The Co-Regulation of Emotions Between Mothers and their Children with Autism

Thirty-four toddlers with autism and their mothers participated in an early intervention targeting joint engagement. Across the 24 intervention sessions, any significant distress episode in the child was coded for emotion regulation outcomes including child negativity, child emotion self-regulation, and mother emotion co-regulation. Results revealed that emotion regulation strategies by both mother and child were employed during distress episodes. An effect of intervention was found such that children decreased their expression of negativity across the intervention and mothers increased their emotional and motivational scaffolding. The results of this study indicate a positive effect of an intervention targeting joint engagement on emotion co-regulation outcomes

Individual Differences in Preschoolers’ Self-Regulation and Theory of Mind

Self-regulation, or the ability to control one’s actions and responses, is essential for healthy development across varied contexts. Self-regulation comes in several forms, including emotional, behavioral, and cognitive. The present study sought to examine whether individual differences in one form of self-regulation was related to children’s regulation in another domain. In addition, we explored whether different forms of self-regulation were similar in their contribution to preschoolers’ understanding of false belief. Findings revealed concurrent relations among emotional, behavioral, and cognitive self-regulation. When measures of children’s self-regulation were related to their performance on false belief tasks one year later, executive function predicted false belief understanding, while emotional and behavioral self-regulation did not contribute significantly to the model. These findings support the theory that self-regulation may consist of different interrelated types, including emotional, behavioral, and cognitive. In addition, the study provides important discriminant validity for the types of properties by which inhibitory control processes may be distinguished