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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Genet Psychol. 2013 Sep-Dec;174(0):642–663. doi: 10.1080/00221325.2012.759525

Preschoolers’ Emotion Expression and Regulation: Relations with School Adjustment

Kristina J Herndon 1, Craig S Bailey 1, Elizabeth Shewark 1, Susanne A Denham 1, Hideko H Bassett 1
PMCID: PMC3856321  NIHMSID: NIHMS509677  PMID: 24303577

Abstract

Children’s expression and regulation of emotions are building blocks of their experiences in classrooms. Thus, a primary goal of this study was to investigate whether preschoolers’ expression and/or ability to regulate emotions were associated with teachers’ ratings of school adjustment. A secondary goal was to investigate how boys and girls differed across these associations. Children’s social-emotional behaviors in Head Start and private childcare center classrooms were observed, and using a series of measures, teachers’ ratings of children’s social competence, attitudes toward school, positive teacher relationships, and cooperative participation were collected. Three factors of children’s school adjustment were extracted from these indicators. A series of hierarchical regressions revealed that emotion expression and regulation were indeed associated with children’s reported school adjustment, with the strongest associations stemming from children’s negative emotion expression and their emotion dysregulation. Many of these associations were also different for boys and girls. Our results corroborate and extend our earlier findings, and have implications for social-emotional programming to maximize children’s early school success.

Keywords: preschoolers, school adjustment, gender, emotional expressiveness, emotion regulation, emotion dysregulation

For most children, preschool represents a period of learning how to navigate the challenges of the classroom for the first time, often creating a trajectory for success or failure in later academic contexts (Campbell & Stauffenberg, 2008). Based on these notions, school adjustment can be defined as: (a) young children’s behaviors and attitudes associated with learning in the classroom environment (e.g., positive attitudes about school, and the ability to participate both cooperatively and self-directedly in classroom activities); and (b) their skills associated with successful interactions with peers and teachers (e.g., social competence and lack of disruptive behavior). The two sets of abilities go hand-in-hand–without either, experiences in the early years of schooling are apt to be less positive. Children who demonstrate such school adjustment are more accepted by classmates and teachers, and are given more instruction and positive feedback by teachers (Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999). Thus, we view school adjustment as a powerful amalgam of the social competencies that allows children to function well in the school environment with teachers and peers alike, accompanied by crucial learning-related attitudes and behaviors that permit them to become immersed in the many new tasks put before them.

Further, it is our view that children’s abilities to express emotions appropriately and advantageously, as well as to regulate emotions when necessary, help to grease the cogs of a successful school experience and hence their school adjustment. Certain patterns of emotional expressiveness and regulation support more mutually satisfying experiences with peers and adults in the classroom, which in turn facilitate children’s greater attention to academic tasks, planning, and personal resources devoted to learning. In comparison to less emotionally competent peers, such children may benefit more from both teachers’ instructions and interactions with classmates, with whom they share academic resources and model learning skills (Ladd, Buhs, & Seid, 2000).

The association between specific aspects of social-emotional competence and such preschool adjustment is receiving increasing attention (see Denham, Zinsser, & Brown, 2012 for a review, as well as Graziano, Reavis, Keane, & Calkins, 2007; Howse, Calkins, Anastopoulos, Keane, & Shelton, 2003; Trentacosta & Izard, 2007 for relations between, e.g., emotion regulation and kindergarten achievement). This emerging literature stresses the importance of emotions and the impact that social relationships have on the skills that children need to thrive in academic contexts (Denham et al., 2012).

However, little, if any, research has examined the additive and multiplicative contributions of both emotional expressiveness and regulation to broad indices of relational and pre-academic aspects of preschoolers’ school adjustment. This lack is especially pronounced for naturalistically observed emotional competence, rather than that reported on by teachers or examined in analogue situations. Authors (2012) validated an observational measure of children’s social-emotional behavior, which will be used in this study, and showed relations of its factors to aggregates of school adjustment. In the present study, we expand the burgeoning research on preschoolers’ school adjustment by more micro-analytically examining separate indices of emotional expressiveness and regulation rather than overall social-emotional factors, using them to predict more differentiated aspects of teacher-rated school adjustment, in a new sample of preschoolers.

Expression and Regulation of Emotion

Emotional expressiveness is the first key aspect of children’s emotional competence that underlies early school adjustment; it is the way children communicate their feelings to those around them (Denham, 2006). For young children to successfully engage in interpersonal exchanges and form the relationships necessary for positive school experiences, they must learn to send and receive emotional messages in ways that are advantageous to both themselves and others (Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore 2001).

The information children give others about emotions, and that they gain from receiving others’ emotional messages, can be “game-changers” during social interactions. Children perceived as more socially competent by peers and teachers are emotionally positive and have appropriate reactions to emotional situations and are considered more adjusted in school (Denham et al., 2003; Denham, McKinley, Couchoud, & Holt, 1990; Shin et al., 2011). In comparison, preschoolers who struggle emotionally, particularly those expressing poorly regulated negative emotions, show compromised adjustment to school (Miller et al., 2006). In this study, we focused on children’s expression of positive and negative emotion during peer interaction.

Emotion regulation is the second key aspect of emotional competence; it is the ability of children to adjust the experience and expression of feelings in context (Cole, Michel, & Teti, 1994). Emotion regulation is the control system of children’s experienced and/or expressed emotions. In our theoretical view, emotions may be experienced or expressed without being regulated, but regulation assumes already-expressed or -experienced emotion (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004). Thus, children may experience and/or express positive or negative emotion, which may or may not require regulation given the demands of the context. After experiencing or expressing emotion in a situation that would benefit from regulation; emotion regulation may or may not ensue.

Indeed, preschoolers encounter many situations requiring emotion regulation during their early experiences in academic settings; following directions, sharing, waiting, doing tasks they might not want to do, all tax their emotion regulation skills (Denham, 2006). Those preschoolers who are able to successfully regulate emotion are more adjusted in Head Start classrooms (Shields et al., 2001; see also Graziano et al., 2007; Howse et al., 2003).

The advent of language is often posited to compliment and promote early emotion regulation; it affords children the ability to describe events and emotions requiring such regulation, and to discuss with others ways to self- and co-regulate (Kopp, 1989). As Cole, Michel, and Teti (1994) note, “A well-balanced relation between talking about emotion-related issues and conveying the content of speech with modulated emotionality supports effective communication and enhances opportunities for the social regulation of affect experience (p. 90).” Cohen and Mendez (2009), for example, have shown that language ability is positively related to emotion regulation; thus, in this study, we focus on preschoolers’ emotion regulation via talking about feelings during emotionally arousing peer interaction.

Children’s successful regulation of emotion contributes to their overall emotional competence because it is adaptive given the demands of the context and age-related expectations (Cole et al., 1994). However, the regulation of emotion is not always adaptive or successful, especially considering the pressures of academic settings. As such, emotion dysregulation is not the absence of emotion regulation, but is distinct from more successful regulation techniques. Emotionally dysregulated children regulate their emotions in ways that impair their ability to successfully adapt to classrooms (e.g., reacting to frustrating situations in inappropriate ways, such as venting their feelings through tantrums or aggression). They not only show negative emotion, but when the emotion requires some sort of regulation, they also behave in a manner demonstrating their emotion dysregulation. Research suggests that emotion dysregulation is an even stronger predictor of negative peer nominations, teacher ratings of negative behavior, and social skills than negative emotion expression alone (Miller & Olson, 2000; Miller et al., 2006). Furthermore, emotion dysregulation has been associated with peer conflict and lower levels of school adjustment (Miller, Gouley, Seifer, Dickstein, & Shields, 2004). In this study, we focus on venting behaviors accompanying emotionally negative peer interactions as indices of emotion dysregulation.

Additional examination of both emotional expressiveness and emotion regulation in preschoolers is essential to better understand how they achieve successful adjustment to school. We predict that positive emotion and emotion regulation would contribute positively to school adjustment, with negative contributions of negative emotion and emotion dysregulation. For example, showing negative emotions and dysregulation might be more disadvantageous to school adjustment than either alone, and the converse could hold true for positive emotion and regulation.

The Contribution of Gender to the Relation between Emotional Competence and School Adjustment

Gender differences in emotional competence are ubiquitous during preschool. In terms of emotional expressiveness and regulation, boys can be more susceptible to being emotionally aroused, with more difficulty regulating once aroused (Fabes, Shepard, Guthrie, & Martin, 1997; Keenan & Shaw, 1997). For example, Glassman (2000) found marked gender differences in young preschoolers’ social interactions; in particular, boys tended to be involved in more physical altercations or intimidation situations, which almost undoubtedly involved negative expressiveness and dysregulation. Thus, boys often (but not always) show more negative emotion and more dysregulation (Authors, 2012; Brody & Hall, 2008; Eschenbeck, Kohlmann, & Lohaus, 2007), These gender differences are likely to be evident in teachers’ views of preschoolers’ school adjustment.

However, it may be even more of a contribution to substantiate whether the relations between preschoolers’ emotion expression and emotion regulation with school adjustment differ for boys and girls. That is, if these aspects of emotional competence, which may differ across genders, are so important for school adjustment (e.g., Denham et al., 2012), it would be useful to pinpoint precisely which aspects of expressiveness and regulation/dysregulation predict such adjustment for boys and girls separately. Earlier research (Denham, Mitchell-Copeland, Strandberg, Auerbach, & Blair 1997; Eisenberg et al., 1996) has already indicated that the development of boys’ social adjustment seems particularly sensitive to individual differences in emotional competence; that is, boys seem to need to demonstrate emotional competence in order to be seen by teachers and peers as socially competent. Broadening this earlier finding, we expected emotional expressiveness, emotion regulation, and emotion dysregulation to be particularly pivotal in the school adjustment of boys.

The Present Study

In sum, the goals of the current investigation are to examine how observed positive and negative expression and regulation of emotion, as well as gender, and their interactions, contribute to preschoolers’ school adjustment. That is, to reiterate our earlier points, we expected that both positive and negative emotions, as well as emotion regulation and dysregulation, will contribute to variance in aspects of school adjustment (positively for positive emotional attributes, and negatively for negative ones). Furthermore, we expected that children, who were high in both positive emotion and emotion regulation and thus more emotionally competent, would be seen as most adjusted to school (with the converse true for those high in both negative emotion and emotion dysregulation). Moreover, we expected that contributions of both positive and negative emotions, as well as emotion regulation and dysregulation–along with the interactions of emotions and regulation–would be stronger for teachers’ reports of boys’ school adjustment than girls’. Thus, dimensions of school adjustment were isolated and regression analyses were used to examine the unique contributions of emotional expression, emotion regulation, and gender, as well as the interactions among the three.

Method

Participants

Children were recruited from Head Starts (36.0 %) and private childcare centers in the Northern Virginia area (N = 308), with which the authors had ongoing research partnerships. Of recruited children, 66.7% of Head Start children from two programs were consented to participate, with 45.9% consented in 12 private childcare centers, for an overall consent rate of 51.7%. Data were collected on three-, four-, and five-year-olds (Mage = 53.8 mos, SD = 7.8 mos), with approximately half the children being male (51.0%); data collection took place from February to April. Fifty-seven percent of children were from Caucasian families, with 33.6% from African-American families. Fifteen percent of families reported their ethnicity as Latino/Hispanic, with 6.4% not choosing to report. Modal maternal education was high school graduation across the sample; thus, 49.2% of mothers attained high school graduation or less, with 34% graduating with AA or BA degrees, and 15.2% with graduate degrees.

Measures

Minnesota Preschool Affect Checklist-Revised/Shortened (MPAC-R/S)

The 18-item MPAC-R/S is an observational tool used to assess children’s social-emotional behavior in naturalistic settings and was used to evaluate children’s positive and negative emotion expression and their emotion regulation and dysregulation. It is a shortened version of the 66-item MPAC-R (Denham & Burton, 1996; Denham, Zahn-Waxler, Cummings, & Iannotti, 1991), and is one of a collection of new, reliable, and valid tools that can be utilized in the classroom to measure children’s social and emotional behaviors (Authors, 2012). Information from 10 of the 18 items was used in this study. The positive emotion (three items, α = .66; average rinter-item = .43), negative emotion (two items, α = .92, average rinter-item = .96), emotion regulation (two items, α = .75; average rinter-item emotion = .65), and dysregulation (three items, α = .56; average rinter-item = .20) subscales demonstrated adequate reliability. Average inter-item correlations (all p < .001) are shown because Cronbach’s alpha may not be an appropriate indication of internal consistency for scales with so few items (Spiliotopoulou, 2009); mean inter-item correlations above .15 are considered acceptable for broad constructs (Clark & Watson, 1995). Item content can be seen in Table 1. Because we observed across four, five-minute periods of observation with potentially differing observers, observer reliability was assessed via average measure intraclass correlations; these indices were .93 and .88 for positive and negative emotion, respectively, and .75 and .90 for regulation and dysregulation, respectively (M ICC = .86, SD ICC = .08, ps < .001).

Table 1.

MPAC-R/S Observation Items

POSITIVE EMOTION
1. The child displays positive emotion in any manner (i.e., facial, vocal, or bodily emotion). The child’s behaviors must match the context of a given situation. Examples: Smiling, laughing, singing, dancing, etc.
2. The child directs positive emotion specifically at a particular person when already in contact with them. Emotion is directed at a specific person.
3. The child displays positive emotion when in a social situation but does not direct it to anyone in particular.
NEGATIVE EMOTION
1. The child displays negative emotion in any manner (i.e., facial, vocal, or bodily emotion). The child’s behaviors must match the context of a given situation.
2. The child directs negative emotion specifically at a particular person when already in contact with them. Emotion is directed at a specific person.
EMOTION REGULATION: POSITIVE REACTIONS TO EMOTIONALLY AROUSING PROBLEM SITUATIONS
1. The child promptly verbally expresses the feelings arising from a problem situation, then moves on to the same or a new activity (versus withdrawing, displacing the emotion onto others or objects, or staying upset).
2. The child shows primarily neutral or positive emotion during this behavior.
EMOTION DYSREGULATION: NEGATIVE REACTIONS TO EMOTIONALLY AROUSING PROBLEM SITUATIONS (usually anger-related)
1. The child displays context-related interpersonal aggression (verbal or physical). Someone does something emotionally arousing, to which the child responds with aggression (emotionally arousing preceding event must be observed).
2. The child hits, kicks, shoves, knocks over, or throws objects (emotionally arousing preceding event must be observed).
3. The child displays unprovoked physical interpersonal aggression.
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Both the MPAC-R and MPAC-R/S have been shown to be valid in capturing children’s social-emotional functioning in preschool contexts and the subsequent contribution of children’s social-emotional functioning to other relevant constructs in a number of samples. Previous research has demonstrated that older preschoolers display more positive emotion expression, emotion regulation, productive involvement in the classroom, and peer skills than younger preschoolers, and that children of non-depressed mothers are more prosocial (Denham et al.,1991). Authors (2012) also found associations between MPAC-R/S components and measures of school success. In this study, using the MPAC-R/S, we extend earlier findings in a new sample by focusing on the specific contributions that emotion expression and regulation, both singly and together, make to a more articulated view of early school adjustment, as well as exploring whether these contributions differ for boys and girls, with an entirely new cohort of children.

Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE-30)

Preschoolers’ social competence and behavior was evaluated by the SCBE-30 (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996). The SCBE-30 consists of 30 items, which were rated by the teacher using a 1 – 5 point Likert scale. Ten-item scales include Anger/Aggression (e.g., “easily frustrated”), Sensitive/Cooperative (e.g., “comforts or assists children in difficulty”), and Anxious/Withdrawn (e.g., “avoids new situations”). Internal consistency was found to be adequate for the three dimensions (α = .94, .85, and .85, respectively). Clinical samples of withdrawn and aggressive children have been shown to differ on the Anxious/Withdrawn and Anger/Aggression scales, demonstrating divergent validity (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996). Validity was also shown with cross-cultural samples (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996; LaFreniere et al., 2002; see also Denham et al., 2003, for relations of SCBE-30 with preschoolers’ emotional expressiveness and regulation). Three of 10 Angry/Aggressive items refer to anger (one of the negative emotions accessible by the MPAC-R/S), and three to aggression (also part of MPAC-R/S dysregulation). Three of 10 Anxious/Withdrawal items refer to fearful behavior, which would also be captured by the MPAC-R/S negative emotions scale. Based on earlier evidence on this point (Denham et al., 2003), we judged that SCBE scales provide enough additional content to weaken concerns about overlap with the MPAC-R/S.

Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale (PLBS)

The PLBS is a 29-item measure that teachers complete to rate children’s approaches to learning (Fantuzzo, Perry, & McDermott, 2004; McDermott, Leigh, & Perry, 2002). The three dimensions of the PLBS are also reliable in our data: Competence Motivation (11 items, e.g., reluctant to tackle a new activity; α = .86), Attention/Persistence (nine items, e.g., tries hard, but concentration soon fades and performance deteriorates; α = .86), and Attitude Toward Learning (seven items, e.g., does not achieve anything constructive when in a sulky mood; α = .75). All negative items are reverse coded. Further, multi-method, multi-source analyses validate the PLBS dimensions for use with preschoolers (Fantuzzo et al., 2004).

Student-Teacher Relationships Scale (STRS)

The student-teacher relationship was measured using the STRS (Pianta & Steinberg, 1992). The STRS is compiled of 30 statements, which consist of three scales: Closeness, Dependency, and Conflict. Teachers rated statements using a 5-point Likert-type scale, which ranged from 1, definitely does not apply, to 5, definitely applies. Reliability was adequate for Student-teacher Conflict (12 items, e.g., “This child and I always seem to be struggling with each other”; α = .86), Closeness (11 items, e.g., “I share an affectionate, warm relationship with this child”; α = .84), and Dependency (four items, e.g., “This child reacts strongly to separation from me”; α = .76). The STRS has shown predictive validity: children in elementary school with higher scores on the STRS were less likely to demonstrate negative school outcomes (i.e., being retained; Fabiano et al, 2010).

Teacher Rating Scale of School Adjustment (TRSSA)

School adjustment was assessed using the TRSSA. The TRSSA includes 52-items across four scales: School Liking, Cooperative Participation, Self-Directedness, and Comfort with Teacher (TRSSA; Birch & Ladd, 1997). Teachers completed the items using a 3-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 0, doesn’t apply, to 2, certainly applies. Adequate reliability was found for Self-Directedness (nine items, e.g., “seeks challenges, confident child”; α = .88), Cooperative Participation (eight items, e.g., “follows teacher’s directions”; α = .92), School Liking (five items, e.g., “likes going to school”; α = .75), and Comfort with Teacher (five items, e.g., “initiates conversations with the teacher” α = .70). The TRSSA was found to be valid across social economic status and ethnicity (Ladd, Kochenderfer, Coleman, 1997).

Procedure

Researchers trained on the MPAC-R/S observed each participating child for five minutes, on four separate occasions. These occasions were at least five days apart, during a period when the class was not transitioning between activities. Observers were instructed to record only what they saw during the five-minute observation interval. Teachers were given questionnaires containing demographics and the SCBE, PLBS, STRS, TRSSA in February and researchers collected the completed questionnaires in March. Finally, teachers were compensated $20 per child for their time.

Results

Two sets of analyses were conducted in order to test whether positive and negative emotion expression and regulation predicts children’s success in school. First, we examined how to capture the various aspects of school adjustment gleaned from the teacher reports. Next, we performed multiple regression analyses to determine how emotional expressiveness and regulation, as measured by the MPAC-R/S, predicted school adjustment.

School Adjustment Principal Components Analysis

Rather than analyzing teacher-child relationship, school readiness, and aspects of school adjustment as separate entities, we conceptualize overall school adjustment as latent composites of various components comprised of these indictors. Thus, we used principal component analysis extraction of the SCBE, STRS, PLBS, and TRSSA scales. The solution was rotated using varimax procedures with Kaiser normalization. Three components emerged with eigenvalues greater than one, explaining 74.91% of the variance.

Table 2 shows loadings above .55 for each component (i.e., so that each component accounts for at least 30 percent of variance in each indicator). No loading for TRSSA School Liking met this criterion, thus its highest loading is displayed. Children scoring high on component 1 subscales were identified as Positive/Engaged Learners, α = .91. We envisioned children high in variables on component 2 as Independent/Motivated Learners, α = .81. Children scoring high in subscales on component 3 can be thought of as Connected/Prosocial Learners, α = .82. To reflect each component, its subscales were standardized and averaged for subsequent analyses.

Table 2.

School Adjustment Principal Components Analysis

Positive/Engaged Components and Loadings
Independent/Motivated		 Prosocial/Connected
SCBE Anger/Aggression −.916
STRS Conflict/Anger −.899
TRSSA Cooperative Participation .843
PLBS Attitude Toward Learning .802
PLBS Attention/Persistence .649
TRSSA School Liking .488
PLBS Competence Motivation .815
TRSSA Self-Directedness .684
SCBE Anxious/Withdrawn −.783
STRS Dependency −.629
STRS Closeness .862
TRSSA Comfort with Teacher .784
SCBE Cooperative/Sensitive .605
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Regression Analyses

A four-step hierarchical regression was used for each school success component. To account for multicollinearity, all independent variables and covariates were centered. Positive and negative aspects of emotional expression and regulation were examined in separate models for each component of school adjustment identified in the principal component analysis, totaling six regressions. Specifically, each step of the regression equations subsequently tested (a) the main effect of gender, and controlled for age; (b) children’s emotional expression and emotion regulation (positive or negative); (c) the 2-way interactions between gender and emotion expression, gender and emotion regulation, and emotion expression and emotion regulation; (d) the 3-way interaction of gender, emotion expression, and emotion regulation. For brevity, only significant main effects and interactions are reported in the results section. For each interaction, post-hoc probing to examine significant simple slopes was performed (Holmbeck, 2002).

Step 1. Regression results in Table 3 show that, overall, girls were more Positive/Engaged, Independent/Motivated, And Cooperative/Prosocial learners than boys. Increases in age were uniquely associated with increases in being Positive/Engaged, Independent/Motivated, And Cooperative/Prosocial Learners (i.e., for both boys and girls).

Table 3.

Prediction of School Adjustment Indices: Emotional Expressiveness and Regulation

Positive/Engaged Learners Independent/Motivated Learners Connected/Prosocial Learners
Equations including
Regulation		 β SE β ΔF ΔR2 β SE β ΔF ΔR2 β SE β ΔF ΔR2
Step 1 18.66 .11*** 24.06 .14*** 33.13 .18***
  Age .23*** .99 .32*** 1.88 .12* .29
  Male −.24*** 1.03 −.19*** .69 −.41*** 3.16
Step 2 .25 .00 1.69 .01 2.32 .01
  Positive Emotion .00 .00 −.01 .00 −.02 .00
  Regulation −.04 .03 .10† .18 .11* .24
Step 3 .90 .01 .92 .01 1.62 .01
  Positive*Regulation −.02 .01 .04 .03 .08 .11
  Male*Positive .03 .02 .05 .05 .02 .01
  Male*Regulation −.08 .12 −.06 .06 −.08 .12
Step 4 2.01 .01 1.77 .01 4.39 .01*
  Male*Pos*Reg .08 .08 .10 .12* .24
Equations including
Dysregulation		 β SE β ΔF ΔR2 β SE β ΔF ΔR2 β SE β ΔF ΔR2
Step 1 18.66 .11*** 24.06 .14*** 33.13 .18***
  Age .23*** .99 .32*** 1.88 .12* .29
  Male −.24*** 1.03 −.19*** .69 −.41*** 3.16
Step 2 17.57 .09*** 5.61 .03** 1.67 .01
  Negative Emotion −.11† .21 .00 .00 −.01 .00
  Dysregulation −.24*** .99 −.18** .52 .09 .13
Step 3 6.69 .05*** 1.90 .02 .39 .00
  Negative*Dysregulation .14† .27 .00 .00 .07 .06
  Male*Negative −.11* .23 .04 .02 −.03 .01
  Male*Dysregulation −.12* .27 −.14* .32 .00 .00
Step 4 .04 .00 .60 .00 .39 .00
  Male*Neg*Dys −.02 .00 −.06 .05 −.05 .03
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Notes. Pos = positive emotion; Neg = negative emotion; Reg = Emotion regulation; Dys = Emotion dysregulation.

***

p < .001,

**

p < .01,

*

p < .05,

†

p < .10.

Step 2. After controlling for the effects of age and gender, significant main effects were found for emotion regulation and dysregulation, but not for positive and negative emotion (although negative emotion was a marginal negative contributor to being a Positive/Engaged Learner). Specifically, increases in emotion regulation were associated with increases in being a Connected/Prosocial Learner. Dysregulation contributed negatively to being a Positive/Engaged Learner and being an Independent Learner; more dysregulated children were less Positive/Engaged and Independent/Motivated Learners.

Step 3. Significant 2-way interactions were found only for negative emotion and emotion dysregulation. As seen in Figure 1, post-hoc probing indicated that the negative association between dysregulation and being a Positive/Engaged Learner was significant for boys. For girls, this association was only marginally significant. Additionally, there was a significant negative association between negative emotion and being a Positive/Engaged Learner for boys (Figure 2). No association was found for girls. A similar pattern of gender differences was found for emotion dysregulation and being an Independent Learner (Figure 3), such that increases in emotion dysregulation were significantly associated with decreases in being an Independent Learner, but only for boys.

Figure 1.

Figure 1

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Gender moderating the association between children’s emotion dysregulation and the positive/engaged factor of children’s school adjustment

Figure 2.

Figure 2

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Gender moderating the association between children’s expressed negative emotion and the positive/engaged factor of children’s school adjustment.

Figure 3.

Figure 3

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Gender moderating the association between children’s emotion dysregulation and the independent/motivated factor of children’s school adjustment.

Step 4. A significant 3-way interaction was found after controlling for the variance associated with the main effects of age, gender, emotion expression, and each subsequent 2-way interaction. Figure 4 shows that the associations between positive emotion, emotion regulation, and being a Connected/Prosocial Learner were different for boys and girls. Further examination of each association indicated a marginally significant positive relation between positive emotion and being a Connected/Prosocial Learner, but only for boys high on emotion regulation. For girls (either high or low emotion regulation) and boys low on emotion regulation, the relations among these aspects of emotionality were not reliably related to this child outcome.

Figure 4.

Figure 4

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Gender moderating the interactive affects of emotion regulation and positive emotion interaction on the positive/engaged factor of children’s school adjustment.

Discussion

In this study, we sought to determine how positive and negative emotional expressiveness, as well as emotion regulation and dysregulation, contributed to preschoolers’ school adjustment, with a particular focus on discovering differences in these associations by child gender. We found compelling evidence that children’s expression and regulation of emotion, especially their dysregulation of negative emotion, and to a lesser or gender-specific extent, emotion regulation and emotional expressiveness, are important for children’s adjustment to preschool. Earlier findings–showing the adequacy of the MPAC-R/S as a measurement tool, its indices’ promotion by emotion knowledge and executive function, and their contributions to early school adjustment and kindergarten academic success (Authors, 2012)–were corroborated and extended.

Contributions of Negative Emotion and Emotion Dysregulation

Negatively valenced expressiveness and emotion dysregulation were significant, or at least borderline, negative predictors of school adjustment indices three of the six times they were entered into the regression equations, highlighting potential difficulties for children with such patterns of emotional incompetence in school contexts. Positive emotion and emotion regulation did not contribute to variance in school adjustment, except for emotion regulation’s contribution to being a connected/prosocial learner. This direct contribution was tempered by an interaction with gender, which is discussed in turn.

Although positive emotional expressiveness and emotion regulation have been acknowledged as important correlates of success in the classroom (for social competence Denham et al., 2003, and/or broader school adjustment, Shin et al., 2001), the contributions of negative expressiveness and emotion dysregulation were much stronger in our data. Earlier research has highlighted the power of negative emotion (anger), when combined with emotion dysregulation (venting), in predicting preschoolers later social incompetence, as rated by both teachers and peers (Denham, Blair, Schmidt, & DeMulder, 2002). Our current results extend these findings to broader indices of early school adjustment; the prominence of negative emotion’s and emotion dysregulation’s contributions reemphasizes the need for programming focused on helping preschoolers become more emotionally competent (e.g., Domitrovich, Cortes, & Greenberg, 2007).

Why were negative expressiveness and dysregulation better predictors of school adjustment, despite the theoretical and empirical importance of positive emotion and emotion regulation during this age period? Earlier work (Authors, 2012) also showed, with a different cohort of children, that the negative expressiveness/dysregulation component was also the strongest correlate of school adjustment.

The reason underlying our current pattern of findings may be due more to the aspects of behavior that most strongly impact teacher ratings of school adjustment and less due to the properties of the social-emotional observation tool. It may be that these emotional qualities are inherently allied with aspects of teachers’ school adjustment ratings–for example, children higher on negativity and dysregulation may not be as cooperative in the classroom as positive and engaged learners, or very self-directed as independent and motivated learners, and that these children’s difficulties with emotions are much more obvious to the teachers who also rated them on school adjustment. In other words, children’s displays of negative emotions and emotion dysregulation, more so than positive emotion and emotion regulation, are more salient to teachers and are more readily remembered when reminiscing about their student’s social-emotional and academic experiences. Furthermore, the already cited studies of preschool emotion regulation and academic achievement (e.g., Graziano et al., 2007) focused mostly on ratings of emotion regulation, rather than observations. Participating teachers and parents had access to patterns of regulation over longer periods of time than can be captured by the relatively brief observation periods of the MPAC-R/S.

Contributions of Gender

Although boys consistently score lower on all our indicators of school adjustment, it appears that some of this direct contribution of gender may be due to boys’ displays of negative emotion, and their maladaptive reactions (i.e., emotion dysregulation). Our results parallel literature showing that girls are more able to meet the demands of the school environment, are more cooperative, and establish closer relationships with teachers (Birch & Ladd, 1997, 1998; Valeski & Stipek, 2001), but also show that boys who are positive and engaged learners or independent, motivated learners evidence less frequent displays of negative emotion and emotion dysregulation.

Boys’ school adjustment appeared particularly susceptible to their difficulties with emotion dysregulation. We already know that the development of boys’ social adjustment seems particularly sensitive to individual differences in emotional competence; it appears that boys also need to demonstrate emotional competence to be seen by teachers as, more broadly, adjusted in the new world of the classroom.

Thus, boys represent a vulnerable subgroup that, according to our findings, needs careful attention to their social-emotional learning and development. Our findings that boys’, but not girls’, negative emotion and dysregulation were related to less positive, engaged behavior in the classroom (as well as dysregulation more related to boys’ than girls’ independent and motivated behavior) suggest that boys would especially benefit from both parents’ and teachers’ assistance in determining what arouses their negative emotions, and in dealing with that arousal so that it does not interfere with their school adjustment. Programming can thus focus on strengthening children’s, especially boys’, awareness of the antecedence and consequences of their emotion in addition to acquiring the emotion self-regulation strategies that compliment those particular situations (Domitrovich et al., 2007).

Girls’ adjustment to school–whether academic or social aspects–seems to be acquired more effortlessly than boys’ adjustment to school. Perhaps girls’ advantage lies in their ability to create higher quality relationships with teachers, which predict higher rates of school adjustment (Kesner, 2000; Winer & Phillips, 2012). Moreover, teachers build different beliefs about each gender, based upon emotion-laden experiences with girls and boys. Although these beliefs do not always correspond to independent observations of behavior and temperament, teachers use them to evaluate girls more positively on school adjustment (Winer & Phillips, 2012). Therefore, at the very least, teachers believe that girls are more ready for school via their adjustment to the classroom. In fact, in the present study, the three school adjustment components were not only all significantly higher, but also significantly less variable, for girls as opposed to boys. Whether there are in fact gender-specific protective factors for school adjustment or teacher beliefs that cloud observations of girls’ actual negative emotions and dysregulation as they impact school adjustment, cannot be determined by our data. It is important to more extensively study these possibilities.

Our suggestions regarding boys’ emotional expressiveness and dysregulation can be extended by the three-way-interaction found here. This interaction indicates that boys’ prosocial, connected school behaviors (although never attaining the level of girls’) benefit especially from their positive emotional expressiveness, when paired with emotion regulation via the use of language to in emotionally negative situations (i.e., as seen in Table 1, we coded regulation as “promptly verbally expressing the feelings arising from a problem situation, then moving on to the same or a new activity”). It is rare to see expressiveness and regulation examined in interaction, but when they have been, their power in predicting social competence or broader school adjustment is readily seen (Denham et al., 2002, 2003; Shields et al., 2001). The current findings corroborate such earlier work.

Further, language has long figured prominently in the social-emotional adjustment of children; in particular, talking about what is emotionally arousing may help in solving difficult situations (Kopp, 1989). In earlier research, Denham, Cook, and Zoller (1992) found that preschoolers who commented or explained emotions in conversations with the mothers were more emotionally positive in their classroom activities. This study’s pairing of emotion regulation through the use of language and positive expressiveness may be particularly powerful for boys’ school adjustment. Thus, current findings focus more exclusively on boys, but expand the contributions of emotion language to broader success in the preschool classroom. Again, findings point to the need for emotional competence programming, which includes training in acquiring an emotion language lexicon, in early childhood education (Domitrovich et al., 2007).

Implications, Limitations, and Future Directions

In sum, we found that preschoolers’ observed negative emotional expressiveness and dysregulation, especially boys’, contributed to variation in teachers’ views of their school adjustment. Despite evidence of potential gender-based difficulties with teacher ratings that bear continued study, our findings highlighted the importance of continued focus on promotion of emotional competence in preschoolers, particularly for boys, especially in terms of preschoolers’ use of emotion language to assist in emotion regulation

These results, although potentially important, are not without caveats. First and foremost, our data are concurrent and correlational, and not the result of random assignment or experimental design—thus, neither direction of effect from child emotion to school adjustment, nor causation can be established. Stringent experimental designs that would allow us to make more solid claims are difficult, if not inappropriate, when exploring children’s contextual expression and regulation of emotion. Thus, an advantage to the current study is the use of the MPAC-R/S as a naturalistic and ecologically valid observational tool. However, more longitudinal designs would certainly add to the results gleaned in the current study in addition to research designs that capture the impact of social-emotional programming on children’s development.

Second, our indicators of children’s school adjustment were teacher-report. There may be important differences between teacher report and direct indicators of children’s adjustment to school that could change the strength or direction of our results; we have already noted the issue of teachers’ views of boys versus girls. Despite such issues, however, the classroom relationships and behaviors on which teachers reported have been shown to relate to their concurrent and later academic achievement (Birch & Ladd, 1997). Thus, teachers’ perceptions of how children are doing in their classrooms are relevant and informative. However, much could still be learned from multi-method indicators of children’s school adjustment, either directly for research or even for applied purposes.

Finally, children’s social-emotional behavior is often viewed as transactional (see Sameroff & MacKenzie, 2003). Thus, it is plausible to suppose teachers play an important role in shaping children’s expression and regulation of emotion, and by extension, their adjustment to school. Future research on emotions in the classroom could help capture the effects of teachers on children’s social and emotional learning, with the ultimate goal of improving teachers’ own emotional competence and their social-emotional transactions with their students. As well, social-emotional programming can better incorporate the intricacies of emotional expressiveness, emotion regulation, and gender, to meet children where they are based on their needs based, in part, on what is learned here and elsewhere.

Footnotes

Kristina J. Herndon is a graduate student at George Mason University. Her research focus is on emotional competence and socialization in toddlerhood. Craig S. Bailey is an advanced graduate student at George Mason University. His research focuses on the socialization of emotion and children’s development of emotional competence in classroom contexts. Elizabeth A. Shewark is a graduate student at The Pennsylvania State University with her M.A. from George Mason University. Her research interests include the influence of social emotional competence on children’s development. Susanne Denham is an applied developmental psychologist and University Professor at George Mason University, with a M.A. from The John Hopkins University and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research focuses on emotional competence in children’s social and academic functioning. Hideko Hamada Bassett is a research assistant professor at George Mason University, with M.S. in Psychology from the University of Memphis, and Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from George Mason University. She is currently involved in studies focusing on social and emotional aspects of school readiness and preschool teachers’ role in young children’s socialization of emotion.

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