Toddlers' Emotional Overregulation: Relations With Infant Temperament and Family Emotional Climate

• Published date: 01 October 2021
• Author: Sarah E. DeMartini,Martin I. Gallegos,Deborah B. Jacobvitz,Nancy L. Hazen
• Date: 01 October 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12580

S E. DM California State University, Chico

M I. G University of Texas at San Antonio

D B. J  N L. H University of Texas at Austin

Toddlers’ Emotional Overregulation: Relations

With Infant Temperament and Family

Emotional Climate

Objective: The aim of this article is to exam-

ine the development of toddlers’ overregulated

emotions in relation to temperament, as well

as to family hostile and emotionally disengaged

emotional climates.

Background: Toddlerhood is a time in which

children have developed consistent, characteris-

tic strategies for coping with their negativeemo-

tions. Temperament plays an important role in

the development of emotion regulation strate-

gies. Overregulated emotions are understudied

and characterized by children’s at or sup-

pressed affect.

Method: The present study examined moth-

ers’ reports of infant temperament assessed

at 6 weeks of age and observations of hostile

and emotionally disengaged family interactions

in relation to observed toddlers’ emotional

overregulation gathered at 24months of age.

Families (N=108) were videotaped while

interacting in four separate family subsystems.

Sarah E. DeMartini, Department of Psychology, California

State University,400 W. First Street, Chico, CA 95929–0234

(sedemartini@csuchico.edu)

Key Words: emotion regulation, emotional disengagement,

family interaction, marital interaction, parent–childinterac-

tion, toddlerhood.

The marital, mother–child, father–child, and

whole family subsystems were observationally

coded for overt hostility and disengagement.

Toddlers were separately observed and coded

for overregulation.

Results: Infants with temperaments low in net

negative reactivity who experienced disengaged

family interactions at 24 months showed the

greatest overregulation.

Conclusions: Takent ogether,the results s uggest

that the way toddlers respond to a disengaged

family emotional environment may depend at

least in part on temperament assessed at infancy.

Findings support the suggestionthat overregula-

tion is a unique type of emotional dysregulation

and that it should continue to be examined in

relation to family subsystems.

Implications: This work emphasizes the impor-

tance of clinicians examining emotional dis-

engagement within multiple family subsystems

and the importance of not overlooking overreg-

ulated toddlers compared with underregulated

children.

Toddlerhood is a particularly important time in

the development of emotion regulation (ER).

As toddlers actively explore and assert their

autonomy, they facemore emotionally challeng-

ing and frustrating situations as their parents

Family Relations 70 (October 2021): 1073–1089 1073

DOI:10.1111/fare.12580

1074 Family Relations

increasingly set limits (Morris et al., 2007).

Because toddlers are just beginning to develop

ER skills, they often display dysregulated

patterns of ER in frustrating situations, most

notably emotional underregulation, such as

tantruming, crying, or aggressive behavior

(Calkins, 2004). However, they may also

show emotional overregulation, dened as

a minimization or suppression of emotional

expressivity and manifested by at, constricted,

suppressed affect (Cassidy, 1994; Martins

et al., 2012). Both underregulation and over-

regulation trigger similar levels of heightened

physiological arousal (e.g., Martins et al., 2012;

Spangler & Grossmann, 1993). Yet little is

understood regarding how children’s intrinsic

temperament and the emotional climate of their

family interactions relate to the development of

early emotional overregulation. Thus, to better

inform intervention and prevention efforts, the

present study examined infant temperament

and emotionally hostile and disengaged family

interactions in relation to overregulation in

toddlerhood.

W S E E

O

Factors related to the early development of

overregulation are important to understand

because overregulation has been linked with

negative developmental outcomes, including

depression, anxiety, and eating disorders (e.g.,

Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010). Unfortu-

nately, the development and family correlates

of overregulation have been studied far less

than underregulation (Robertson et al., 2012).

This may be partly because parents may be

less likely to recognize overregulated toddlers’

suppression of negative emotions, especially

in comparison with their more overt and dis-

tressing expression of underregulated emotions.

For instance, studies have shown that although

parents and teachers can easily observation-

ally detect externalizing behaviors in young

children, they are less reliable in identifying

internalizing behaviors (e.g., Molins & Clop-

ton, 2002; van der Sluis et al., 2015). Because of

this, overregulation is inherently more difcult

to assess using parental self-reports, especially

in young children who are not able to talk about

their distressed feelings (Martins et al., 2012).

Observational research methods have more

promise for capturing overregulation in young

children. For example, by using a challeng-

ing task designed to induce child frustration,

Martins and colleagues (2012) were able to

observe overregulation reliably in infants as

young as 10 months old. However, in that study,

overregulation was dened simply as a “total

lack of expression of negative emotions by the

infant,” which may make it difcult to differ-

entiate from well-adapted emotion regulation

or low temperamental reactivity. When facing

potentially frustrating situations, young children

showing well-adapted emotion regulation dis-

play negative emotions in more socially appro-

priate ways and are more persistent at try-

ing to deal with emotionally challenging situ-

ations, while those with low emotional reac-

tivity are simply less likely to become dis-

tressed in such situations. In contrast, overreg-

ulated children tend to emotionally “freeze” in

frustrating situations, showing signs of anxi-

ety and emotional suppression (Cassidy, 1994;

Malatesta et al., 1989). The attachment litera-

ture also provides evidence for overregulation in

infancy. Specically, infants classied as inse-

cure avoidant in the Strange Situation show little

overt distress when separated from their primary

caregiver, even though they experience similar

heart rate acceleration and cortisol increases as

other infants, indicating that they feel consider-

able distress but suppress its expression (Span-

gler & Grossman, 1993). Thus, observers must

be carefully trained to pick up subtle nonverbal

cues that characterize the emotional suppression

and tension characteristic of overregulation.

T R  T  T’

D  E

O

In the rst 2 years of life, children progress from

neonates who are nearly entirely dependent on

their caregivers to regulate their emotions to tod-

dlers who have developed consistent, charac-

teristic strategies for coping with their negative

emotions (Calkins, 2004). Temperament plays

an important role in the development of these ER

strategies. Rothbart (1986) dened temperament

as “constitutionally based individual differences

in reactivity and self-regulation, with ‘constitu-

tional’ referring to the relatively enduring bio-

logical makeup of the individual, inuenced

over time by heredity, maturation, and expe-

rience” (p. 356). Temperament includes both

negative (e.g., fear and distress to limitations)