Self-control Development Study

BACKGROUND

Dissertation study of children’s cognitive and emotional development, school readiness and the influence of parenting style.
Emotion regulation is defined as the control of emotion experience.
A multi-step process: experience an emotion and then select a regulatory response that is separate from the emotion itself.
Aim is to investigate 3-year old children’s dynamic respiratory sinus arrhythmia change in response to a negative-affect evoking laboratory episode. RSA is a proxy for emotion regulation.
Investigate whether parenting style influences child RSA. Test RSA’s affect on child preschool readiness.

METHODS

ANALYTICAL PLAN
Latent growth curve modeling

Examine intra- and interindividual RSA change across the eight 15-s epochs during the anger-induction
- Estimate latent factors for the baseline RSA score (intercept) and change in RSA over the course of the anger induction (slope)
- Test linear, quadratic, no-growth and latent basis models to determine best fit

Moderation