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Development and Psychopathology 16 ~2004!, 43–68

Copyright © 2004 Cambridge University Press
Printed in the United States of America
DOI: 10.10170S0954579404040404

Affect dysregulation in the mother–child

relationship in the toddler years:
Antecedents and consequences

NICHD EARLY CHILD CARE RESEARCH NETWORK

Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine child, maternal, and family antecedents of children’s early affect
dysregulation within the mother–child relationship and later cognitive and socioemotional correlates of affect
dysregulation. Children’s affect dysregulation at 24 and 36 months was defined in the context of mother–child
interactions in semistructured play and toy cleanup. Dyads were classified as dysregulated at each age based on high
negative affect. Affect dysregulation was associated with less maternal sensitivity and stimulation, more maternal
depressive symptoms, and lower family income over the first 36 months of life. Children with early negative mood,
lower Bayley Mental Development Index scores and insecure-avoidant ~15 months! or insecure-resistant attachment
classifications ~36 months! were more likely to be in an affect-dysregulated group. Controlling for family and child
variables, affect-dysregulated children had more problematic cognitive, social, and behavioral outcomes at 54
months, kindergarten, and first grade. The findings are discussed in terms of the early role played by parents in
assisting children with affect regulation, the reciprocal nature of parent–child interactions, and the contribution of
affect regulation to children’s later cognitive, social, and behavioral competence.

The first 3 years of life are an important time
in the development of a child’s emotional and
behavioral self-regulation ~Thompson, 1998!.
Although the literature often refers to self-
regulation as a characteristic of the child, schol-
ars increasingly argue that self-regulation in
infancy is best conceptualized as a quality of
the infant–caregiver relationship, rather than
as a characteristic of the infant alone. Sroufe
~1996! noted that the role of the caregiver in

This study is directed by a Steering Committee and sup-
ported by NICHD through a cooperative agreement ~U10!,
which calls for scientific collaboration between the grant-
ees and the NICHD staff. Participating investigators, listed
in alphabetical order, are Virginia Allhusen, University of
California, Irvine; Jay Belsky, University of London; Cath-
ryn L. Booth, University of Washington; Robert Bradley,
University of Arkansas, Little Rock; Celia A. Brownell,
University of Pittsburgh; Margaret Burchinal, University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Susan B. Campbell, Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh; K. Alison Clarke–Stewart, Univer-
sity of California, Irvine; Martha Cox, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill; Sarah L. Friedman, NICHD, Be-
thesda, Maryland; Kathyrn Hirsh–Pasek, Temple Univer-
sity; Aletha Huston, University of Texas, Austin; Elizabeth
Jaeger, Temple University; Jean F. Kelly, University of
Washington; Bonnie Knoke, Research Triangle Institute,
Research Triangle, North Carolina; Nancy Marshall,
Wellesley College; Kathleen McCartney, Harvard Univer-
sity; Marion O’Brien, University of Kansas; Margaret Tre-
sch Owen, University of Texas, Dallas; Chris Payne,
University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Deborah
Phillips, National Research Council, Washington, DC;
Robert Pianta, University of Virginia; Wendy Robeson,
Wellesley College; Susan Spieker, University of Wash-
ington; Deborah Lowe Vandell, University of Wisconsin,
Madison; and Marsha Weinraub, Temple University. The
authors express appreciation to the study coordinators at
each site who supervised the data collection, the research
assistants who collected the data, and especially the fam-
ilies and child care providers who welcomed the authors
into their homes and workplaces and cooperated will-
ingly with repeated requests for information.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to:
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, NICHD,
6100 Executive Blvd., 4A01, Rockville, MD 20852.

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44
the infant’s regulation of emotion is so funda-
mental that researchers have used terms such
as “co-regulation” ~Fogel, 1993! and “mutual
regulation” ~Tronick, 1989!. These terms de-
scribe the process whereby the child’s self-
regulation arises out of the patterns of arousal
and affect modulation repeatedly experienced
in early caregiving relationships.
Both the goodness of fit model of Thomas
and Chess ~1977! and attachment theory
~Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978;
Bowlby, 1968; Carlson & Sroufe, 1995! em-
phasize the importance of the child’s relation-
ship with the primary caregiver as central to
understanding the developmental processes
leading from early affective arousal and atten-
tional control to later functioning. Thomas and
Chess ~1977! and Sameroff and Chandler
~1975! argued that the caregiver–child rela-
tionship emerges as a function of ongoing
transactions in which each member of the dyad
changes the other’s behaviors and expec-
tations in an ongoing feedback loop. The
quality of the dyadic relationship over time,
including children’s mood, compliance with
maternal requests, and ability to use affect to
communicate security needs, appears to be an
important component of individual differ-
ences in children’s ability to regulate negative
affect and may have long-term implications.
During the first 3 years of life, children are
navigating several successive stage-salient
tasks related to self-regulation. These include
establishing physiological regulation, syn-
chronizing dyadic interaction, forming at-
tachments to caregivers, learning to manage
impulses, establishing autonomy, and internal-
izing norms and standards for social inter-
action ~Cicchetti, Toth, Bush, & Gillespie,
1988; Kopp, 1982, 1989; Sroufe, 1979!. Most
children negotiate these developmental tasks
relatively smoothly, although some are seen
as showing brief periods of disruptive or
noncompliant behavior ~Campbell, 2002!.
However, for a small group of children these
difficult transitions may escalate into nega-
tive, coercive exchanges with caregivers that
are seen as a potential precursor of later be-
havior problems ~Bates, Pettit, & Dodge, 1995;
Campbell, 2002; Campbell, Shaw, & Gilliom,
2000!. A common theme in most conceptual-
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NICHD Early Child Care Research Network
izations of children’s early problem behavior
is whether and in what contexts they are un-
able to control negative affect ~Thompson,
1994, 1998!, and thus, for example, show ex-
treme levels of anger and defiance, or affect
dysregulation, in interactions with their care-
givers. Children’s inability to control negative
affect in early interactions with their caregiv-
ers may forecast continuing difficulties with
affective regulation across multiple contexts.
Emotions and emotion regulation are increas-
ingly conceptualized as functional in all of the
child’s transactions with the world ~Saarni,
Mumme, & Campos, 1998!, including the
physical world, and development of emotion
regulation entails coordinating and regulating
affective responding across multiple domains
~Dodge, 1989!. Hence, problems in early af-
fect regulation may disrupt optimal cognitive
development. Furthermore, as children enter
school, both their adjustment and their achieve-
ment depend in part on their ability to manage
the emotional and regulatory demands of the
classroom. This may include coping with bore-
dom, frustration, or anxiety, as well as dealing
with the interpersonal requirements of the
classroom setting, including impulse control
and regulation of interpersonal affect. Be-
cause the roots of emotional and interpersonal
regulation lie in the caregiver–child dyad ~Carl-
son & Sroufe, 1995; Kopp, 1989; Sroufe,
1996!, affect dysregulation in this context may
be a precursor of both socioemotional and cog-
nitive outcomes.
In the current report we use measures col-
lected as part of the NICHD Study of Early
Child Care to identify aspects of affect dys-
regulation that take into account the child’s
behavior in relation to mother across different
interactive contexts. These contexts include
minimally stressful semistructured play ses-
sions and a potentially more stressful but
shorter clean up after play episodes. We de-
fine children’s affect dysregulation in the con-
text of the mother–child relationship at 24 and
36 months with these measures and then ex-
amine the developmental antecedents and
sequelae of varying degrees of affect dysreg-
ulation. More specifically, we examine how
well earlier aspects of the mother–child rela-
tionship and family context predict affect dys-
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Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers
regulation in the second and third years, and
how well affect dysregulation in the mother–
child relationship predicts later child function-
ing in the social and cognitive domains. Most
existing work addresses either antecedents or
sequelae of affect regulation, but seldom both.
And few studies have operationalized affect
regulation dyadically despite the strong theo-
retical grounds for doing so.
We adopted a relationship-based approach
in defining affect dysregulation because it ap-
pears to capture a potentially important and
developmentally salient aspect of the child’s
emerging self-control. Children’s negative af-
fect when it occurs in the context of the
caregiver–child relationship may be an espe-
cially important marker of potential problems
with affect regulation. This is because the care-
giver is usually expected to be a source of sup-
port in situations in which children have
difficulty managing their own negative emo-
tions. Strong or persistent negative affect in the
context of the caregiver–child relationship may
reflect a lack of mutual cooperation, harmony,
or support as toddlers and preschoolers grap-
ple with stage-salient issues such as establish-
ing autonomy and learning to cooperate with
others. Affect dysregulation in the caregiver–
child relationship may partly reflect the qual-
ity of maternal scaffolding and limit setting
during a developmental period when young chil-
dren still depend on adults to help them control
arousal and negative emotion, despite their de-
sire to become independent. Thus, caregivers
of young children need to strike a balance in
responding to their toddlers’ competing de-
mands for autonomy and support. Some care-
givers may be better able to help their young
children learn to use and manage potent af-
fects, whereas others may be less skilled. The
children of less skillful caregivers may be more
angry and frustrated and use affect less ef-
fectively within the relationship. From this
perspective, then, young children’s ability to
regulate negative emotion may be seen as
emerging from the early caregiver–child rela-
tionship, evident in child mood and behavior
as well as qualities of the caregiver–child rela-
tionship, including attachment security.
Interest in young children’s affect regula-
tion derives from several perspectives. One is
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a temperament perspective and the search for
individual difference parameters that appear
to predict later socioemotional functioning and
to differentiate between well-adjusted and
poorly adjusted children ~Bates, Maslin, &
Frankel, 1985; Kochanska, 1995; Rothbart &
Bates, 1998!. In general, studies of stable, bi-
ologically based individual differences in in-
fants and toddlers have emphasized reactivity
and self-regulation that reflect variations in
irritability, impulsivity, resistance to control,
fearfulness, and attentional processes ~Roth-
bart & Bates, 1998!. A growing body of evi-
dence indicates that high levels of negative
affect, impulsivity, and irritability in infancy
and toddlerhood predict later behavior prob-
lems ~Campbell et al., 2000; Keenan, Shaw,
Delliquadri, Giovannelli, & Walsh, 1998; San-
son, Oberklaid, Pedlow, & Prior, 1991!. How-
ever, this relationship is not always clear or
direct ~e.g., Bates, Pettit, Dodge, & Ridge,
1998; Belsky, Hsieh & Crnic, 1998!. Not all
difficult infants evidence behavior problems
in the preschool years, and there are often com-
plex interactions between child characteristics
and aspects of parental behavior that together
predict which difficult children will and will
not show problem behavior at later ages. Pre-
diction from early temperamental characteris-
tics to later functioning requires complex
transactional models that take into account the
child’s reactivity and regulation as well as par-
enting behavior.
Several recent studies provide support for
this transactional perspective by demonstrat-
ing that temperamental characteristics of the
child and features of maternal parenting style
interact to predict outcomes. Belsky, Wood-
worth, and Crnic ~1996! characterized toddler
boys and their families as having difficulties
with the “terrible twos” on the basis of both
children’s defiance in response to parental con-
trol attempts and parents’ use of negative con-
trol. In roughly 20% of the sample, parent–
child dyads engaged in escalating negative
control attempts across the second year. Moth-
ers, fathers, and caregivers rated boys in this
group higher on externalizing symptoms at
age 3. Follow-up of this sample revealed an
interaction between child characteristics and
maternal behavior in predicting later behavior
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problems ~Belsky et al., 1998!. Maternal neg-
ative affect and intrusiveness in the second
and third years of life were more strongly pre-
dictive of later behavior problems among irri-
table than nonirritable toddlers. Toddlers who
were more positive in mood were less suscep-
tible to the influence of negative maternal be-
havior. Shaw, Keenan, and Vondra ~1994! also
showed that negative and irritable children with
less flexible or sensitive mothers were more
likely to have difficulties controlling their be-
havior and affect than irritable toddlers with
more responsive and supportive mothers. Con-
versely, other research suggests that positive
parenting interacts with children’s irritability
or fearfulness to predict positive outcomes
~Pettit & Bates, 1989; Kochanska, 1995!. A
growing body of work is thus emerging to sup-
port the idea that child characteristics inter-
act with aspects of parenting to predict early
signs of behavior problems, especially exter-
nalizing problems reflecting poor emotional
control, or to protect irritable children from
potentially negative outcomes ~e.g., Bates et al.,
1998; Kochanska, 1995!.
Attachment theorists also consider the qual-
ity of the attachment relationship as having im-
plications for how well children learn to manage
negative affect ~Carlson & Sroufe, 1995!. The
experience of a satisfying, reciprocal relation-
ship that meets the child’s needs for comfort and
security leads the child to value the relation-
ship and become more amenable to socializa-
tion efforts. For example, Kochanska ~1995,
1997! suggested that caregiver–child mutual-
ity and cooperation, partly reflected in secure
attachment, may render some children more sus-
ceptible to the internalization of parental val-
ues and expectations, as well as more willing
to comply with maternal requests. Thus, chil-
dren should be better able to manage arousal
and negative affect in the context of a secure
attachment relationship. In contrast, insecurely
attached children, who presumably have less
harmonious relationships with their mothers,
may be less easily socialized and more likely to
engage in negative behavior with their mothers
even in relatively undemanding situations that
require cooperation and shared goals.
Studies of individual differences in chil-
dren’s affect regulation skills, especially com-
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NICHD Early Child Care Research Network
pliance and defiance characteristic of the
terrible twos, have tended to emphasize child
characteristics ~Braungart–Rieker & Stifter,
1996; Calkins, 1994! that are then examined
as a function of different parenting strategies.
Three recent studies, however, have specifi-
cally examined dyadic regulation of affect as
a predictor of early behavior problems ~Den-
ham, Workman, Cole, Weissbrod, Kendziora,
& Zahn–Waxler, 2000; Leadbeater, Bishop, &
Raver, 1996; Martin, Clements, & Crnic,
2001!. In all three studies, when parent–child
dyads were characterized by negativity, anger,
and conflict when children were 2 years old,
the children were more likely to exhibit dis-
ruptive, externalizing behavior problems later
as preschoolers.
In summary, affect regulation is a construct
that generally encompasses behaviors and strat-
egies that children use to control and commu-
nicate affect and arousal, especially negative
affect ~Calkins, 1994; Kopp, 1989; Thomp-
son, 1994, 1998!. Affect regulation is increas-
ingly conceptualized as an important early
emerging skill with implications for both
social and cognitive development ~Calkins,
1994!. This is because both constructive so-
cial interactions and the ability to learn from
the environment are likely to be facilitated
when young children can modulate attention,
arousal, and negative affect to engage in re-
warding and enriching social and cognitive ac-
tivities. Conversely, children who are highly
aroused and unable to modulate negative emo-
tions such as anger and frustration are likely
to engage in fewer positive social interactions
with either adults or peers. They also may have
a more difficult time focusing attention in ways
that enhance the acquisition of cognitive and
language skills ~Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Roth-
bart, Posner, & Hershey, 1995!.
Based on this review of the importance of
the caregiver–child relationship context for
children’s emerging emotion regulation, we de-
fined children’s affect dysregulation on the
basis of child behavior observed in two age-
appropriate, interactional contexts with mother
at 24 and 36 months. These ages were chosen
because they represent a period when chil-
dren’s relationship with mother has stabilized
into a predictable dyadic partnership and when
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Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers
the challenge of balancing needs for auton-
omy and dependence is at its peak. We se-
lected situations that differed in the degree of
challenge to the dyad. However, they both rely
on dyadic cooperation, mutuality, and a sense
of shared goals. The situations included an un-
demanding, semistructured play interaction and
a potentially more emotionally charged com-
pliance task in which mothers requested that
children clean up a set of appealing toys with
which they had been playing. At each age, we
defined affect dysregulation in the mother–
child relationship on the basis of the child’s
observed negative affect during play with
mother, or child negative affect and defiance
during cleanup. Because the mother–child play
situation was undemanding and positive for
most dyads, child negative affect in this set-
ting was considered an important indicator of
poor control of emotion directed at mother,
and possibly an indicator of a more generally
negative mother–child relationship. During toy
cleanup, although some degree of resistance
may be normative ~Crockenberg & Litman,
1990; NICHD Early Child Care Research Net-
work, 1998!, high levels of defiance and neg-
ative affect in this context also signal a poorly
regulated mother–child relationship in which
conflict over disparate goals overshadows mu-
tual cooperation and harmony. We expected
that most children would show no signs of
affect dysregulation in the mother–child rela-
tionship at either age. When affect dysregula-
tion was observed, we expected that it would
be associated with earlier and concurrent as-
pects of child behavior and family context. In
particular, we expected that children who ev-
idenced no affect dysregulation would have
families that could more easily support the de-
velopmental needs of young children and that
this would be reflected in greater demographic
and psychosocial resources ~maternal educa-
tion, financial resources, maternal mood, and
maternal language skills! and more sensitive
and stimulating maternal caregiving. These
children would be more likely to have been
characterized as less difficult in infancy, more
advanced cognitively, and securely attached
at 15 months.
We also examined children’s cognitive and
social outcomes at 54 months, kindergarten,
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47
and first grade as a function of earlier affect
dysregulation. We expected that children who
showed no affect dysregulation would func-
tion most competently on outcome measures.
Although our primary focus on the anteced-
ents of affect dysregulation in the mother–
child relationship was on child and family
characteristics, we also examined whether the
quantity or quality of child care experienced
by children accounted for any associations be-
tween affect dysregulation and other child0
family variables, including children’s outcomes
at 54 months and school age.
Method
Participants
Participants in the NICHD Study of Early Child
Care were recruited from hospitals near the
following locations throughout 1991: Little
Rock, Arkansas; Irvine, California; Lawrence,
Kansas; Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
Charlottesville, Virginia; Morganton, North
Carolina; Seattle, Washington; and Madison,
Wisconsin. Potential participants were se-
lected from among 8,986 mothers giving birth
during selected 24-hr sampling periods to de-
termine their eligibility for the study. Subjects
were excluded from the sample if ~a! the
mother was under 18, ~b! the mother was not
conversant in English, ~c! the family planned
to move, ~d! the child was hospitalized for
more than 7 days after birth or had obvious
disabilities, ~e! the mother had a known or an
acknowledged substance-abuse problem, or ~f !
the family lived at considerable distance from
the site or in a location that posed a danger to
home visitors. Of those contacted in the initial
sampling periods, 5,265 met the eligibility cri-
teria for the study and agreed to be contacted
after their return home from the hospital. A
subset of this group was selected in accor-
dance with a conditionally random sampling
plan.
When the infants were 1 month old, a total
of 1,364 families with healthy newborns were
enrolled in the study. The recruited families
came from a wide range of socioeconomic and
sociocultural backgrounds, and included 24%
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48
ethnic-minority children, 11% low-education
mothers ~less than high school education!, and
14% single-parent mothers. ~Note that these
percentages are not mutually exclusive.! The
recruited families did not differ significantly
from other families eligible to participate on
major demographic variables, except that the
mothers in the study were slightly ~4%! more
likely to report that they planned to be em-
ployed compared with the nonparticipating
mothers. Of the mothers recruited, 53%
planned to work full time ~.30 hr0week!, 23%
part time ~10–30 hr0week!, and 24% did not
intend to be employed during the child’s first
year.
The sample was not designed to be nation-
ally representative. However, we compared the
demographic characteristics of the sample with
those of people living in the same census tracts
and nationally. The sample was similar to fam-
ilies in the census tract records and the nation
as a whole on key demographic variables
~household income and ethnicity!.
Overview of data collection
Data for this report were collected from the
time the child was 1 month of age through
first grade. When the child was 1 month of
age, basic demographic information on the
child and family was gathered and mothers
completed questionnaires during a home
visit. Data on child-care usage were collected
through phone calls at 3-month intervals, up
to age 3 years and at 4-month intervals there-
after, and in face to face contacts with moth-
ers at 1, 6, 15, 24, 36, and 54 months and
Grade 1. Data were gathered in the laboratory
and in the home on children’s behavioral func-
tioning, mother’s psychological functioning,
mother–child interaction, and the quality of
the home environment when children were 6,
15, 24, 36, and 54 months of age, and in the
spring of Grade 1. Teachers also completed
questionnaires about the child in kindergarten
and Grade 1.
Overview of measures
This presentation of measures is organized to
reflect the ways in which the variables func-
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NICHD Early Child Care Research Network
tioned in the analyses. We first present mea-
sures used to create affect-dysregulation
variables at 24 and 36 months, and then
describe how different affect-dysregulation
groups were constructed. Next we discuss the
child and family variables used to describe the
characteristics of the affect-dysregulation
groups at 24 and 36 months, including vari-
ables that will be used as covariates in the
analyses of subsequent child social and cog-
nitive outcomes at 54 months, kindergarten,
and Grade 1. Finally, we describe measures
used to assess social and cognitive outcomes
at 54 months, kindergarten, and Grade 1.
Affect dysregulation
Affect dysregulation was assessed during two
laboratory playroom observations of mother–
child interaction, meant to index aspects of
their relationship at 24 and 36 months: a toy
cleanup activity and a semistructured mother–
child play interaction.
Lab cleanup. At the end of a 15-min toy play
period which opened the lab sessions at 24
and 36 months, the visit coordinator handed
the mother containers for the toys and in-
structed her to have the child participate in
picking up the toys; no other directions were
given to mother ~see NICHD Early Child Care
Research Network, 1998, for details!. Clean
up lasted no more than 5 min. Child behaviors
coded on a 5-point scale from 1 5 not at all
characteristic to 5 5 very characteristic were:
compliance, assertive noncompliance, defiant
noncompliance, passive noncompliance, pos-
itive affect, and negative affect. Only the de-
fiant noncompliance and negative affect scores
were used. A rating of $3 on both of these
scales at one age point was required for a child
to be assigned to the affect-dysregulation group
at that age. The intraclass correlation ~Winer,
1971! of intercoder reliabilities of the defiant
noncompliant and negative affect scales were
.71 and .81 at 24 months, and .83 and .81 at 36
months.
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics for
the selected lab cleanup ratings. Means, and
standard deviations for the defiant noncompli-
ance and negative affect ratings are presented,
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Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers 49

Table 1. Measures of dyadic affect dysregulation

Child Age

24 Months 36 Months

Lab Clean Up

Defiance M ~SD! 1.13 ~0.51! 1.16 ~0.54!

Low ~ratings of 1–2! n 989 ~97%! 979 ~97%!
High ~ratings of 3–5! n 29 ~3%! 31 ~3%!
Negative affect M ~SD! 1.15 ~0.51! 1.20 ~0.56!
Low ~ratings of 1–2! n 994 ~98%! 971 ~96%!
High ~ratings of 3–5! n 24 ~2%! 39 ~4%!

Mother–Child Interaction

24-month negative affect M ~SD! 1.43 ~0.70!

Low ~ratings of 1–2! n 926 ~91%!
High ~ratings of 3– 4! n 95 ~9%!
36-month negative affect M ~SD! 1.66 ~1.08!
Low ~ratings of 1–3! n 953 ~94%!
High ~rating of 4–7! n 62 ~6%!

Note: The criteria for high negative affect in the mother–child interactions differ
over age because the ratings of interactions could range from 1 to 4 at 24 months
and from 1 to 7 at 36 months.

along with the proportion of children display-
ing low and high levels of negativity. Rela-
tively few children showed high levels of both
defiance and negative affect. As shown in
Table 2, only 17 children were high in both
defiance and negative affect during toy cleanup
at 24 months, whereas 7 children showed high
levels of negative affect alone and 12 children
showed high levels of defiance alone. Only 21
children showed high levels of both defiance
and negative affect during toy cleanup at 36
months.
Mother–child interaction. Mother–child inter-
action was videotaped in semistructured 15-
min play observations at both ages ~see NICHD
Early Child Care Research Network, 1999 for
details!. At 24 months child negative mood was
rated on a 4-point scale.At 36 months, child neg-
ativity, which paralleled the 24-month rating of
child negative mood, was rated on a 7-point
scale. Winer ~1971! intraclass correlations, as-
sessing interrater reliability for this scale, were
.88 and .85 for 24 and 36 months, respectively.
Children were assigned to the affect-
dysregulation group if they displayed exten-
sive negative affect in interaction with their
mother. At 24 months, extensive negative af-
fect was indicated by scores of 3– 4, and at
36 months by scores of 4–7. Table 1 shows
the mean and standard deviation of negative
affect at each of the two ages and the propor-
tion of children classified as displaying exten-
sive negativity during interactions with their
mothers. As shown in this table, 95 children
met this criterion at 24 months and 62 at 36
months.
Children were classified as dysregulated
if they showed high levels of negative affect
during interaction with the mother or if they
showed high levels of both defiance and
negative affect during the toy cleanup. The
bottom half of Table 2 displays the num-
bers of children meeting these criteria at both
ages. As the table shows, a total of 105 chil-
dren were classified as dysregulated at 24
months because they displayed high levels of
negative affect during both interaction and
cleanup ~n 5 6!, in interaction alone ~n 5
89!, or during cleanup alone ~n 5 10!. At 36
months, 77 children were classified as
dysregulated.
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50 NICHD Early Child Care Research Network

Table 2. Number of children displaying outcome variables; child gender was added as
affect dysregulation a covariate because of its association with the
outcome measures.!
During Lab Cleanup Maternal education was represented by five
24 Months 36 Months
levels as determined at 1 month: 1 5 less than
high school, 2 5 high school graduate, 3 5
Negative Affect Negative Affect some college, 4 5 college graduate, and 5 5
graduate education.
Defiance No Yes No Yes Maternal vocabulary was assessed with the
No ~n! 982 7 961 18 Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test— Revised
Yes ~n! 12 17 10 21 ~PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981!. The PPVT
assesses verbal intelligence operationalized as
Mother–Child Interactions receptive knowledge of vocabulary. Scores are
24 Months 36 Months standardized with a mean of 100 and standard
deviation of 15. Scores are moderately corre-
Negative Affect Negative Affect lated with standard measures of verbal intelli-
gence such as the WAIS Vocabulary subscale
Lab Cleanup No Yes No Yes
~Weschler, 1981!.
No ~n) 911 89 925 57 Maternal personality was assessed using
Yes ~n) 10 6 18 2 three scales of the NEO Personality Inventory
~NEO PI; Costa & McCrae, 1985! obtained at
Note: The children who were high on both Negative Af- 1 month. The three NEO scales were neuroti-
fect and Defiance were classified as dysregulated during
lab cleanup; children considered dysregulated by either cism, the extent to which the mother indicated
criterion were classified as dysregulated. she is anxious, hostile, and depressed ~re-
versed!; extraversion, the extent to which she
is sociable, fun-loving, and optimistic; and
agreeableness, the extent to which she is trust-
ing, helpful, and forgiving. Thus, higher scores
Family and child characteristics
indicated better adjustment.
The following variables were used as family Maternal depressive symptoms were mea-
and child predictors or correlates of affect dys- sured using the Center for Epidemiological
regulation in univariate analyses ~Table 3!: ma- Studies Depression Scale ~CES-D; Radloff,
ternal education, vocabulary, personality, and 1977! administered at each home visit ~1, 6,
depressive symptoms; partner in the home; in- 15, 24, 36, and 54 months, and Grade 1!. Cron-
come; caregiving quality; child gender and eth- bach’s alpha for the CES-D across the data
nicity ~Black, Hispanic, other, or White!; collection points ranged from .88 to .91. The
6-month negative mood; 6-month tempera- depression scores had moderately strong cor-
ment; 15-month cognitive functioning; 15-, 24-, relations over time ~.46 to .58!.
and 36-month attachment; and amount and Partner in the home was reported by moth-
quality of child care. Variables significantly ers at each interview, and the proportion of
associated with affect dysregulation at the time a partner was in residence was computed
univariate level were included in a single multi- for each family from 6 to 54 months.
variate analysis predicting to dysregulation sta- Income was the income0needs ratio com-
tus ~Table 4! and were also covariates in the puted from maternal interview items col-
analyses predicting child outcomes ~Table 5!. lected at each home visit. Family income,
~Exceptions were child variables from assess- excluding AFDC, was divided by the appro-
ments after age 6 months, to avoid overcon- priate poverty threshold, determined by the
trolling for child outcomes; and child care year in which the income was earned and by
quality, because it was not available for the household size. This variable was averaged
full sample. Site was a covariate, as it was across 0 –54 months to create an average
complexly associated with both predictor and income0needs ratio.
| DPP16~1! 440 9026 02013004 11:29 am REVISED PROOF |

Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers 51

Table 3. Comparisons on selected family and child variables for affect-dysregulated groups

Dysregulated 24 Months Dysregulated 36 Months

No Yes No Yes
N 5 917 N 5 106 N 5 942 N 5 81

Maternal Characteristics

Maternal education a 14.6 ~2.4! 13.7 ~2.4! 14.5 ~2.4! 13.9 ~2.6!
Maternal receptive vocabulary b,c 100.3 ~18.3! 93.7 ~18.5! 100.2 ~18.2! 92.2 ~19.6!
Maternal agreeableness at 6 months b 46.7 ~5.2! 44.8 ~4.7! 46.6 ~5.1! 45.4 ~5.9!
Maternal extraversion at 6 months 42.6 ~5.8! 41.3 ~5.9! 42.5 ~5.8! 41.8 ~5.7!
Maternal neuroticism at 6 months d 29.5 ~7.0! 31.3 ~7.1! 29.6 ~7.0! 30.6 ~7.4!
Maternal depression ~CESD score! c,d
6 months 8.6 ~7.9! 11.3 ~9.5! 8.6 ~7.8! 11.5 ~10.5!
15 months 8.8 ~8.0! 10.0 ~8.7! 8.8 ~8.0! 10.3 ~9.2!
24 months 9.1 ~8.3! 12.0 ~10.3! 9.1 ~8.2! 11.9 ~11.6!
36 months 8.9 ~8.1! 12.0 ~10.7! 8.9 ~8.1! 12.6 ~11.3!

Family Characteristics

Partner 6–54 months d,e 0.87 ~0.28! 0.75 ~0.38! 0.87 ~0.28! 0.76 ~0.39!
Income0poverty threshold a
6 months 3.9 ~3.2! 3.1 ~2.4! 3.9 ~3.1! 3.2 ~3.3!
15 months 3.9 ~3.3! 3.0 ~2.4! 3.8 ~3.2! 3.4 ~3.1!
24 months 3.9 ~3.0! 2.9 ~2.4! 3.8 ~2.9! 3.7 ~3.8!
36 months 3.8 ~3.1! 2.8 ~2.6! 3.7 ~3.0! 3.3 ~3.8!
Maternal caregiving a, f,g
6 months 0.09 ~0.80! 20.31 ~0.90! 0.07 ~0.79! 20.27 ~1.01!
15 months 0.10 ~0.78! 20.28 ~0.86! 0.08 ~0.78! 20.20 ~0.96!
24 months 0.14 ~0.74! 20.68 ~0.99! 0.09 ~0.79! 20.37 ~0.95!
36 months 0.10 ~0.77! 20.48 ~1.07! 0.11 ~0.77! 20.76 ~1.06!

Child Characteristics

Male gender ~%! 50 57 51 47

Child ethnicity ~%!
Black d,e 10 20 11 21
Hispanic 6 7 6 6
Other 4 6 4 3
White d,e 80 68 80 70
Negative mood SI 6 months b,d 1.41 ~0.68! 1.64 ~0.87! 1.41 ~0.69! 1.63 ~0.82!
Carey temperament 6 months 3.16 ~0.40! 3.21 ~0.44! 3.16 ~0.39! 3.19 ~0.50!
Bayley MDI 15 months a,e 110.2 ~13.6! 100.5 ~13.9! 109.6 ~13.9! 104.7 ~14.1!
Attachment SS 15 months ~%!
Aa 12 31 13 19
Ba 64 45 63 53
C 9 9 9 8
D0U 15 14 15 19
Q-security 24 months b,c 0.31 ~0.20! 0.21 ~0.20! 0.30 ~0.20! 0.21 ~0.20!
SS 36 months ~%!
A 5 4 5 4
B 64 48 64 46
C b,c 16 25 16 28
D0U b 15 23 16 23
Hours of care0week
6 months 23.5 ~21.4! 23.4 ~21.1! 23.8 ~21.6! 19.8 ~17.9!
15 months 25.1 ~21.7! 25.4 ~18.6! 25.4 ~21.4! 22.7 ~20.6!
24 months 25.4 ~21.0! 28.2 ~21.0! 25.7 ~21.1! 25.5 ~20.1!
36 months 27.0 ~21.3! 27.5 ~21.3! 27.2 ~21.2! 24.5 ~20.2!
54 months 30.6 ~18.8! 33.7 ~20.4! 30.9 ~18.8! 31.3 ~21.8!
| DPP16~1! 440 10026 02013004 11:30 am REVISED PROOF |

52 NICHD Early Child Care Research Network

Table 3 ~cont.!

Dysregulated 24 Months Dysregulated 36 Months

No Yes No Yes
N 5 917 N 5 106 N 5 942 N 5 81

Child Characteristics ~cont.!

Quality ~ORCE composite rating! c,d

6 months 3.0 ~0.6! 3.0 ~0.5! 3.0 ~0.6! 3.0 ~0.5!
15 months 3.0 ~0.6! 2.9 ~0.6! 3.0 ~0.6! 2.8 ~0.5!
24 months 2.8 ~0.6! 2.7 ~0.6! 2.8 ~0.6! 2.6 ~0.6!
36 months 2.8 ~0.5! 2.7 ~0.6! 2.8 ~0.5! 2.6 ~0.5!
54 months 3.0 ~0.6! 2.9 ~0.6! 3.0 ~0.6! 2.9 ~0.6!

Note: N, maximum number listed; sample sizes vary depending on the outcome examined. The site is included as a
covariate in all analyses. All values except percentages are means ~standard deviations!.
a 24-month dysregulated groups different at p , .001.
b 24-month dysregulated groups different at p , .01.
c 36-month dysregulated groups different at p , .01.
d 24-month dysregulated groups different at p , .05.
e 36-month dysregulated groups different at p , .05.
f 36-month dysregulated groups different at p , .001.
g Mean levels of maternal caregiving decrease over time for both 24- and 36-month dysregulated groups ~ p , .001!.

Mother–child interaction during play at
home at 6 months, and in a laboratory play-
room at 15, and 24 months, was rated on 4-point
global rating scales developed for this study;
7-point rating scales were used for ratings of
36 and 54 month–month laboratory interactions.
A maternal sensitivity composite composed of
the sum of sensitivity to nondistress, instrusive-
ness ~reverse scored!, and positive regard was
formed at 6, 15, 24, 36, and 54 months ~see
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network,
1999, for a discussion of the adjustment to con-
vert all ratings to the same scale!. Intercoder
reliability was calculated as the intraclass cor-
relation ~Winer, 1971!. For the maternal sensi-
tivity composites the intraclass correlations were
.87, .83, .84, .84, and .84 for 6, 15, 24, 36, and
54 months, respectively. Cronbach’s alpha for
the composites ranged from .70 to .84.
The Home Observation for Measurement
of the Environment ~HOME; Caldwell & Bra-
dley, 1984! assesses overall quality of the phys-
ical and social resources available to a child
within the home. The HOME consists of both
direct observation and a semistructured inter-
view with the mother. The focus is on the child
as a recipient of stimulation from objects,
events, and interactions occurring in the fam-
ily surroundings. The total score is computed
as the sum of 45 items at 6 and 15 months, and
as the sum of 55 items at 36 and 54 months,
with higher values denoting higher levels of
maternal responsiveness, child stimulation, and
support to the child. All observers attended
centralized training sessions before collecting
the data and were required to maintain relia-
bility by matching a master coder on 90% of
items. The Infant0Toddler version was admin-
istered at 6 and 15 months, and the Early Child-
hood version was administered at 36 and 54
months. Cronbach’s alpha for the total score
was .76 at 6 months, .80 at 15 months, .87 at
36 months, and .82 at 54 months. Correlations
across time range from .48 to .70 ~ p , .0001!.
A composite measure of quality of mater-
nal caregiving was created at 6, 15, 24, 36,
and 54 months from the mean of the standard-
ized maternal sensitivity composite plus the
standardized HOME total score.
Infant negative mood was the 6-month
4-point child negative mood rating from vid-
eotaped mother–child interaction in the home
~see NICHD Early Child Care Research Net-
work, 1999, for details!. The intraclass corre-
lation for this scale was .69, indicating adequate
interrater reliability.
Infant temperament was based on fifty-five
6-point items from the Infant Temperament
| DPP16~1! 440 11026 02013004 11:30 am REVISED PROOF |

Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers 53

Table 4. Logistic regressions predicting affect-dysregulation group

from child and family characteristics

24-Month Dys. 36-Month Dys.

~n 5 919! ~n 5 904!

Maternal
Education 0.05 ~0.07! 0.15 ~0.08!
Vocabulary 20.00 ~0.01! 20.01 ~0.01!
Agreeableness 20.02 ~0.03! 0.01 ~0.03!
Neuroticism 0.00 ~0.02! 20.02 ~0.03!
Depression 6–24036 months 20.01 ~0.02! 0.03 ~0.03!
Partner in home 6–24036 months 20.07 ~0.33! 0.22 ~0.37!
Income0poverty 6–24036 months 20.00 ~0.06! 0.09 ~0.06!
Maternal caregiving 6–24036 months 20.89 ~0.25!*** 20.94 ~0.29!**
Child ethnicity ns ns
Black–White 20.54 ~0.34! 0.18 ~0.43!
Hispanic–White 0.27 ~0.40! 0.67 ~0.48!
Other–White 0.03 ~0.50! 21.05 ~0.81!
Negative mood 6 months 0.24 ~0.15! 0.16 ~0.17!
Bayley MDI 15 months 20.04 ~0.01!*** 20.01 ~0.01!
Attachment 15 months ** ns
A–B 0.76 ~0.23!** 0.08 ~0.20!
C–B 20.20 ~0.32! 20.15 ~0.38!
D–B 20.24 ~0.26! 0.20 ~0.28!
Attachment security 24 months 21.10 ~0.62! 20.77 ~0.72!
Attachment 36 months ns
A–B 20.04 ~0.50!
C–B 0.42 ~0.28!
D–B 20.22 ~0.31!
Site * ns

Note: Dys., dysregulated. The coefficients for the site are not listed. All values are B and
~standard errors!.
**p , .01. ***p , .001.

Questionnaire completed by mothers at 6 Infant–mother attachment security was as-

months ~Medoff–Cooper, Carey, & McDevitt,
1993!. The composite measure reflected diffi-
cult temperament and was created by calculat-
ing the mean of the nonmissing items with
appropriate reversal of scales, so that numer-
ically large scores consistently reflected a more
“difficult” temperament. Cronbach’s alpha was
.81. Higher scores reflect a more negative dis-
position: that is, a child seen as more intense,
less positive in mood, and less adaptable to
daily routines.
Children’s cognitive functioning was as-
sessed using the original Bayley Scales of In-
fant Development ~Bayley, 1969! at 15 months
during lab visits. The Mental Development In-
dex ~MDI! represents overall cognitive level.
Scores are standardized so that the mean is
100 with a standard deviation of 15.
sessed at 15, 24, and 36 months. At 15 months
the Ainsworth et al. ~1978! Strange Situation
procedure was conducted. Videotapes of all
Strange Situations were coded in a central lo-
cation and attachment security was evaluated
by a team of three coders blind to child-care
status and other information about the child
and family. These coders double-coded 1,201
Strange Situation assessments using the stan-
dard attachment classifications of secure ~B!,
insecure-avoidant ~A!, insecure-resistant ~C!,
disorganized ~D!, and unclassifiable ~U!. The
group viewed disagreements and a code was
assigned by consensus. Across all coder pairs,
before conferencing, agreement with the
5-category classification system was 83%
~k 5 .69!. In this report the D and U classifi-
cations are combined.
 |
DPP16~1! 440
Table 5. Affect dysregulation and child outcomes from 54 months to first grade
24-Month Dysregulation 36-Month Dysregulation

Time Interaction Time Interaction

12026
Main Effect Adj. M Main Effect Adj. M

F d F 54 G0 G1 F d F 54 G0 G1

02013004
Cognitive0academic outcomes
Sample size
Not dys. 875 848 897 872
Dys. 99 97 77 73

11:30 am
Math ~WJ Applied Problems! a

6.48* 0.25* 3.03 11.48*** 0.37*** 0.22

Not dys. 427.2 472.6 427.4 472.5
Dys. 424.9 467.4 421.5 467.5

Reading ~WJ Letter–Word Identification! a

REVISED PROOF
54

3.31 0.17 2.21 4.06* 0.21* 1.18

Not dys. 373.3 455.0 373.6 454.7
Dys. 371.4 449.3 367.6 451.8

Phonological Knowledge ~WJ Incomplete Words! a

4.76* 0.19* 2.32 10.27** .32** .00

Not dys. 464.4 486.6 464.4 486.8
Dys. 460.7 485.6 460.4 482.7
Impulsivity ~CPT errors of commission log transformed!
7.62* 20.25* 0.12 4.32* 20.19 0.56
Not dys. 1.91 1.29 1.92 1.31
Dys. 2.19 1.52 2.18 1.45
Sustained attention ~CPT errors of omission log transformed!
0.61 20.07 0.02 2.78 20.17 0.64
Not dys. 1.94 0.77 1.94 0.77
Dys. 2.01 0.82 2.11 0.85
Mother rating of social skills
Sample size
Not dys. 881 857 847 895 879 871
Dys. 101 100 97 78 78 72

|
 |
DPP16~1! 440
CPRS, closeness
3.95* 0.18* 0.82 2.17 0.13 0.11

13026
Not dys. 4.61 4.67 4.76 4.60 4.66 4.76
Dys. 4.54 4.61 4.73 4.57 4.62 4.71
CBCL, externalizing
4.52* 20.19* 0.35 0.60 20.10 2.12

02013004
Not dys. 51.3 50.2 48.5 51.3 50.3 48.7
Dys. 52.8 52.0 50.6 52.8 51.1 48.6
CBCL, internalizing
1.89 0.12 0.02 0.00 0 1.38
Not dys. 46.8 47.4 48.3 46.9 47.5 48.5
Dys. 48.0 48.5 49.3 47.5 47.6 47.8

11:30 am
SSRS, social skills
10.82** 0.30** 5.55* 1.20 0.11 1.29
Not Dys. 99.1 101.7 105.7 99.0 101.5 105.2
Dys. 96.7 97.9 99.8 96.6 99.8 104.7
Teacher rating of social skills
Sample size
Not dys. 588 822 820 602 843 843

REVISED PROOF
Dys. 66 96 97 52 75 73
TCRS, closeness
0.16 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.03 0.00
55

Not dys. 4.18 4.22 4.28 4.19 4.22 4.28

Dys. 4.21 4.24 4.30 4.20 4.23 4.29
TRF, externalizing
14.75*** 20.20*** .70 0.86 20.09 0.63
Not dys. 49.6 49.8 50.0 49.8 50.0 50.4
Dys. 51.9 52.5 53.4 51.1 50.8 50.5
TRF–Internalizing
0.71 1.12 1.35 0.12 0.00 0.00
Not dys. 49.2 48.8 48.2 49.2 48.8 48.3
Dys. 48.9 49.3 49.8 49.4 49.1 48.6

SSRS–Social Skills

5.87* 0.22* 0.04 5.49 .24* 1.03

Not dys. 103.6 103.9 104.0 103.5 103.8 104.2
Dys. 101.0 101.0 101.0 102.0 100.9 99.3

Note: 54, 54 months; G0, kindergarten; G1, first grade; dys., dysregulated; WJ, Woodcock–Johnson. Covariates: site, mother’s education, PPVT vocabulary,
caregiving ~maternal sensitivity 1 HomeTotal!, depressive symptoms, income, partner in the home; child gender, ethnicity, negative mood at 6 months, age at
assessment, and all interactions with age at assessment.
a Raush scores were used in the longitudinal analyses of Woodcock–Johnson subscales.

*p , .05. **p , .01. ***p , .001.

|
| DPP16~1! 440 14026 02013004 11:30 am
56
Infant–mother attachment security was as-
sessed at 24 months using the Attachment
Q-set. Two-hour home visits were conducted
during which trained observers made notes of
child behavior that was naturally occurring or
in response to semistructured situations intro-
duced by the observer. After the visit the ob-
servers used the Attachment Q-Sort ~AQS! to
describe security with mother ~Vaughn & Wa-
ters, 1990; Waters & Deane, 1985!. The result-
ing profile is correlated with the profile of a
prototypically secure child, as determined by
experts in the field, and the correlation is the
child’s Q-security score. Research assistants
were tested on five videotaped observations
scored by experts Drs. Posada and Gao. The
Posada–Gao consensus score was the “gold
standard” for this test. Their reliability agree-
ment across the five test tapes, before confer-
encing to consensus, was .77, with a security
score difference of .04. Research assistants
were certified to collect data if the median
correlation of their Q-security scores with the
gold standard Q-security scores was .55, and
no correlation was below .40. Across the data
collection period within-site reliability was as-
sessed. Across all research assistants at all sites,
this correlation was .73, with a security score
difference of .06.
A modified Strange Situation procedure
based on recommendations by Cassidy and
Marvin and the MacArthur Working Group
on Attachment ~1992! was used to assess at-
tachment classifications at 36 months see
~NICHD Early Child Care Research Network,
2001, for details!. The MacArthur coding sys-
tem classifies preschoolers as secure ~B! or
insecure-avoidant ~A!, insecure-resistant ~C!,
and insecure-controlling0insecure other ~D!.
A team of three coders conducted the coding.
Reliability was calculated based on 867 ran-
domly paired cases. Disagreements were dis-
cussed and a consensus code was assigned.
Intercoder agreement ~before conferencing! on
the 4-category A B C D classifications was
75.7% ~k 5 .58!.
Child care variables
Amount of child care was the sum of all hours
reported by mothers in all nonmaternal care
REVISED PROOF |
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network
arrangements, scored as mean hours per week
during the periods 1– 6 months, 7–15 months,
16–24 months, 25–36 months, and 37–54
months. Children who experienced no routine
nonmaternal care received a score of zero.
Quality of child care was assessed during
two half-day child care visits at 6, 15, 24, and
36 months, and one half-day visit at 54 months,
using observational methods developed for this
study ~Observational Record of the Caregiv-
ing Environment or ORCE; see NICHD Early
Child Care Network, 1996; in press!. Positive
caregiving was generated at 6, 15, and 24
months by summing five qualitative ratings of
the care received by the focus child, made at
the end of four observation cycles: sensitivity0
responsiveness to child’s nondistress expres-
sions, positive regard, stimulation of cognitive
development, detachment ~reversed!, and flat
affect ~reversed!. At 36 and 54 months, two
additional ratings, fostering exploration and
intrusiveness ~reversed!, were added to the
composite. The Cronbach’s alphas were .89,
.88, .86, .82, and .79 at 6, 15, 24, 36, and 54
months, respectively. Interobserver reliability
estimates ~Pearson correlations! for positive
caregiving ratings were .94, .86, .81, .80, and
.94 ~videotapes!, and .90, .89, .89, .90, and .98
~live! at each age.
Child outcome measures
The set of child outcome variables included in
the analyses was derived from measures ob-
tained during laboratory, home, and child care
or school visits. The criteria used to determine
the final set of outcomes included coverage of
major developmental domains ~cognitive0
academic and social!, good psychometric
properties, and representation of important con-
structs. We also sought to limit the set to a
small number to permit us to construct a rela-
tively coherent picture of the antecedents and
sequelae of early affect dysregulation. The
child outcomes were measured over time: some
at 54 months and first grade and others at 54
months, kindergarten, and first grade.
Cognitive0academic outcomes. Three sub-
scales of the Woodcock Johnson Achievement
Battery, Letter–Word Identification, Incom-
| DPP16~1! 440 15026 02013004 11:30 am REVISED PROOF
Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers
plete Words, and Applied Problems, to assess
reading, phonological knowledge, and math,
respectively, were administered during lab vis-
its at 54 months and Grade 1. All subscales
have a mean of 100 and standard deviation of
15. In addition, Raush scores are available
for longitudinal analyses. Raush scores are
not standardized by age, and so true develop-
mental change can be charted by increasing
scores. Scores on the three subtests were cor-
related in our sample at 54 months ~r 5 .38–
.59, p , .001! and first grade ~r 5 .34–.56,
p , .001!.
Sustained attention and impulsivity were
measured using the Continuous Performance
Task ~CPT; Rosvold, Mirsky, Sarason, Bran-
some, & Beck, 1956!. This task was admin-
istered to each child individually toward the
end of a 2.5-hr laboratory visit at the 54
months and first-grade assessments. At 54
months, with an experimenter in the room,
the child was seated at a table in front of a
2-in. square screen and a red button. Dot-
matrix pictures of 10 familiar objects ~e.g.,
butterfly, fish, flower! were generated by a
computer and presented on the screen. The
child was asked to press the button “as fast
as you can” each time a target stimulus ~a
chair! appeared on the screen. A total of 220
stimuli were presented in 22 blocks. The tar-
get stimulus was randomly presented within
each block and appeared twice within each
block for a total of 44 presentations, leaving
176 presentations of nontarget stimuli. Each
stimulus appeared on the screen for 500 ms
at 1500-ms interstimulus intervals. The child’s
task was twofold: ~a! to press the red button
as soon as he or she saw the image of the
chair on the screen, and ~b! to refrain from
pressing the button at the appearance of other
nontarget stimuli. The task took 7 min and
20 s.
A more challenging version of this task
was used at first grade. Children were seated
in front of a computer monitor and letter stim-
uli were randomly presented in 30 blocks, 10
stimuli per block. The target stimulus, the let-
ter X, appeared twice in each block. The stim-
ulus duration was 200 ms and the interstimulus
interval was 1500 ms. The child was in-
structed to press the red button whenever an
|
57
X appeared on the screen and to refrain from
pressing when any other letter appeared. Be-
fore administration, children’s letter knowl-
edge was assessed. The task lasted 8 min and
30 s.
Sustained attention was assessed by the
number of errors of omission. Errors of omis-
sion occurred when children failed to press
the button in response to the appearance of the
target stimulus. Therefore, children with greater
ability to sustain attention had fewer lapses in
attention and made fewer errors of omission.
Impulsivity was reflected in the number of er-
rors of commission made by the child—that
is, incorrect button-press responses to nontar-
get stimuli. Children with more incorrect re-
sponses to nontargets were considered more
impulsive than were children with fewer in-
correct responses.
Measures of sustained attention and impul-
sivity derived from the CPT have adequate
test–retest reliability ~r 5 .65–.74!, based on
data from a sample of 138 nonreferred boys
~Halperin, Sharma, Greenblatt, & Schwartz,
1991!. Children’s performance on the CPT
has high construct validity as a measure of
attention ~Halperin et al., 1991!, and adequate
predictive validity ~e.g., Barkley, 1994; Bark-
ley, Brodzinsky, & DuPaul, 1992; Campbell,
Pierce, March, Ewing, & Szumowski, 1994!.
Performance on these two measures of atten-
tion is correlated at r 5 .24 and r 5 .48 ~ p ,
.0001! at 54 months and first grade in the cur-
rent sample. Cross age correlations are r 5 .26
and .19 ~ p , .0001! for sustained attention
and impulsivity, respectively.
Social and behavioral outcomes. Mothers and
teachers rated children’s social skills using their
respective forms of the Social Skills scale from
the Social Skills Rating System ~Gresham &
Elliott, 1990!, rating how often a social behav-
ior occurs on a 3-point scale ~0 5 never, 1 5
sometimes, 2 5 very often!. The teacher So-
cial Skills Scale contains three subscales:
Cooperation, Assertion, and Self-control. Co-
operation includes behaviors such as paying
attention to the teacher’s instruction and put-
ting away work materials properly. Assertion
includes initiating appropriate behaviors, such
as starting conversations with peers, introduc-
| DPP16~1! 440 16026 02013004 11:30 am
58
ing oneself, and volunteering to help peers with
classroom tasks. Self-control includes behav-
iors that are effective in conflict situations,
such as responding to teasing or peer pressure
appropriately, receiving criticisms well, and
controlling temper. The maternal version in-
cludes an additional Responsibility subscale.
Responsibility includes behaviors that demon-
strate ability to communicate with adults and
exhibiting regard for property or work. For
the elementary-level forms, Cronbach’s a 5
.87 and .94 for the total mother and teacher
Social Skills scales, respectively. The total
score was used in these analyses. The validity
~content, criterion, and construct! of the SSRS
is documented extensively in Gresham and El-
liot ~1990!.
The Child Behavior Checklist ~CBCL;
Achenbach, 1991a! and Teacher Report Form
~TRF; Achenbach 1991b! are slightly differ-
ent versions of a widely used measure to
assess the social competence and problem be-
havior of children 4–18 years. This family of
measures has been standardized on large sam-
ples of children in the United States and
abroad. A series of behaviors ~about 100 items
per version! are rated on 3-point scales from
0 ~not true of the child ! to 2 ~very true of the
child !. Broad band scales of internalizing and
externalizing problems are derived from a
computerized scoring program. Mothers and
teachers completed the CBCL and TRF at 54
months, kindergarten, and Grade 1.
The Child–Parent Relationship Scale
~CPRS; Pianta, 1994! and Student–Teacher
Relationship Scale ~STRS; Pianta, 1992! are
30-item, 5-point Likert-type scales designed
to assess the adult’s perception of the quality
of the relationship between the child and the
adult. The Closeness scale was used in these
analyses. The 54-month version had 11 items
and the later versions had 8 items. The total
score was the mean across items. Higher scores
indicated the respondent reported a warmer,
closer relationship with the child. The alpha
values ranged from .64 to .69 for the parent-
completed measure and from .83 to .85 for
the teacher-completed form. The CPRS and
STRS were completed by caregivers or teach-
ers and mothers, respectively, at 54 months,
kindergarten, and Grade 1.
REVISED PROOF |
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network
Analysis and Results
Of the 1,364 families enrolled in the study,
1,023 were included in the analyses in this
report; 341 were excluded because of missing
data on the dysregulation, covariates, or out-
come variables. The included and excluded
families do not differ significantly on child’s
gender or dysregulation classification at 24 or
36 months. Mothers who were excluded and
included in these analyses also did not differ
on maternal depression scores at any age, or
maternal neurotism or extroversion scores ob-
tained at 1 month. The two groups were also
comparable on income at 15, 24, 36, and 54
months and at Grade 1. However, families with
missing outcome data were more likely to in-
clude a child who was Black, x 2 ~3, N 5
1,364! 5 15.7, p , .001, and a mother rated as
less agreeable on the personality inventory, t
~1,270! 5 23.21, p , .001, with less maternal
education, t ~1,361! 5 25.87, p , .001, and
with lower maternal vocabulary scores on the
PPVT, t ~1,165! 5 22.91, p , .01.
The results are presented in three sections.
First, children in the two affect-dysregulation
groups at 24 and 36 months ~0 5 not dysreg-
ulated, 1 5 dysregulated ! are compared for
concordance over time. Second, they are com-
pared on relevant child and family character-
istics, including some that were measured
longitudinally from 6 to 36 months. Third, the
two affect-dysregulation groups are compared
on the child outcomes, collected longitudi-
nally from 54 months to Grade 1, adjusting
for a variety of child, family, and child care
variables.
Concordance in affect-dysregulation
groups over time
Children classified as dysregulated at 24
months were substantially more likely to be
classified as dysregulated at 36 months, x 2
~1, N 5 1,023! 5 44.75, p , .001, but there
was no extensive overlap across age. As shown
in Table 6, about 84% of the sample did not
show affect dysregulation at either age. Of the
161 children classified as dysregulated at ei-
ther age, 26 children were classified as dys-
regulated at both ages.
| DPP16~1! 440 17026 02013004 11:30 am REVISED PROOF
Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers
Table 6. Agreement between affect-
dyregulation classifications at 24
and 36 months
36-Month
Dysregulation
24-Month
Dysregulation No Yes
No 862 ~84%! 55 ~5%!
Yes 80 ~8%! 26 ~3%!
Note: The difference in numbers between Table 2 and this
table is because a few children have missing data on the
lab cleanup or mother–child interaction and so meet cri-
teria based only on one or the other. The values are the
number of subjects.
x 2 ~1, n 5 1,023! 5 44.75, p , .001.
Comparing affect-dysregulation groups
on child and family characteristics
First, we compared the dysregulated groups
on selected family and child variables. Analy-
ses of variance compared families on all mea-
sures collected at a single age, and repeated
measures analyses compared families on all
measures collected longitudinally. Table 3 lists
the means and standard deviations or propor-
tions for these variables. Both sets of analyses
asked whether the two dysregulation groups
~0, 1! at 24 months and the two dysregulation
groups at 36 months differed in analyses that
adjusted for site. These analyses were con-
ducted separately for each of the selected char-
acteristics. Both effect sizes and test statistics
are reported below when significant group dif-
ferences were detected. Effect sizes were com-
puted as the difference between the adjusted
means for the two dysregulation groups di-
vided by the pooled standard deviation, the
square root of the residual error variance.
The first set of analyses compared the ma-
ternal and family characteristics that were
collected only once. Many of them differed
according to the child’s dysregulation status.
Mothers of children dysregulated at 24 months,
but not 36 months, reported less education,
d 5 .38; F ~1, 1,011! 5 12.8, p , .001. Ma-
ternal vocabulary scores on the PPVT were
significantly lower among children classified
as dysregulated at 24 months, d 5 .33;
|
59
F ~1, 1,006! 5 9.68, p , .01, and at 36 months,
d 5 .35; F ~1, 1,006! 5 8.66, p , .01!. The
mothers of children dysregulated at 24 months
but not 36 months also reported poorer psy-
chological adjustment, lower agreeableness,
d 5 .34; F ~1, 993! 5 10.3, p , .01, and higher
neuroticism, d 5 25, F ~1, 993! 5 5 .62, p ,
.05. The dysregulation groups did not differ
on extraversion. In addition, dysregulated chil-
dren were less likely to have mothers with part-
ners in the household at 24 months, d 5 .39,
F ~1, 1,011! 5 13.8, p , .001, and 36 months,
d 5 .26, F ~1, 1,011! 5 4.78, p , .05, than
those children who were not dysregulated.
Significant differences among the dysreg-
ulation groups emerged on many of the child
characteristics. No gender differences emerged.
More African American and fewer White chil-
dren were in the dysregulated groups at 24
months, x 2 ~3, N 5 1,023! 5 10.2, p 5 .017,
and at 36 months, x 2 ~3, N 5 1,023! 5 8.58,
p 5 .036!. Children tended to show more neg-
ative affect in interactions with their mothers
when they were 6 months old if dysregulated
at 24, d 5 .28, F ~1, 905! 5 7 .11, p , . 01, or
36 months, d 5 .24, F ~1, 905! 5 4.07, p 5
.04!, although there were no significant differ-
ences in mothers’ reports of temperament
ratings at 6 months of age. Children also per-
formed more poorly on the Bayley at 15 months
than their nondysregulated peers if they were
dysregulated at 24 months, d 5 .68, F ~1,
976! 5 39.9, p , .001, or at 36 months, d 5
.25, F ~1, 976! 5 4.07, p , .05. Finally, the
dysregulated children also differed on at-
tachment. Compared with nondysregulated
children, children who were classified as dys-
regulated at 24 months were less likely than
nondysregulated children to have been se-
curely attached at 15 months and they were
more likely to have been classified as insecure-
avoidant, x 2 ~3, N 5 996! 5 27.1, p , .001,
based on analyses of individual cells using EX-
ACON ~Bergman & El-Khouri, 1987, 1998!.
However, children in the dysregulated group
at 24 months were more likely than other chil-
dren to be classified as insecure-resistant or
insecure-controlling0insecure-other at 36
months, x 2 ~3, N 5 1,003! 5 12.1, p , .01,
based on analyses of individual cells. In addi-
tion, children who were classified as dysreg-
| DPP16~1! 440 18026 02013004 11:30 am
60
ulated at 36 months were also more likely to
be insecure-resistant at 36 months, x 2 ~3, N 5
1,003! 5 12.7, p , .01. Children classified as
dysregulated at 24 months also had lower 24-
month Q-security scores, F ~1, 1,005! 5 14.83,
p , .01, as did children classified as dysreg-
ulated at 36 months, F ~1, 1,005! 5 7.71, p ,
.01. Overall, therefore, children who were clas-
sified as dysregulated at either 24 or 36 months
also were less likely to have secure attach-
ments to their mothers both earlier and con-
currently, although the specific patterns varied
somewhat over time.
Next, we asked whether children’s classi-
fications as affect-dysregulated showed dif-
ferent patterns of associations over time on
repeated assessments of maternal caregiving,
maternal depression, family income, and
amount and quality of child care experiences.
Repeated measures analyses of variance were
conducted in which the affect-dysregulation
groups at 24 and 36 months were the predic-
tors of interest and site was included as a co-
variate. Repeated assessments of each measure
were collected across four waves of data col-
lection from 6 to 36 months. Table 3 lists the
means on the repeated assessments for chil-
dren classified as dysregulated or not dysreg-
ulated at the two ages. The repeated measures
analyses simultaneously tested whether the
groups differed on the average level of a given
outcome over time and whether they showed
different patterns of change between 6 and 36
months on that outcome. A general linear mixed
model approach was used so that we could
include children who might be missing data at
a particular age ~e.g., child care quality at ages
at which the child was in exclusive maternal
care!.
Children classified as dysregulated dif-
fered from other children in four of the five
repeated measures analyses. More maternal de-
pressive symptoms were reported over time
by mothers of children in the 24-month dys-
regulated group, d 5 .28, F ~1, 1,011! 5 11.4,
p , .001, and the 36-month dysregulated
group, d 5 . 27, F ~1, 1,101! 5 8.0, p , .01,
but no differences in patterns of change over
time were observed in either comparison.
Lower family incomes were reported over time
by mothers of children classified as dysregu-
REVISED PROOF |
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network
lated at 24 months, d 5 .32, F ~1, 1,011! 5
11.4, p , .001, but not at 36 months. Change
over time in income was not related to either
dysregulation group. Compared with the other
children, dysregulated children at 24 months
experienced less sensitive and stimulating
maternal caregiving over time, d 5 .64, F ~1,
1,011! 5 51.3, p , .001, and their mothers
became less sensitive and stimulating be-
tween 15 and 36 months, F ~3, 1,011! 5 20.1,
p , .001. For example, the dyregulation groups
became more discrepant, increasing from an
effect size of 0.50 at 15 months to an effect
size of 1.0 at 24 months. Similarly, dysregu-
lated children at 36 months also experienced
less sensitive and stimulating maternal care-
giving over time, d 5 47; F ~1, 1,011! 5 22.1,
p , . 001, and more decline in caregiving qual-
ity over time, F ~3, 1,011! 5 23.7, p , .001,
than children who were not dysregulated at 36
months. Although the amount of nonmaternal
care did not differ between the dysregulation
groups at either age, children considered dys-
regulated at 24 months, d 5 .20; F ~1, 772! 5
4.93, p , .05, and at 36 months, d 5 .29; F ~3,
772! 5 7.88, p , .01, were observed to be in
lower quality child care. Change in child care
quality over time was not related to dysregu-
lation group.
Finally, we conducted logistic regression
analyses to determine the independent contri-
bution of each of the significant family and
child characteristics, controlling for the ef-
fects of all other variables in the model, in
predicting whether the child was classified as
dysregulated at each age. As shown in Table 4,
the logistic regression included maternal edu-
cation, vocabulary, agreeableness, extraver-
sion, and depressive symptoms; partner in the
home; income; and caregiving quality; and
child’s ethnicity ~Black, Hispanic, other, or
White!, 6-month negative mood, 15-month
cognitive functioning, 15- and 36-month at-
tachment classifications, and 24-month
Q-security. Child care quality was excluded
because children not in child care had missing
data. The repeated assessments were averaged
from 6 to 24 months when predicting 24-
month dysregulation status, and from 6 and 36
months when predicting 36-month dysregula-
tion status. Only three variables showed sig-
| DPP16~1! 440 19026 02013004 11:30 am REVISED PROOF
Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers
nificant independent prediction, and one of
them emerged as a significant predictor of both
24- and 36-month dysregulation classifica-
tions. Children whose mothers were less sen-
sitive and stimulating had children who were
significantly more likely to be classified as
dysregulated at 24 months ~B 5 2.89, SE 5
.25, p , .001! and 36 months ~B 5 2.94,
SE 5 .29, p , .01!. In addition, children were
significantly more likely to be classified as
dysregulated at 24 months if they had lower
Bayley MDI cognitive scores ~B 5 2.04, SE 5
.01, p , .001! or were classified as avoidant
versus secure at 15 months ~B 5 .76, SE 5
.23, p , .001!.
Child outcomes
We conducted repeated measures analyses of
variance to determine the extent to which chil-
dren classified as dysregulated at either 24 or
36 months exhibited more negative outcomes
during preschool and the early elementary
school years. The repeated measures analyses
were conducted using a general linear mixed
model approach ~Singer, 1998! in which re-
peated assessments of predictors as well as
repeated assessments of outcomes were in-
cluded. The models included site; maternal ed-
ucation, verbal ability, and concurrent measures
of income, partner in the home, depressive
symptoms, and caregiving; and the child’s eth-
nicity, sex, and negative mood rating at 6
months age and all interactions with age. The
results of these analyses are reported in Table 5.
This table lists the F statistics for main effect
tests comparing the children dysregulated at
24 months with the other children in the first
column and the associated effect size in the
second column. The effect size is computed as
the difference between the adjusted mean for
the two groups divided by the estimated stan-
dard deviation ~square root of the estimated
residual variance!. The third column lists the
F statistics for the test of the Age 3 Dysregu-
lation interaction and the next three columns
list the adjusted means at each age for each
group. The same values are listed in the 7th
through 12th columns with respect to dysreg-
ulation status at 36 months.
|
61
Cognitive0academic outcomes. Children clas-
sified as dysregulated at 24 or 36 months scored
higher on impulsivity and lower on all mea-
sures of academic achievement. As can be seen
under the cognitive0academic outcomes in
Table 5, children who displayed affect dysreg-
ulation at 24 months, F ~1, 978! 5 6.47, p ,
.05, and at 36 months, F ~1, 978! 5 11.48, p ,
.001, scored lower on a standardized math test
on average over time but did not show pat-
terns of gains over time different from those
of other children. The children dysregulated
at 24 months scored on average 2.3 points
lower at 54 months and 5.2 points lower in
first grade, resulting in an averaged over time
effect size of d 5 .25. The children dysregu-
lated at 36 months scored on average 5.9 points
lower at 54 months and 5.0 points lower in
first grade, resulting in an averaged over time
effect size of d 5 .37.
A similar pattern of results obtained for the
other academic outcomes. Dysregulated chil-
dren at 24 months scored lower than other
children on phonological knowledge, d 5 .19;
F ~1, 978! 5 4.76, p , .05, and higher on im-
pulsivity, d 5 .25; F ~1, 967! 5 7.62, p , .01.
Similarly, dysregulated children at 36 months
scored lower than other children on reading,
d 5 .21; F ~1, 978! 5 4.06, p , .05, and pho-
nological knowledge, d 5 .32; F ~1, 978! 5
10.27, p , .01, and higher on impulsivity, d 5
.19; F ~1, 967! 5 4.32, p , .05. None of these
analyses indicated that change over time on
these cognitive measures was related to dys-
regulation status at either age.
Social and behavioral outcomes: Mother
report. Affect dysregulation at 24 but not 36
months was related to maternal ratings of so-
cial skills between 54 months and the end of
first grade. Children in the dysregulation group
at 24 months were rated as lower in social
skills on three of the four mother-reported out-
comes. Their mothers reported less closeness
in the mother–child relationship, d 5 .18; F ~1,
981! 5 3.95, p , .05, more externalizing prob-
lems, d 5 2.19; F ~1, 981! 5 4.52, p , .05,
and fewer social skills, d 5 .30; F ~1, 981! 5
10.82, p , .01, than the other children. In the
analysis of mother-reported social skills, an
Age3Dysregulation interaction, F ~1, 1,845!5
| DPP16~1! 440 20026 02013004 11:30 am
62
5.55, p , .05, emerged because mothers re-
ported fewer gains over time in social skills
for the dysregulated children than for the other
children. Children in the dysregulated group
at 36 months did not differ significantly from
the other children on any of these maternal
ratings of social skills.
Social and behavioral outcomes: Teacher
report. Teachers rated the social skills of chil-
dren in the dysregulated groups at 24 or 36
months as more problematic on two of the four
measures. Teachers reported that children in
the dysregulated group at 24 months had more
externalizing problems, d 5 2.20; F ~1, 953! 5
14.75, p , .001, and fewer social skills, d 5
.22; F ~1, 949! 5 5.87, p , .05, than the other
children. Children in the dysregulated group
at 36 months were also rated by their teacher
as showing fewer social skills, d 5 .24,
F ~1, 940! 5 5.49, p , .05, than the other
children. Teachers reported no differences in
the levels of internalizing symptoms, in their
feelings of closeness to the study child, or in
change over time on any measure for children
who did or did not show affect dysregulation
in interactions with their mothers at 24 or 36
months.
Discussion
In this study we have conceptualized the con-
struct of children’s affect dysregulation in the
early years at the dyadic level rather than at the
individual child level. Our measures of affect
dysregulation represent the child’s responses to
mother during dyadic interactions that varied
in their emotional demands. The child’s affect
and affect regulation as we have assessed them
are thus a product of the mother–child dyad, but
the mother’s behavior, per se, was not included
in the formation of the affect-dysregulation
groups. Based on their negative affect with
their mothers, we have characterized some chil-
dren as showing “affect-dysregulation in the
context of the mother–child relationship” in
recognition of the central role of parents in
assisting children with affect regulation in the
first few years of life, and the bidirectional
nature of parent–child interactions, including
those which scaffold emerging affect regula-
REVISED PROOF |
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network
tion capacities in young children. Children
characterized as affect-dysregulated in the cur-
rent study displayed marked negative affect
during low stress play with their mothers, and
some children also exhibited high levels of
defiance and other forms of negative affect
when asked by their mothers to clean up toys
after playing in the lab. In other words, as
early as age 2 or 3, some mother–child dyads
had developed relationships that appeared to
be affectively negative, sometimes coercive,
and relatively ineffective during times of low
and moderate stress.
About 16% of the sample of more than
1,000 children was identified as affect-
dysregulated at either 24 or 36 months. The
children in affectively dysregulated relation-
ships with their mothers differed in important
ways from children not so identified. They
came from families that were more likely to
be African American, with fewer father fig-
ures and mothers who had less education, lower
verbal ability, and poorer psychological adjust-
ment. The children themselves had lower Bay-
ley MDI scores at 15 months. In addition, their
mothers were less sensitive and stimulating
during both semistructured play and during nat-
urally occurring interactions at home during
the first years of these children’s lives. How-
ever, when all of these predictors were con-
sidered in a multivariate analysis, only the
mother’s sensitivity and stimulation and the
child’s cognitive development and insecure-
avoidant attachment classification at 15 months
were associated with affect-dysregulation sta-
tus at 24 or 36 months. Children classified as
affect-dysregulated thus experienced and ex-
pressed negative affect in the context of par-
enting relationships that were less emotionally
supportive overall, and they may have had
fewer cognitive resources to assist in strategic
emotion regulation and to elicit more positive
caregiving.
There were several associations between at-
tachment, which was assessed in different ways
at 15, 24, and 36 months, and affect dysregu-
lation at both 24 and 36 months. Children who
were insecure-avoidant at 15 months, but not
insecure-resistant or insecure-disorganized
children at that age, were more likely to be
classified in the affect-dysregulated group at
| DPP16~1! 440 21026 02013004 11:30 am REVISED PROOF
Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers
24 months. This finding is interesting because
avoidance is often characterized by emotional
overcontrol, or a minimization of negative af-
fect when the attachment system is activated
in the presence of the mother. However, some
avoidant infants ~in the A2 subcategory! do
show fussiness in the Strange Situation, and
Ainsworth, Bell, and Stayton ~1972! showed
that avoidant infants are angry with their moth-
ers at home and ambivalent about contact with
her, fussing and crying when they are put down.
Thus, avoidant children who inhibit the ex-
pression of attachment behavior when their at-
tachment systems are activated do behave in
more negative ways with their mothers under
some conditions. The results of this study also
support the findings by others that avoidant
infants are undercontrolled in other situations
in later childhood ~Egeland, Pianta, & O’Brien,
1993; Munson, McMahon, & Spieker, 2001;
Renken, Egeland, Marvinney, Mangelsdorf, &
Sroufe, 1989!. The lack of association with
disorganized attachment classifications is in-
teresting. However, this classification is het-
erogeneous. We know little about how children
whose Strange Situation behavior is classified
as disorganized manage negative affect in in-
teraction with the mother in less stressful sit-
uations. It is possible, for instance, that when
their attachment systems are not activated they
tend to inhibit the expression of negative af-
fect in the presence of their mother ~i.e., a
pattern opposite that observed in infants clas-
sified as avoidant!. A shift in the type of in-
secure attachment associated with affect
dysregulation is already detectable by 36
months, when the association is with insecure-
resistant attachment for both 24- and 36-
month affect dysregulation groups. Crittenden
~1992! predicted such a shift to insecure-
resistance in the preschool years. Our findings
are consistent with her speculation that more
preschoolers will begin to use the more coer-
cive strategies that are available to them as a
result of their increasing cognitive and linguis-
tic competence.
Given the importance of affect regulation
for the acquisition of competence in multiple
domains ~Campos, Campos, & Barrett, 1989;
Campos, Mumme, Kermoian, & Campos 1994;
Dodge, 1989; Garber & Dodge, 1991; Kopp,
|
63
1989; Thompson, 1994!, it is perhaps unsur-
prising that the developmental outcomes in
later preschool and the early school years were
much less positive for children in the affect-
dysregulation groups. Children who were dys-
regulated as toddlers or young preschoolers
were less cognitively and socially competent
at 54 months, kindergarten, and Grade 1, and
were more likely to be rated higher on behav-
ior problems than were never dysregulated
children. Notably, this was true even after con-
trolling for earlier and concurrent family and
child characteristics that were associated with
affective dysregulation, including maternal ed-
ucation, vocabulary, depressive symptoms,
partner in the home, income, and caregiving
quality, and child ethnicity and 6-month neg-
ative mood. Thus, early affect dysregulation
in the context of the mother–child relation-
ship apparently is associated with continuing
problems in both cognitive and social devel-
opment through preschool and into the early
school years.
Mothers of affectively dysregulated chil-
dren reported feeling less closeness with their
children in later years, compared with moth-
ers of children who were not dysregulated. In
contrast, teachers did not report differential
feelings of closeness across the groups of chil-
dren although they did report differences in
social skills and behavior problems. Perhaps
this pattern of results reflects teacher profes-
sionalism. It will be interesting to test in fu-
ture analyses whether observations of the
quality of student–teacher interactions sup-
port or contradict teacher reports of the qual-
ity of the student–teacher relationship.
The findings from this study converge with
those of three smaller studies that also re-
ported links between negativity and conflict
in the mother–child relationship during the tod-
dler years and subsequent behavior problems
~Denham et al., 2000; Leadbeater et al., 1996;
Martin et al., 2001!. However, the large sam-
ple size and measurement strategies of the
NICHD Study of Early Child Care have per-
mitted us to control for a number of possible
confounding factors and to extend the find-
ings from previous research in several impor-
tant ways: ~a! we included multiple measures
of affect dysregulation in different contexts of
| DPP16~1! 440 22026 02013004 11:30 am REVISED PROOF
64
mother–child interaction that embodied differ-
ent kinds of emotional demands or challenges;
~b! we identified several demographic, mater-
nal, and family antecedents and concurrent
correlates of affect dysregulation; ~c! our de-
velopmental outcome measures included not
only behavior problems, but also more gen-
eral measures of social and cognitive compe-
tence, and were obtained using multiple forms
of assessment and multiple informants; and
~d! we followed the children longitudinally
through preschool and into the school years as
demands for affective and behavioral self-
regulation steadily increased.
The effects reported here are notable for
their longevity and for their breadth. The con-
vergence across very different assessments of
competence as well as across informants makes
us confident in concluding that affect dysreg-
ulation in the early years constitutes a sig-
nificant risk for later social and cognitive
development. What might account for these
effects enduring into the preschool and early
school years? Interestingly, dysregulated tod-
dlers and preschoolers had not been identified
by their mothers as more temperamentally dif-
ficult as infants than were children who exhib-
ited no dysregulation. However, these children
were more likely than their nondysregulated
counterparts to become affectively negative
with their mothers during play interactions as
early as 6 months of age. We cannot rule out
the possibility that negativity was characteris-
tic of these children early on, which could ex-
plain their difficulties with negative emotions
in the mother–child relationship at 24 months
~Mangelsdorf, Gunnar, Krestenbaum, Lang, &
Andreas, 1990!. However, it is equally likely
that the early negativity was a child response
to the less sensitive and stimulating maternal
caregiving that they received at every age. Just
as Ainsworth et al. ~1978! concluded that du-
ration of infant crying in the first quarter of
life reflected differences in maternal respon-
siveness to crying, it is possible that some
mothers induced or elicited negative affect in
their infants, thereby creating an emotionally
dysregulated relationship by either 24 or 36
months. Higher infant negativity with moth-
ers was observed by 6 months for the children
who would be in the dysregulated group at 24
|
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network
months. It emerged later for children classi-
fied as dysregulated at 36 months. For both
groups, mothers of dysregulated toddlers were
less sensitive and stimulating beginning in
infancy. Thus, infants of such mothers experi-
enced higher rates and0or intensities of nega-
tive affect in the very relationship on which
they depend for reducing and managing their
negative affect, and they would receive less
sensitive responsiveness and scaffolding to help
them learn to manage their negative emotions
independently. Amplified during the emotion-
ally difficult transitions of the toddler years,
such dyads may be more likely to establish a
pattern of mutual negativity and coercion ~Pat-
terson, DeBaryshe, & Ramsey, 1989! that be-
comes progressively more difficult to escape.
With less effective socialization of attention
control ~Raver, 1996; Raver, Blackburn, Ban-
croft, & Torp, 1999! and compliance ~Kochan-
ska, 1994; Londerville & Main, 1981! in such
dyads, in addition to increasingly negative
affect, children’s cognitive and achievement-
related outcomes as well as their social com-
petence could be compromised; deficits could
easily cumulate and further exacerbate the dif-
ficult mother–child relationship.
As appealing as such an account may be, it
fails to tell the whole story. Among mothers
who were in the lowest quartile of maternal
caregiving from 6 through 36 months, only
24% of their infants were in the affect-
dysregulated group at 24 months, and only 16%
were in the affect-dysregulated group at 36
months. This suggests the still more complex
possibility that the roots of affect dysregula-
tion are truly dyadic—that is, that some moth-
ers and infants are a poor affective fit for one
another ~Crockenberg & Litman, 1990; Kopp,
1989; Mangelsdorf et al., 1990; Seifer, Schiller,
Sameroff, Resnick, & Riordan, 1996!. The ef-
fects of such mismatches may not be readily
apparent until the second or third year of life
when the young child’s emotions are both
quickly differentiating and intensifying ~Cam-
pos et al., 1994; Lewis, 1993!, when demands
for self-regulation increase ~Kopp, 1989;
Thompson, 1994!, and when autonomy bids
emerge as issues for children and for their par-
ents ~Belsky et al., 1998; Crockenberg & Lit-
man, 1990!. Under these conditions, dyads that
| DPP16~1! 440 23026 02013004 11:30 am REVISED PROOF
Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers
have not effectively negotiated the affect reg-
ulation challenges of infancy may be particu-
larly susceptible to affect dysregulation in the
toddler and early preschool years. This sus-
ceptibility is perhaps especially likely to be
expressed in adverse ecological conditions that
place additional psychological stresses on fam-
ilies, and make it more difficult for mothers to
support and manage their children’s changing
emotional needs. Such a possibility is consis-
tent with our findings that children were dis-
proportionately more likely to be affect-
dysregulated when they were growing up in
poverty with mothers who were poorly edu-
cated and depressed.
There are several implications of the find-
ings of this study for research on affect reg-
ulation. First, there are implications for
conceptualizing affect regulation in the early
years. Although several scholars have hypoth-
esized that affect regulation occurs in the con-
text of the parent–child dyad during infancy
~Kopp, 1989; Thompson, 1994; Tronick,
1989!, the current study is one of the first to
operationalize early affect dysregulation in ex-
plicitly dyadic terms and is the largest and
most complex. The findings that dysregu-
lated toddlers and preschoolers differ with re-
spect to both antecedent and concurrent
correlates as well as social and cognitive se-
quelae several years later confirm the value
of observing and studying early affect regu-
lation in a dyadic context. Similarly, there
are implications for predictive relationships
among early child, maternal, and environmen-
tal characteristics and later developmental out-
come. The findings of the current study
suggest that it is perhaps not so much child
or even maternal affective characteristics that
are most predictive, but relationship qualities
to which both partners contribute and which
are best captured at the dyadic level. By ob-
serving child affect with the mother in un-
demanding play settings and more demanding
compliance settings, we have gained a unique
perspective on the extent to which the mother–
child relationship serves as an effective or an
ineffective regulator of the child’s negative
emotions across contexts. This account sug-
gests that future researchers should focus on
dyadic measures of affective dysregulation be-
|
65
ginning in infancy, and not on assessments of
infants or mothers alone.
Despite the strength of our findings, an im-
portant feature of this study limits our conclu-
sions. Although we have assessed children’s
affect dysregulation in a dyadic context, we
have not evaluated mothers’ contributions to
the dyadic interactions. We do not know for
which dyads the negative affect in interaction
was mutual, thus reflecting a true coercive cy-
cle, and for which dyads it was one-sided on
the part of the child only. Thus, we are unable
to examine the dyadic processes that contrib-
ute to affect dysregulation in mother–child re-
lationships or to identify which particular
qualities within the dyadic relationship are most
critical to effective or ineffective affect regu-
lation. The finding that affect dysregulation in
the mother–child dyad at 24 months predicted
more broadly to later outcomes than did 36-
month affect dysregulation further suggests the
need for research to discern which features of
mother–child interaction at age two are dis-
rupted in affectively dysregulated dyads, and
how they differ from disruptions at age 3. Per-
haps the requirements for a good fit between
mother and child vary somewhat at the two
ages, so that some dyads are particularly at
risk for dysregulation at particular develop-
mental stages.
This study suggests several additional ave-
nues for future investigation. First, although
we found a significant association between
affect-dysregulation at 24 and 36 months, in
fact most children were classified as affec-
tively dysregulated at a single age. Either af-
fect dysregulation trajectories are variable or
our measurement is still imprecise. We did not
find that using continuous measures of dysreg-
ulation made significant differences in our find-
ings, but finer grained observations might make
a difference. Second, although we assessed af-
fect dysregulation in the toddler years, we have
not examined later features of self-regulation
such as resistance to temptation, delay of
gratification, sustained attention, and affect
regulation strategies that emerge during the
preschool years. These may be important me-
diators of the longitudinal associations be-
tween early affect regulation and later cognitive
and social development. Third, we have pri-
| DPP16~1! 440 24026 02013004 11:30 am
66
marily considered underregulated rather than
overregulated emotion. We found few associ-
ations between early dysregulation and later
internalizing behavior, perhaps because we did
not look for early indicators of overregula-
tion. It is interesting to speculate that children
whose emotions are consistently checked in
their relationships with mothers during the nor-
mative emotional upheavals of the toddler years
may also be at risk for later deficits in func-
tioning, perhaps especially in the socioemo-
tional domain.
In conclusion, we are encouraged by the
intriguing and important findings of the cur-
rent investigation and the potential value of
the construct of affect dysregulation for un-
derstanding associations between emotions in
the parent–child relationship and children’s
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