Roads to regulation: Indirect paths from effortful control and respiratory sinus arrhythmia to emotion regulation across childhood.

Abstract

Emotion regulation begins to develop early in childhood and has important implications for optimal development. Individual regulatory factors, such as effortful control and baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (bRSA), have been demonstrated as markers that influence the development of emotion regulation across childhood. The aim of this present study was to examine the stability and the direct and indirect associations of these regulatory factors from early to middle childhood in predicting emotion regulation in late childhood. Children (n = 230) visited the lab when they were 3, 6, and 9 years old. At ages 3 and 6, mothers reported on child effortful control, and bRSA was assessed, and at age 9, mothers reported on child emotion regulation. Using cross lagged path modeling, we demonstrated that both effortful control and bRSA exhibited stability from early to middle childhood. Our results highlighted two distinct longitudinal pathways to emotion regulation: indirect effects of effortful control and bRSA at age 3 on emotion regulation at age 9, mediated through their respective measures at age 6. Cross-lagged mediation paths and alternate models, however, did not support the roles of effortful control and bRSA at age 6 as mediators in the relationship between each other's early measures and later emotion regulation. In other words, neither effortful control nor bRSA at age 6 indirectly predicted emotion regulation at age 9 through each other. These results are discussed in light of their clinical and prevention applications, as well as the developmental trajectories of these regulatory factors across childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).