful situations (Calkins &Hill, 2007). Across the first two years of life, infants change from initially relying on other people to help them regulate, to independently attempting to calm themselves. Initially, infants have little control over their emotions. In fact, primary care- givers play a central role in helping young infants regulate their emotions and arousal (Perry, Calkins, & Bell, 2016). Adults may comfort or distract their dis- tressed infants, for example by hugging and rocking them and offering them toys. Such behaviors help teach infants strategies that can reduce emotional arousal. Toward the end of the first year, infants begin to independently control their emotions. For example, infants may look away from an unpleasant event, or soothe themselves by sucking their thumb (Fox & Calkins, 2003; Stifter & Braungart, 1995). In the second and third years of life, toddlers broaden their regulation strategies to include distractions such as singing and playing finger games to occupy themselves (Grolnick, Bridges, & Connell, 1996; Stansbury & Sigman, 2000). CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING 7.7 1. What are some strategies that older infants and toddlers might use to regulate their emotions? ✓ effortful control  A child’s capacity to voluntarily regulate attention and behavior when responding to emo- tionally challenging situations PROPERTY OF OXFORD self-regulation  The ability to control attention, emotions, thinking, and behavior emotion regulation  The monitor- ing, evaluating, and moderating of emotional responses, especially in stressful situations

Effortful Control LEARNING OBJECTIVE 7.8  Explain the attentional and behavioral components involved in infants’ effortful control. Effortful control refers to a child’s capacity to voluntarily regulate attention and behaviors when responding to emotionally challenging situations (Eisenberg et al., 2010; Rothbart & Bates, 2006). For example, the attentional component of effortful control is seen when a toddler looks away from a frightening scene on television so as not to become distressed ( FIGURE 7.12 ). The behavioral component of effortful con- trol might involve refraining from throwing toys across the floor when upset (Grolnick, Cosgrove, & Bridges, 1996). Attentional and

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FIGURE 7.12  Effortful control.  The attentional component of effortful control might be seen when a toddler looks away from a frightening scene on television or blocks his ears when hearing loud noises as a way to not become distressed. UNIVERSITY PRESS

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