affect dysregulation

Affect dysregulation in the mother–childrelationship in the toddler years:Antecedents and consequences

NICHD EARLY CHILD CARE RESEARCH NETWORK

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to examine child, maternal, and family antecedents of children’s early affectdysregulation within the mother–child relationship and later cognitive and socioemotional correlates of affectdysregulation. Children’s affect dysregulation at 24 and 36 months was defined in the context of mother–childinteractions in semistructured play and toy cleanup. Dyads were classified as dysregulated at each age based on highnegative affect. Affect dysregulation was associated with less maternal sensitivity and stimulation, more maternaldepressive 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 attachmentclassifications~36 months! were more likely to be in an affect-dysregulated group. Controlling for family and childvariables, affect-dysregulated children had more problematic cognitive, social, and behavioral outcomes at 54months, kindergarten, and first grade. The findings are discussed in terms of the early role played by parents inassisting children with affect regulation, the reciprocal nature of parent–child interactions, and the contribution ofaffect regulation to children’s later cognitive, social, and behavioral competence.

The first 3 years of life are an important timein the development of a child’s emotional andbehavioral 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 ininfancy is best conceptualized as a quality ofthe infant–caregiver relationship, rather thanas 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, listedin alphabetical order, are Virginia Allhusen, University ofCalifornia, 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, Universityof North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Susan B. Campbell, Uni-versity of Pittsburgh; K. Alison Clarke–Stewart, Univer-sity of California, Irvine; Martha Cox, University of NorthCarolina, Chapel Hill; Sarah L. Friedman, NICHD, Be-thesda, Maryland; Kathyrn Hirsh–Pasek, Temple Univer-sity; Aletha Huston, University of Texas, Austin; ElizabethJaeger, Temple University; Jean F. Kelly, University ofWashington; 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; DeborahPhillips, 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. Theauthors express appreciation to the study coordinators ateach site who supervised the data collection, the researchassistants who collected the data, and especially the fam-ilies and child care providers who welcomed the authorsinto 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.

| |DPP16~1! 440 1026 02013004 11:29 am REVISED PROOF

Development and Psychopathology16 ~2004!, 43–68Copyright © 2004 Cambridge University PressPrinted in the United States of AmericaDOI: 10.10170S0954579404040404

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the infant’s regulation of emotion is so funda-mental that researchers have used terms suchas “co-regulation”~Fogel, 1993! and “mutualregulation”~Tronick, 1989!. These terms de-scribe the process whereby the child’s self-regulation arises out of the patterns of arousaland affect modulation repeatedly experiencedin early caregiving relationships.

Both the goodness of fit model of Thomasand 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 tounderstanding the developmental processesleading from early affective arousal and atten-tional control to later functioning. Thomas andChess~1977! and Sameroff and Chandler~1975! argued that the caregiver–child rela-tionship emerges as a function of ongoingtransactions in which each member of the dyadchanges the other’s behaviors and expec-tations in an ongoing feedback loop. Thequality of the dyadic relationship over time,including children’s mood, compliance withmaternal requests, and ability to use affect tocommunicate security needs, appears to be animportant component of individual differ-ences in children’s ability to regulate negativeaffect and may have long-term implications.

During the first 3 years of life, children arenavigating several successive stage-salienttasks related to self-regulation. These includeestablishing physiological regulation, syn-chronizing dyadic interaction, forming at-tachments to caregivers, learning to manageimpulses, establishing autonomy, and internal-izing norms and standards for social inter-action ~Cicchetti, Toth, Bush, & Gillespie,1988; Kopp, 1982, 1989; Sroufe, 1979!. Mostchildren negotiate these developmental tasksrelatively smoothly, although some are seenas showing brief periods of disruptive ornoncompliant behavior~Campbell, 2002!.However, for a small group of children thesedifficult transitions may escalate into nega-tive, coercive exchanges with caregivers thatare 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-

izations of children’s early problem behavioris 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 affectdysregulation, in interactions with their care-givers. Children’s inability to control negativeaffect in early interactions with their caregiv-ers may forecast continuing difficulties withaffective regulation across multiple contexts.Emotions and emotion regulation are increas-ingly conceptualized as functional in all of thechild’s transactions with the world~Saarni,Mumme, & Campos, 1998!, including thephysical world, and development of emotionregulation entails coordinating and regulatingaffective responding across multiple domains~Dodge, 1989!. Hence, problems in early af-fect regulation may disrupt optimal cognitivedevelopment. Furthermore, as children enterschool, both their adjustment and their achieve-ment depend in part on their ability to managethe emotional and regulatory demands of theclassroom. This may include coping with bore-dom, frustration, or anxiety, as well as dealingwith the interpersonal requirements of theclassroom setting, including impulse controland regulation of interpersonal affect. Be-cause the roots of emotional and interpersonalregulation lie in the caregiver–child dyad~Carl-son & Sroufe, 1995; Kopp, 1989; Sroufe,1996!, affect dysregulation in this context maybe 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 EarlyChild Care to identify aspects of affect dys-regulation that take into account the child’sbehavior in relation to mother across differentinteractive contexts. These contexts includeminimally stressful semistructured play ses-sions and a potentially more stressful butshorter clean up after play episodes. We de-fine children’s affect dysregulation in the con-text of the mother–child relationship at 24 and36 months with these measures and then ex-amine the developmental antecedents andsequelae of varying degrees of affect dysreg-ulation. More specifically, we examine howwell earlier aspects of the mother–child rela-tionship and family context predict affect dys-


44 NICHD Early Child Care Research Network

regulation in the second and third years, andhow well affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship predicts later child function-ing in the social and cognitive domains. Mostexisting work addresses either antecedents orsequelae of affect regulation, but seldom both.And few studies have operationalized affectregulation dyadically despite the strong theo-retical grounds for doing so.

We adopted a relationship-based approachin defining affect dysregulation because it ap-pears to capture a potentially important anddevelopmentally salient aspect of the child’semerging self-control. Children’s negative af-fect when it occurs in the context of thecaregiver–child relationship may be an espe-cially important marker of potential problemswith affect regulation. This is because the care-giver is usually expected to be a source of sup-port in situations in which children havedifficulty managing their own negative emo-tions. Strong or persistent negative affect in thecontext of the caregiver–child relationship mayreflect 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 withothers. Affect dysregulation in the caregiver–child relationship may partly reflect the qual-ity of maternal scaffolding and limit settingduringadevelopmentalperiodwhenyoungchil-dren still depend on adults to help them controlarousal and negative emotion, despite their de-sire to become independent. Thus, caregiversof young children need to strike a balance inresponding to their toddlers’ competing de-mands for autonomy and support. Some care-givers may be better able to help their youngchildren learn to use and manage potent af-fects, whereas others may be less skilled. Thechildren of less skillful caregivers may be moreangry and frustrated and use affect less ef-fectively within the relationship. From thisperspective, then, young children’s ability toregulate negative emotion may be seen asemerging from the early caregiver–child rela-tionship, evident in child mood and behavioras 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

a temperament perspective and the search forindividual difference parameters that appearto predict later socioemotional functioning andto differentiate between well-adjusted andpoorly 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 reactivityand self-regulation that reflect variations inirritability, impulsivity, resistance to control,fearfulness, and attentional processes~Roth-bart & Bates, 1998!. A growing body of evi-dence indicates that high levels of negativeaffect, impulsivity, and irritability in infancyand 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 ordirect ~e.g., Bates, Pettit, Dodge, & Ridge,1998; Belsky, Hsieh & Crnic, 1998!. Not alldifficult infants evidence behavior problemsin the preschool years, and there are often com-plex interactions between child characteristicsand aspects of parental behavior that togetherpredict which difficult children will and willnot show problem behavior at later ages. Pre-diction from early temperamental characteris-tics to later functioning requires complextransactional models that take into account thechild’s reactivity and regulation as well as par-enting behavior.

Several recent studies provide support forthis transactional perspective by demonstrat-ing that temperamental characteristics of thechild and features of maternal parenting styleinteract to predict outcomes. Belsky, Wood-worth, and Crnic~1996! characterized toddlerboys and their families as having difficultieswith the “terrible twos” on the basis of bothchildren’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 negativecontrol attempts across the second year. Moth-ers, fathers, and caregivers rated boys in thisgroup higher on externalizing symptoms atage 3. Follow-up of this sample revealed aninteraction between child characteristics andmaternal behavior in predicting later behavior


Affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship in toddlers 45

problems~Belsky et al., 1998!. Maternal neg-ative affect and intrusiveness in the secondand third years of life were more strongly pre-dictive of later behavior problems among irri-table than nonirritable toddlers. Toddlers whowere more positive in mood were less suscep-tible to the influence of negative maternal be-havior. Shaw, Keenan, and Vondra~1994! alsoshowed that negative and irritable children withless flexible or sensitive mothers were morelikely to have difficulties controlling their be-havior and affect than irritable toddlers withmore responsive and supportive mothers. Con-versely, other research suggests that positiveparenting interacts with children’s irritabilityor fearfulness to predict positive outcomes~Pettit & Bates, 1989; Kochanska, 1995!. Agrowing body of work is thus emerging to sup-port the idea that child characteristics inter-act with aspects of parenting to predict earlysigns of behavior problems, especially exter-nalizing problems reflecting poor emotionalcontrol, or to protect irritable children frompotentially 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 managenegative affect~Carlson & Sroufe, 1995!. Theexperience of a satisfying, reciprocal relation-ship that meets the child’s needs for comfort andsecurity 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 secureattachment,may rendersomechildrenmoresus-ceptible to the internalization of parental val-ues and expectations, as well as more willingto comply with maternal requests. Thus, chil-dren should be better able to manage arousaland negative affect in the context of a secureattachment relationship. In contrast, insecurelyattached children, who presumably have lessharmonious relationships with their mothers,may be less easily socialized and more likely toengage in negative behavior with their motherseven in relatively undemanding situations thatrequire cooperation and shared goals.

Studies of individual differences in chil-dren’s affect regulation skills, especially com-

pliance and defiance characteristic of theterrible twos, have tended to emphasize childcharacteristics~Braungart–Rieker & Stifter,1996; Calkins, 1994! that are then examinedas a function of different parenting strategies.Three recent studies, however, have specifi-cally examined dyadic regulation of affect asa 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–childdyads 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 lateras preschoolers.

In summary, affect regulation is a constructthat generally encompasses behaviors and strat-egies that children use to control and commu-nicate affect and arousal, especially negativeaffect ~Calkins, 1994; Kopp, 1989; Thomp-son, 1994, 1998!. Affect regulation is increas-ingly conceptualized as an important earlyemerging skill with implications for bothsocial and cognitive development~Calkins,1994!. This is because both constructive so-cial interactions and the ability to learn fromthe environment are likely to be facilitatedwhen 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 highlyaroused and unable to modulate negative emo-tions such as anger and frustration are likelyto engage in fewer positive social interactionswith either adults or peers. They also may havea more difficult time focusing attention in waysthat enhance the acquisition of cognitive andlanguage skills~Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Roth-bart, Posner, & Hershey, 1995!.

Based on this review of the importance ofthe caregiver–child relationship context forchildren’s emerging emotion regulation, we de-fined children’s affect dysregulation on thebasis of child behavior observed in two age-appropriate, interactional contexts with motherat 24 and 36 months. These ages were chosenbecause they represent a period when chil-dren’s relationship with mother has stabilizedinto a predictable dyadic partnership and when



the challenge of balancing needs for auton-omy and dependence is at its peak. We se-lected situations that differed in the degree ofchallenge to the dyad. However, they both relyon dyadic cooperation, mutuality, and a senseof shared goals. The situations included an un-demanding, semistructured play interaction anda potentially more emotionally charged com-pliance task in which mothers requested thatchildren clean up a set of appealing toys withwhich they had been playing. At each age, wedefined affect dysregulation in the mother–child relationship on the basis of the child’sobserved negative affect during play withmother, or child negative affect and defianceduring cleanup. Because the mother–child playsituation was undemanding and positive formost dyads, child negative affect in this set-ting was considered an important indicator ofpoor control of emotion directed at mother,and possibly an indicator of a more generallynegative mother–child relationship. During toycleanup, although some degree of resistancemay 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 poorlyregulated mother–child relationship in whichconflict over disparate goals overshadows mu-tual cooperation and harmony. We expectedthat most children would show no signs ofaffect dysregulation in the mother–child rela-tionship at either age. When affect dysregula-tion was observed, we expected that it wouldbe associated with earlier and concurrent as-pects of child behavior and family context. Inparticular, we expected that children who ev-idenced no affect dysregulation would havefamilies that could more easily support the de-velopmental needs of young children and thatthis would be reflected in greater demographicand psychosocial resources~maternal educa-tion, financial resources, maternal mood, andmaternal language skills! and more sensitiveand stimulating maternal caregiving. Thesechildren would be more likely to have beencharacterized as less difficult in infancy, moreadvanced cognitively, and securely attachedat 15 months.

We also examined children’s cognitive andsocial outcomes at 54 months, kindergarten,

and first grade as a function of earlier affectdysregulation. We expected that children whoshowed 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 familycharacteristics, we also examined whether thequantity or quality of child care experiencedby children accounted for any associations be-tween affect dysregulation and other child0family variables, including children’s outcomesat 54 months and school age.

Method

Participants

Participants in the NICHD Study of Early ChildCare were recruited from hospitals near thefollowing locations throughout 1991: LittleRock, Arkansas; Irvine, California; Lawrence,Kansas; Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia,Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;Charlottesville, Virginia; Morganton, NorthCarolina; Seattle, Washington; and Madison,Wisconsin. Potential participants were se-lected from among 8,986 mothers giving birthduring selected 24-hr sampling periods to de-termine their eligibility for the study. Subjectswere excluded from the sample if~a! themother was under 18,~b! the mother was notconversant in English,~c! the family plannedto move, ~d! the child was hospitalized formore than 7 days after birth or had obviousdisabilities,~e! the mother had a known or anacknowledged substance-abuse problem, or~f !the family lived at considerable distance fromthe site or in a location that posed a danger tohome visitors. Of those contacted in the initialsampling periods, 5,265 met the eligibility cri-teria for the study and agreed to be contactedafter their return home from the hospital. Asubset of this group was selected in accor-dance with a conditionally random samplingplan.

When the infants were 1 month old, a totalof 1,364 families with healthy newborns wereenrolled in the study. The recruited familiescame from a wide range of socioeconomic andsociocultural backgrounds, and included 24%



ethnic-minority children, 11% low-educationmothers~less than high school education!, and14% single-parent mothers.~Note that thesepercentages are not mutually exclusive.! Therecruited families did not differ significantlyfrom other families eligible to participate onmajor demographic variables, except that themothers in the study were slightly~4%! morelikely to report that they planned to be em-ployed compared with the nonparticipatingmothers. Of the mothers recruited, 53%planned to work full time~.30 hr0week!, 23%part time~10–30 hr0week!, and 24% did notintend to be employed during the child’s firstyear.

The sample was not designed to be nation-ally representative. However, we compared thedemographic characteristics of the sample withthose of people living in the same census tractsand nationally. The sample was similar to fam-ilies in the census tract records and the nationas a whole on key demographic variables~household income and ethnicity!.

Overview of data collection

Data for this report were collected from thetime the child was 1 month of age throughfirst grade. When the child was 1 month ofage, basic demographic information on thechild and family was gathered and motherscompleted questionnaires during a homevisit. Data on child-care usage were collectedthrough phone calls at 3-month intervals, upto 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 andGrade 1. Data were gathered in the laboratoryand in the home on children’s behavioral func-tioning, mother’s psychological functioning,mother–child interaction, and the quality ofthe home environment when children were 6,15, 24, 36, and 54 months of age, and in thespring of Grade 1. Teachers also completedquestionnaires about the child in kindergartenand Grade 1.

Overview of measures

This presentation of measures is organized toreflect the ways in which the variables func-

tioned in the analyses. We first present mea-sures used to create affect-dysregulationvariables at 24 and 36 months, and thendescribe how different affect-dysregulationgroups were constructed. Next we discuss thechild and family variables used to describe thecharacteristics of the affect-dysregulationgroups at 24 and 36 months, including vari-ables that will be used as covariates in theanalyses of subsequent child social and cog-nitive outcomes at 54 months, kindergarten,and Grade 1. Finally, we describe measuresused to assess social and cognitive outcomesat 54 months, kindergarten, and Grade 1.

Affect dysregulation

Affect dysregulation was assessed during twolaboratory playroom observations of mother–child interaction, meant to index aspects oftheir relationship at 24 and 36 months: a toycleanup activity and a semistructured mother–child play interaction.

Lab cleanup.At the end of a 15-min toy playperiod which opened the lab sessions at 24and 36 months, the visit coordinator handedthe mother containers for the toys and in-structed her to have the child participate inpicking up the toys; no other directions weregiven to mother~see NICHD Early Child CareResearch Network, 1998, for details!. Cleanup lasted no more than 5 min. Child behaviorscoded on a 5-point scale from 15 not at allcharacteristicto 55 very characteristicwere:compliance, assertive noncompliance, defiantnoncompliance, passive noncompliance, pos-itive affect, and negative affect. Only the de-fiant noncompliance and negative affect scoreswere used. A rating of$3 on both of thesescales at one age point was required for a childto be assigned to the affect-dysregulation groupat that age. The intraclass correlation~Winer,1971! of intercoder reliabilities of the defiantnoncompliant and negative affect scales were.71 and .81 at 24 months, and .83 and .81 at 36months.

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics forthe selected lab cleanup ratings. Means, andstandard deviations for the defiant noncompli-ance and negative affect ratings are presented,



along with the proportion of children display-ing low and high levels of negativity. Rela-tively few children showed high levels of bothdefiance and negative affect. As shown inTable 2, only 17 children were high in bothdefiance and negative affect during toy cleanupat 24 months, whereas 7 children showed highlevels of negative affect alone and 12 childrenshowed high levels of defiance alone. Only 21children showed high levels of both defianceand negative affect during toy cleanup at 36months.

Mother–child interaction.Mother–child inter-action was videotaped in semistructured 15-min play observations at both ages~see NICHDEarly Child Care Research Network, 1999 fordetails!.At 24 months child negative mood wasratedona4-point scale.At36months, childneg-ativity, which paralleled the 24-month rating ofchild negative mood, was rated on a 7-pointscale. 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 theirmother. At 24 months, extensive negative af-fect was indicated by scores of 3–4, and at36 months by scores of 4–7. Table 1 showsthe mean and standard deviation of negativeaffect at each of the two ages and the propor-tion of children classified as displaying exten-sive negativity during interactions with theirmothers. As shown in this table, 95 childrenmet this criterion at 24 months and 62 at 36months.

Children were classified as dysregulatedif they showed high levels of negative affectduring interaction with the mother or if theyshowed high levels of both defiance andnegative affect during the toy cleanup. Thebottom half of Table 2 displays the num-bers of children meeting these criteria at bothages. As the table shows, a total of 105 chil-dren were classified as dysregulated at 24months because they displayed high levels ofnegative affect during both interaction andcleanup~n 5 6!, in interaction alone~n 589!, or during cleanup alone~n 5 10!. At 36months, 77 children were classified asdysregulated.

Table 1. Measures of dyadic affect dysregulation

Child Age

24 Months 36 Months

Lab Clean Up

DefianceM ~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 affectM ~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 affectM ~SD! 1.43~0.70!Low ~ratings of 1–2! n 926 ~91%!High ~ratings of 3–4! n 95 ~9%!

36-month negative affectM ~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 differover age because the ratings of interactions could range from 1 to 4 at 24 monthsand from 1 to 7 at 36 months.



Family and child characteristics

The following variables were used as familyand child predictors or correlates of affect dys-regulation in univariate analyses~Table 3!: ma-ternal education, vocabulary, personality, anddepressive symptoms; partner in the home; in-come; caregiving quality; child gender and eth-nicity ~Black, Hispanic, other, or White!;6-month negative mood; 6-month tempera-ment; 15-month cognitive functioning; 15-, 24-,and 36-month attachment; and amount andquality of child care. Variables significantlyassociated with affect dysregulation at theunivariate level were included in a single multi-variate analysis predicting to dysregulation sta-tus ~Table 4! and were also covariates in theanalyses predicting child outcomes~Table 5!.~Exceptions were child variables from assess-ments after age 6 months, to avoid overcon-trolling for child outcomes; and child carequality, because it was not available for thefull sample. Site was a covariate, as it wascomplexly associated with both predictor and

outcome variables; child gender was added asa covariate because of its association with theoutcome measures.!

Maternal educationwas represented by fivelevels as determined at 1 month: 15 less thanhigh school, 2 5 high school graduate, 3 5some college, 4 5 college graduate, and 55graduate education.

Maternal vocabularywas assessed with thePeabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Revised~PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981!. The PPVTassesses verbal intelligence operationalized asreceptive knowledge of vocabulary. Scores arestandardized with a mean of 100 and standarddeviation of 15. Scores are moderately corre-lated with standard measures of verbal intelli-gence such as the WAIS Vocabulary subscale~Weschler, 1981!.

Maternal personalitywas assessed usingthree scales of the NEO Personality Inventory~NEO PI; Costa & McCrae, 1985! obtained at1 month. The three NEO scales were neuroti-cism, the extent to which the mother indicatedshe is anxious, hostile, and depressed~re-versed!; extraversion, the extent to which sheis sociable, fun-loving, and optimistic; andagreeableness, the extent to which she is trust-ing, helpful, and forgiving. Thus, higher scoresindicated better adjustment.

Maternal depressive symptomswere mea-sured using the Center for EpidemiologicalStudies Depression Scale~CES-D; Radloff,1977! administered at each home visit~1, 6,15, 24, 36, and 54 months, and Grade 1!. Cron-bach’s alpha for the CES-D across the datacollection points ranged from .88 to .91. Thedepression scores had moderately strong cor-relations over time~.46 to .58!.

Partner in the homewas reported by moth-ers at each interview, and the proportion oftime a partner was in residence was computedfor each family from 6 to 54 months.

Incomewas the income0needs ratio com-puted from maternal interview items col-lected at each home visit. Family income,excluding AFDC, was divided by the appro-priate poverty threshold, determined by theyear in which the income was earned and byhousehold size. This variable was averagedacross 0–54 months to create an averageincome0needs ratio.

Table 2. Number of children displayingaffect dysregulation

During Lab Cleanup

24 Months 36 Months

Negative Affect Negative Affect

Defiance No Yes No Yes

No ~n! 982 7 961 18Yes ~n! 12 17 10 21

Mother–Child Interactions

24 Months 36 Months

Negative Affect Negative Affect

Lab Cleanup No Yes No Yes

No ~n) 911 89 925 57Yes ~n) 10 6 18 2

Note:The children who were high on both Negative Af-fect and Defiance were classified as dysregulated duringlab cleanup; children considered dysregulated byeithercriterion were classified as dysregulated.



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 educationa 14.6 ~2.4! 13.7 ~2.4! 14.5 ~2.4! 13.9 ~2.6!Maternal receptive vocabularyb,c 100.3 ~18.3! 93.7 ~18.5! 100.2 ~18.2! 92.2 ~19.6!Maternal agreeableness at 6 monthsb 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 monthsd 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 monthsd,e 0.87~0.28! 0.75~0.38! 0.87~0.28! 0.76~0.39!Income0poverty thresholda

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 caregivinga, 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 47Child ethnicity~%!

Blackd,e 10 20 11 21Hispanic 6 7 6 6Other 4 6 4 3Whited,e 80 68 80 70

Negative mood SI 6 monthsb,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 monthsa,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 19Ba 64 45 63 53C 9 9 9 8D0U 15 14 15 19

Q-security 24 monthsb,c 0.31~0.20! 0.21~0.20! 0.30~0.20! 0.21~0.20!SS 36 months~%!

A 5 4 5 4B 64 48 64 46Cb,c 16 25 16 28D0Ub 15 23 16 23

Hours of care0week6 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!



Mother–child interaction during play athome at 6 months, and in a laboratory play-room at 15, and 24 months, was rated on 4-pointglobal rating scales developed for this study;7-point rating scales were used for ratings of36and54month–month laboratory interactions.A maternal sensitivity composite composed ofthe sum of sensitivity to nondistress, instrusive-ness~reverse scored!, and positive regard wasformed at 6, 15, 24, 36, and 54 months~seeNICHD Early Child Care Research Network,1999, for a discussion of the adjustment to con-vert all ratings to the same scale!. Intercoderreliability was calculated as the intraclass cor-relation~Winer, 1971!. For the maternal sensi-tivitycomposites the intraclasscorrelationswere.87, .83, .84, .84, and .84 for 6, 15, 24, 36, and54 months, respectively. Cronbach’s alpha forthe composites ranged from .70 to .84.

The Home Observation for Measurementof the Environment~HOME; Caldwell & Bra-dley, 1984! assesses overall quality of the phys-ical and social resources available to a childwithin the home. The HOME consists of bothdirect observation and a semistructured inter-view with the mother. The focus is on the childas 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, andas the sum of 55 items at 36 and 54 months,with higher values denoting higher levels ofmaternal responsiveness, child stimulation, andsupport to the child. All observers attendedcentralized training sessions before collectingthe data and were required to maintain relia-bility by matching a master coder on 90% ofitems. The Infant0Toddler version was admin-istered at 6 and 15 months, and the Early Child-hood version was administered at 36 and 54months. Cronbach’s alpha for the total scorewas .76 at 6 months, .80 at 15 months, .87 at36 months, and .82 at 54 months. Correlationsacross 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 thestandardized HOME total score.

Infant negative moodwas the 6-month4-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 adequateinterrater reliability.

Infant temperamentwas based on fifty-five6-point items from the Infant Temperament

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 acovariate in all analyses. All values except percentages are means~standard deviations!.a24-month dysregulated groups different atp , .001.b24-month dysregulated groups different atp , .01.c36-month dysregulated groups different atp , .01.d24-month dysregulated groups different atp , .05.e36-month dysregulated groups different atp , .05.f36-month dysregulated groups different atp , .001.gMean levels of maternal caregiving decrease over time for both 24- and 36-month dysregulated groups~ p , .001!.



Questionnaire completed by mothers at 6months~Medoff–Cooper, Carey, & McDevitt,1993!. The composite measure reflected diffi-cult temperament and was created by calculat-ing the mean of the nonmissing items withappropriate 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 todaily routines.

Children’s cognitive functioningwas as-sessed using the original Bayley Scales of In-fant Development~Bayley, 1969! at 15 monthsduring lab visits. The Mental Development In-dex ~MDI ! represents overall cognitive level.Scores are standardized so that the mean is100 with a standard deviation of 15.

Infant–mother attachment security was as-sessed at 15, 24, and 36 months. At 15 monthsthe Ainsworth et al.~1978! Strange Situationprocedure was conducted. Videotapes of allStrange Situations were coded in a central lo-cation and attachment security was evaluatedby a team of three coders blind to child-carestatus and other information about the childand family. These coders double-coded 1,201Strange Situation assessments using the stan-dard attachment classifications of secure~B!,insecure-avoidant~A!, insecure-resistant~C!,disorganized~D!, and unclassifiable~U!. Thegroup viewed disagreements and a code wasassigned by consensus. Across all coder pairs,before conferencing, agreement with the5-category classification system was 83%~k 5 .69!. In this report the D and U classifi-cations are combined.

Table 4. Logistic regressions predicting affect-dysregulation groupfrom child and family characteristics

24-Month Dys.~n 5 919!

36-Month Dys.~n 5 904!

MaternalEducation 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 areB and~standard errors!.** p , .01. *** p , .001.



Table 5. Affect dysregulation and child outcomes from 54 months to first grade

24-Month Dysregulation 36-Month Dysregulation

Main EffectTime Interaction

Adj. M Main EffectTime Interaction

Adj. M

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

Cognitive0academic outcomesSample size

Not dys. 875 848 897 872Dys. 99 97 77 73

Math ~WJ Applied Problems!a

6.48* 0.25* 3.03 11.48*** 0.37*** 0.22Not dys. 427.2 472.6 427.4 472.5Dys. 424.9 467.4 421.5 467.5

Reading~WJ Letter–Word Identification!a

3.31 0.17 2.21 4.06* 0.21* 1.18Not dys. 373.3 455.0 373.6 454.7Dys. 371.4 449.3 367.6 451.8

Phonological Knowledge~WJ Incomplete Words!a

4.76* 0.19* 2.32 10.27** .32** .00Not dys. 464.4 486.6 464.4 486.8Dys. 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 1.31Dys. 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 0.77Dys. 2.01 0.82 2.11 0.85

Mother rating of social skillsSample size

Not dys. 881 857 847 895 879 871Dys. 101 100 97 78 78 72

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CPRS, closeness3.95* 0.18* 0.82 2.17 0.13 0.11

Not dys. 4.61 4.67 4.76 4.60 4.66 4.76Dys. 4.54 4.61 4.73 4.57 4.62 4.71

CBCL, externalizing4.52* 20.19* 0.35 0.60 20.10 2.12

Not dys. 51.3 50.2 48.5 51.3 50.3 48.7Dys. 52.8 52.0 50.6 52.8 51.1 48.6

CBCL, internalizing1.89 0.12 0.02 0.00 0 1.38

Not dys. 46.8 47.4 48.3 46.9 47.5 48.5Dys. 48.0 48.5 49.3 47.5 47.6 47.8

SSRS, social skills10.82** 0.30** 5.55* 1.20 0.11 1.29

Not Dys. 99.1 101.7 105.7 99.0 101.5 105.2Dys. 96.7 97.9 99.8 96.6 99.8 104.7

Teacher rating of social skillsSample size

Not dys. 588 822 820 602 843 843Dys. 66 96 97 52 75 73

TCRS, closeness0.16 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.03 0.00

Not dys. 4.18 4.22 4.28 4.19 4.22 4.28Dys. 4.21 4.24 4.30 4.20 4.23 4.29

TRF, externalizing14.75*** 20.20*** .70 0.86 20.09 0.63

Not dys. 49.6 49.8 50.0 49.8 50.0 50.4Dys. 51.9 52.5 53.4 51.1 50.8 50.5

TRF–Internalizing0.71 1.12 1.35 0.12 0.00 0.00

Not dys. 49.2 48.8 48.2 49.2 48.8 48.3Dys. 48.9 49.3 49.8 49.4 49.1 48.6

SSRS–Social Skills

5.87* 0.22* 0.04 5.49 .24* 1.03Not dys. 103.6 103.9 104.0 103.5 103.8 104.2Dys. 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 sensitivity1 HomeTotal!, depressive symptoms, income, partner in the home; child gender, ethnicity, negative mood at 6 months, age atassessment, and all interactions with age at assessment.aRaush scores were used in the longitudinal analyses of Woodcock–Johnson subscales.*p , .05. **p , .01. *** p , .001.

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55

Infant–mother attachment security was as-sessed at 24 months using the AttachmentQ-set. Two-hour home visits were conductedduring which trained observers made notes ofchild behavior that was naturally occurring orin response to semistructured situations intro-duced by the observer. After the visit the ob-servers used the Attachment Q-Sort~AQS! todescribe security with mother~Vaughn & Wa-ters, 1990; Waters & Deane, 1985!. The result-ing profile is correlated with the profile of aprototypically secure child, as determined byexperts in the field, and the correlation is thechild’s Q-security score. Research assistantswere tested on five videotaped observationsscored by experts Drs. Posada and Gao. ThePosada–Gao consensus score was the “goldstandard” for this test. Their reliability agree-ment across the five test tapes, before confer-encing to consensus, was .77, with a securityscore difference of .04. Research assistantswere certified to collect data if the mediancorrelation of their Q-security scores with thegold standard Q-security scores was .55, andno correlation was below .40. Across the datacollection period within-site reliability was as-sessed.Across all research assistants at all sites,this correlation was .73, with a security scoredifference of .06.

A modified Strange Situation procedurebased on recommendations by Cassidy andMarvin and the MacArthur Working Groupon 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! orinsecure-avoidant~A!, insecure-resistant~C!,and insecure-controlling0 insecure 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! onthe 4-category AB C D classifications was75.7%~k 5 .58!.

Child care variables

Amount of child care was the sum of all hoursreported by mothers in all nonmaternal care

arrangements, scored as mean hours per weekduring the periods 1–6 months, 7–15 months,16–24 months, 25–36 months, and 37–54months. Children who experienced no routinenonmaternal care received a score of zero.

Quality of child carewas assessed duringtwo half-day child care visits at 6, 15, 24, and36 months, and one half-day visit at 54 months,using observational methods developed for thisstudy ~Observational Record of the Caregiv-ing Environment or ORCE; see NICHD EarlyChild Care Network, 1996; in press!. Positivecaregiving was generated at 6, 15, and 24months by summing five qualitative ratings ofthe care received by the focus child, made atthe end of four observation cycles: sensitivity0responsiveness to child’s nondistress expres-sions, positive regard, stimulation of cognitivedevelopment, detachment~reversed!, and flataffect ~reversed!. At 36 and 54 months, twoadditional ratings, fostering exploration andintrusiveness~reversed!, were added to thecomposite. The Cronbach’s alphas were .89,.88, .86, .82, and .79 at 6, 15, 24, 36, and 54months, respectively. Interobserver reliabilityestimates~Pearson correlations! for positivecaregiving 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 inthe analyses was derived from measures ob-tained during laboratory, home, and child careor school visits. The criteria used to determinethe final set of outcomes included coverage ofmajor developmental domains~cognitive0academic and social!, good psychometricproperties, and representation of important con-structs. We also sought to limit the set to asmall number to permit us to construct a rela-tively coherent picture of the antecedents andsequelae of early affect dysregulation. Thechild outcomes were measured over time: someat 54 months and first grade and others at 54months, kindergarten, and first grade.

Cognitive0academic outcomes.Three sub-scales of the Woodcock Johnson AchievementBattery, Letter–Word Identification, Incom-



plete Words, and Applied Problems, to assessreading, phonological knowledge, and math,respectively, were administered during lab vis-its at 54 months and Grade 1. All subscaleshave a mean of 100 and standard deviation of15. In addition, Raush scores are availablefor longitudinal analyses. Raush scores arenot standardized by age, and so true develop-mental change can be charted by increasingscores. 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 weremeasured using the Continuous PerformanceTask ~CPT; Rosvold, Mirsky, Sarason, Bran-some, & Beck, 1956!. This task was admin-istered to each child individually toward theend of a 2.5-hr laboratory visit at the 54months and first-grade assessments. At 54months, with an experimenter in the room,the child was seated at a table in front of a2-in. square screen and a red button. Dot-matrix pictures of 10 familiar objects~e.g.,butterfly, fish, flower! were generated by acomputer and presented on the screen. Thechild was asked to press the button “as fastas you can” each time a target stimulus~achair! appeared on the screen. A total of 220stimuli were presented in 22 blocks. The tar-get stimulus was randomly presented withineach block and appeared twice within eachblock for a total of 44 presentations, leaving176 presentations of nontarget stimuli. Eachstimulus appeared on the screen for 500 msat 1500-ms interstimulus intervals. The child’stask was twofold:~a! to press the red buttonas soon as he or she saw the image of thechair on the screen, and~b! to refrain frompressing the button at the appearance of othernontarget stimuli. The task took 7 min and20 s.

A more challenging version of this taskwas used at first grade. Children were seatedin front of a computer monitor and letter stim-uli were randomly presented in 30 blocks, 10stimuli per block. The target stimulus, the let-ter X, appeared twice in each block. The stim-ulus duration was 200 ms and the interstimulusinterval was 1500 ms. The child was in-structed to press the red button whenever an

X appeared on the screen and to refrain frompressing when any other letter appeared. Be-fore administration, children’s letter knowl-edge was assessed. The task lasted 8 min and30 s.

Sustained attentionwas assessed by thenumber of errors of omission. Errors of omis-sion occurred when children failed to pressthe button in response to the appearance of thetarget stimulus. Therefore, children with greaterability to sustain attention had fewer lapses inattention and made fewer errors of omission.Impulsivitywas reflected in the number of er-rors of commission made by the child—thatis, incorrect button-press responses to nontar-get stimuli. Children with more incorrect re-sponses to nontargets were considered moreimpulsive than were children with fewer in-correct responses.

Measures of sustained attention and impul-sivity derived from the CPT have adequatetest–retest reliability~r 5 .65–.74!, based ondata from a sample of 138 nonreferred boys~Halperin, Sharma, Greenblatt, & Schwartz,1991!. Children’s performance on the CPThas high construct validity as a measure ofattention~Halperin et al., 1991!, and adequatepredictive 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 atr 5 .24 andr 5 .48 ~ p ,.0001! at 54 months and first grade in the cur-rent sample. Cross age correlations arer 5 .26and .19~ p , .0001! for sustained attentionand impulsivity, respectively.

Social and behavioral outcomes.Mothers andteachers rated children’s social skills using theirrespective forms of the Social Skills scale fromthe Social Skills Rating System~Gresham &Elliott, 1990!, rating how often a social behav-ior occurs on a 3-point scale~0 5 never, 1 5sometimes, 2 5 very often!. The teacher So-cial Skills Scale contains three subscales:Cooperation, Assertion, and Self-control. Co-operation includes behaviors such as payingattention to the teacher’s instruction and put-ting away work materials properly. Assertionincludes initiating appropriate behaviors, suchas starting conversations with peers, introduc-



ing oneself, and volunteering to help peers withclassroom tasks. Self-control includes behav-iors that are effective in conflict situations,such as responding to teasing or peer pressureappropriately, receiving criticisms well, andcontrolling temper. The maternal version in-cludes an additional Responsibility subscale.Responsibility includes behaviors that demon-strate ability to communicate with adults andexhibiting regard for property or work. Forthe elementary-level forms, Cronbach’sa 5.87 and .94 for the total mother and teacherSocial Skills scales, respectively. The totalscore was used in these analyses. The validity~content, criterion, and construct! of the SSRSis 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 toassess the social competence and problem be-havior of children 4–18 years. This family ofmeasures has been standardized on large sam-ples of children in the United States andabroad. A series of behaviors~about 100 itemsper version! are rated on 3-point scales from0 ~not true of the child! to 2 ~very true of thechild!. Broad band scales of internalizing andexternalizing problems are derived from acomputerized scoring program. Mothers andteachers completed the CBCL and TRF at 54months, kindergarten, and Grade 1.

The Child–Parent Relationship Scale~CPRS; Pianta, 1994! and Student–TeacherRelationship Scale~STRS; Pianta, 1992! are30-item, 5-point Likert-type scales designedto assess the adult’s perception of the qualityof the relationship between the child and theadult. The Closeness scale was used in theseanalyses. The 54-month version had 11 itemsand the later versions had 8 items. The totalscore was the mean across items. Higher scoresindicated the respondent reported a warmer,closer relationship with the child. The alphavalues ranged from .64 to .69 for the parent-completed measure and from .83 to .85 forthe teacher-completed form. The CPRS andSTRS were completed by caregivers or teach-ers and mothers, respectively, at 54 months,kindergarten, and Grade 1.

Analysis and Results

Of the 1,364 families enrolled in the study,1,023 were included in the analyses in thisreport; 341 were excluded because of missingdata on the dysregulation, covariates, or out-come variables. The included and excludedfamilies do not differ significantly on child’sgender or dysregulation classification at 24 or36 months. Mothers who were excluded andincluded in these analyses also did not differon maternal depression scores at any age, ormaternal neurotism or extroversion scores ob-tained at 1 month. The two groups were alsocomparable on income at 15, 24, 36, and 54months and at Grade 1. However, families withmissing outcome data were more likely to in-clude a child who was Black,x2 ~3, N 51,364! 5 15.7,p , .001, and a mother rated asless agreeable on the personality inventory,t~1,270! 5 23.21,p , .001, with less maternaleducation,t ~1,361! 5 25.87,p , .001, andwith lower maternal vocabulary scores on thePPVT, t ~1,165! 5 22.91,p , .01.

The results are presented in three sections.First, children in the two affect-dysregulationgroups at 24 and 36 months~0 5 not dysreg-ulated, 1 5 dysregulated! are compared forconcordance over time. Second, they are com-pared on relevant child and family character-istics, including some that were measuredlongitudinally from 6 to 36 months. Third, thetwo affect-dysregulation groups are comparedon the child outcomes, collected longitudi-nally from 54 months to Grade 1, adjustingfor a variety of child, family, and child carevariables.

Concordance in affect-dysregulationgroups over time

Children classified as dysregulated at 24months were substantially more likely to beclassified as dysregulated at 36 months,x2

~1, N 5 1,023! 5 44.75,p , .001, but therewas no extensive overlap across age. As shownin Table 6, about 84% of the sample did notshow affect dysregulation at either age. Of the161 children classified as dysregulated at ei-ther age, 26 children were classified as dys-regulated at both ages.



Comparing affect-dysregulation groupson child and family characteristics

First, we compared the dysregulated groupson selected family and child variables. Analy-ses of variance compared families on all mea-sures collected at a single age, and repeatedmeasures analyses compared families on allmeasures collected longitudinally. Table 3 liststhe means and standard deviations or propor-tions for these variables. Both sets of analysesasked whether the two dysregulation groups~0, 1! at 24 months and the two dysregulationgroups at 36 months differed in analyses thatadjusted for site. These analyses were con-ducted separately for each of the selected char-acteristics. Both effect sizes and test statisticsare reported below when significant group dif-ferences were detected. Effect sizes were com-puted as the difference between the adjustedmeans for the two dysregulation groups di-vided by the pooled standard deviation, thesquare root of the residual error variance.

The first set of analyses compared the ma-ternal and family characteristics that werecollected only once. Many of them differedaccording 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 weresignificantly lower among children classifiedas dysregulated at 24 months,d 5 .33;

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!. Themothers of children dysregulated at 24 monthsbut not 36 months also reported poorer psy-chological adjustment, lower agreeableness,d5 .34;F ~1, 993! 5 10.3,p , .01, and higherneuroticism,d 5 25, F ~1, 993! 5 5 .62,p ,.05. The dysregulation groups did not differon 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, thanthose children who were not dysregulated.

Significant differences among the dysreg-ulation groups emerged on many of the childcharacteristics. No gender differences emerged.More African American and fewer White chil-dren were in the dysregulated groups at 24months,x2 ~3, N 5 1,023! 5 10.2,p 5 .017,and at 36 months,x2 ~3, N 5 1,023! 5 8.58,p5 .036!. Children tended to show more neg-ative affect in interactions with their motherswhen they were 6 months old if dysregulatedat 24,d 5 .28,F ~1, 905! 5 7 .11,p , . 01, or36 months,d 5 .24, F ~1, 905! 5 4.07, p 5.04!, although there were no significant differ-ences in mothers’ reports of temperamentratings at 6 months of age. Children also per-formed more poorly on the Bayley at 15 monthsthan their nondysregulated peers if they weredysregulated 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, thedysregulated children also differed on at-tachment. Compared with nondysregulatedchildren, children who were classified as dys-regulated at 24 months were less likely thannondysregulated children to have been se-curely attached at 15 months and they weremore likely to have been classified as insecure-avoidant,x2 ~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 groupat 24 months were more likely than other chil-dren to be classified as insecure-resistant orinsecure-controlling0 insecure-other at 36months,x2 ~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-

Table 6. Agreement between affect-dyregulation classifications at 24and 36 months

36-MonthDysregulation

24-MonthDysregulation No Yes

No 862~84%! 55 ~5%!Yes 80~8%! 26 ~3%!

Note:The difference in numbers between Table 2 and thistable is because a few children have missing data on thelab cleanup or mother–child interaction and so meet cri-teria based only on one or the other. The values are thenumber of subjects.x2 ~1, n 5 1,023! 5 44.75,p , .001.



ulated at 36 months were also more likely tobe insecure-resistant at 36 months,x2 ~3, N51,003! 5 12.7,p , .01. Children classified asdysregulated 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 monthsalso were less likely to have secure attach-ments to their mothers both earlier and con-currently, although the specific patterns variedsomewhat over time.

Next, we asked whether children’s classi-fications as affect-dysregulated showed dif-ferent patterns of associations over time onrepeated assessments of maternal caregiving,maternal depression, family income, andamount and quality of child care experiences.Repeated measures analyses of variance wereconducted in which the affect-dysregulationgroups at 24 and 36 months were the predic-tors of interest and site was included as a co-variate. Repeated assessments of each measurewere collected across four waves of data col-lection from 6 to 36 months. Table 3 lists themeans on the repeated assessments for chil-dren classified as dysregulated or not dysreg-ulated at the two ages. The repeated measuresanalyses simultaneously tested whether thegroups differed on the average level of a givenoutcome over time and whether they showeddifferent patterns of change between 6 and 36months on that outcome.Ageneral linear mixedmodel approach was used so that we couldinclude children who might be missing data ata particular age~e.g., child care quality at agesat which the child was in exclusive maternalcare!.

Children classified as dysregulated dif-fered from other children in four of the fiverepeated measures analyses. More maternal de-pressive symptoms were reported over timeby 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 dysregulatedgroup,d 5 . 27, F ~1, 1,101! 5 8.0, p , .01,but no differences in patterns of change overtime were observed in either comparison.Lower family incomes were reported over timeby mothers of children classified as dysregu-

lated at 24 months,d 5 .32, F ~1, 1,011! 511.4,p , .001, but not at 36 months. Changeover time in income was not related to eitherdysregulation group. Compared with the otherchildren, dysregulated children at 24 monthsexperienced less sensitive and stimulatingmaternal caregiving over time,d 5 .64,F ~1,1,011! 5 51.3, p , .001, and their mothersbecame less sensitive and stimulating be-tween 15 and 36 months,F ~3, 1,011! 5 20.1,p, .001. For example, the dyregulation groupsbecame more discrepant, increasing from aneffect size of 0.50 at 15 months to an effectsize of 1.0 at 24 months. Similarly, dysregu-lated children at 36 months also experiencedless 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 36months. Although the amount of nonmaternalcare did not differ between the dysregulationgroups at either age, children considered dys-regulated at 24 months,d 5 .20;F ~1, 772! 54.93,p , .05, and at 36 months,d5 .29;F ~3,772! 5 7.88,p , .01, were observed to be inlower quality child care. Change in child carequality over time was not related to dysregu-lation group.

Finally, we conducted logistic regressionanalyses to determine the independent contri-bution of each of the significant family andchild characteristics, controlling for the ef-fects of all other variables in the model, inpredicting whether the child was classified asdysregulated at each age. As shown in Table 4,the logistic regression included maternal edu-cation, vocabulary, agreeableness, extraver-sion, and depressive symptoms; partner in thehome; income; and caregiving quality; andchild’s ethnicity ~Black, Hispanic, other, orWhite!, 6-month negative mood, 15-monthcognitive functioning, 15- and 36-month at-tachment classifications, and 24-monthQ-security. Child care quality was excludedbecause children not in child care had missingdata. The repeated assessments were averagedfrom 6 to 24 months when predicting 24-month dysregulation status, and from 6 and 36months when predicting 36-month dysregula-tion status. Only three variables showed sig-



nificant independent prediction, and one ofthem emerged as a significant predictor of both24- and 36-month dysregulation classifica-tions. Children whose mothers were less sen-sitive and stimulating had children who weresignificantly more likely to be classified asdysregulated at 24 months~B 5 2.89, SE5.25, p , .001! and 36 months~B 5 2.94,SE5 .29,p , .01!. In addition, children weresignificantly more likely to be classified asdysregulated at 24 months if they had lowerBayley MDI cognitive scores~B5 2.04,SE5.01, p , .001! or were classified as avoidantversus secure at 15 months~B 5 .76, SE5.23,p , .001!.

Child outcomes

We conducted repeated measures analyses ofvariance to determine the extent to which chil-dren classified as dysregulated at either 24 or36 months exhibited more negative outcomesduring preschool and the early elementaryschool years. The repeated measures analyseswere conducted using a general linear mixedmodel approach~Singer, 1998! in which re-peated assessments of predictors as well asrepeated assessments of outcomes were in-cluded. The models included site; maternal ed-ucation, verbal ability, and concurrent measuresof income, partner in the home, depressivesymptoms, and caregiving; and the child’s eth-nicity, sex, and negative mood rating at 6months age and all interactions with age. Theresults of these analyses are reported in Table 5.This table lists theF statistics for main effecttests comparing the children dysregulated at24 months with the other children in the firstcolumn and the associated effect size in thesecond column. The effect size is computed asthe difference between the adjusted mean forthe two groups divided by the estimated stan-dard deviation~square root of the estimatedresidual variance!. The third column lists theF statistics for the test of the Age3 Dysregu-lation interaction and the next three columnslist the adjusted means at each age for eachgroup. The same values are listed in the 7ththrough 12th columns with respect to dysreg-ulation status at 36 months.

Cognitive0academic outcomes.Children clas-sified as dysregulated at 24 or 36 months scoredhigher on impulsivity and lower on all mea-sures of academic achievement. As can be seenunder the cognitive0academic outcomes inTable 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 teston average over time but did not show pat-terns of gains over time different from thoseof other children. The children dysregulatedat 24 months scored on average 2.3 pointslower at 54 months and 5.2 points lower infirst grade, resulting in an averaged over timeeffect size ofd 5 .25. The children dysregu-lated at 36 months scored on average 5.9 pointslower at 54 months and 5.0 points lower infirst grade, resulting in an averaged over timeeffect size ofd 5 .37.

A similar pattern of results obtained for theother academic outcomes. Dysregulated chil-dren at 24 months scored lower than otherchildren on phonological knowledge,d5 .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 monthsscored 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! 510.27,p , .01, and higher on impulsivity,d5.19;F ~1, 967! 5 4.32,p , .05. None of theseanalyses indicated that change over time onthese cognitive measures was related to dys-regulation status at either age.

Social and behavioral outcomes: Motherreport. Affect dysregulation at 24 but not 36months was related to maternal ratings of so-cial skills between 54 months and the end offirst grade. Children in the dysregulation groupat 24 months were rated as lower in socialskills on three of the four mother-reported out-comes. Their mothers reported less closenessin the mother–child relationship,d5 .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! 510.82,p , .01, than the other children. In theanalysis of mother-reported social skills, anAge3Dysregulation interaction,F ~1, 1,845!5



5.55, p , .05, emerged because mothers re-ported fewer gains over time in social skillsfor the dysregulated children than for the otherchildren. Children in the dysregulated groupat 36 months did not differ significantly fromthe other children on any of these maternalratings of social skills.

Social and behavioral outcomes: Teacherreport. Teachers rated the social skills of chil-dren in the dysregulated groups at 24 or 36months as more problematic on two of the fourmeasures. Teachers reported that children inthe dysregulated group at 24 months had moreexternalizing problems,d52.20;F ~1, 953!514.75,p , .001, and fewer social skills,d 5.22;F ~1, 949! 5 5.87,p , .05, than the otherchildren. Children in the dysregulated groupat 36 months were also rated by their teacheras showing fewer social skills,d 5 .24,F ~1, 940! 5 5.49, p , .05, than the otherchildren. Teachers reported no differences inthe levels of internalizing symptoms, in theirfeelings of closeness to the study child, or inchange over time on any measure for childrenwho did or did not show affect dysregulationin interactions with their mothers at 24 or 36months.

Discussion

In this study we have conceptualized the con-struct of children’s affect dysregulation in theearly years at the dyadic level rather than at theindividual child level. Our measures of affectdysregulation represent the child’s responses tomother during dyadic interactions that variedin their emotional demands. The child’s affectand affect regulation as we have assessed themare thus a product of the mother–child dyad, butthe mother’s behavior, per se, was not includedin the formation of the affect-dysregulationgroups. Based on their negative affect withtheir mothers, we have characterized some chil-dren as showing “affect-dysregulation in thecontext of the mother–child relationship” inrecognition of the central role of parents inassisting children with affect regulation in thefirst few years of life, and the bidirectionalnature of parent–child interactions, includingthose which scaffold emerging affect regula-

tion capacities in young children. Childrencharacterized as affect-dysregulated in the cur-rent study displayed marked negative affectduring low stress play with their mothers, andsome children also exhibited high levels ofdefiance and other forms of negative affectwhen asked by their mothers to clean up toysafter playing in the lab. In other words, asearly as age 2 or 3, some mother–child dyadshad developed relationships that appeared tobe affectively negative, sometimes coercive,and relatively ineffective during times of lowand moderate stress.

About 16% of the sample of more than1,000 children was identified as affect-dysregulated at either 24 or 36 months. Thechildren in affectively dysregulated relation-ships with their mothers differed in importantways from children not so identified. Theycame from families that were more likely tobe African American, with fewer father fig-ures and mothers who had less education, lowerverbal ability, and poorer psychological adjust-ment. The children themselves had lower Bay-ley MDI scores at 15 months. In addition, theirmothers were less sensitive and stimulatingduring both semistructured play and during nat-urally occurring interactions at home duringthe first years of these children’s lives. How-ever, when all of these predictors were con-sidered in a multivariate analysis, only themother’s sensitivity and stimulation and thechild’s cognitive development and insecure-avoidant attachment classification at 15 monthswere associated with affect-dysregulation sta-tus at 24 or 36 months. Children classified asaffect-dysregulated thus experienced and ex-pressed negative affect in the context of par-enting relationships that were less emotionallysupportive overall, and they may have hadfewer cognitive resources to assist in strategicemotion regulation and to elicit more positivecaregiving.

There were several associations between at-tachment, which was assessed in different waysat 15, 24, and 36 months, and affect dysregu-lation at both 24 and 36 months. Children whowere insecure-avoidant at 15 months, but notinsecure-resistant or insecure-disorganizedchildren at that age, were more likely to beclassified in the affect-dysregulated group at



24 months. This finding is interesting becauseavoidance is often characterized by emotionalovercontrol, or a minimization of negative af-fect when the attachment system is activatedin the presence of the mother. However, someavoidant infants~in the A2 subcategory! doshow fussiness in the Strange Situation, andAinsworth, Bell, and Stayton~1972! showedthat avoidant infants are angry with their moth-ers at home and ambivalent about contact withher, 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 inmore negative ways with their mothers undersome conditions. The results of this study alsosupport the findings by others that avoidantinfants are undercontrolled in other situationsin later childhood~Egeland, Pianta, & O’Brien,1993; Munson, McMahon, & Spieker, 2001;Renken, Egeland, Marvinney, Mangelsdorf, &Sroufe, 1989!. The lack of association withdisorganized attachment classifications is in-teresting. However, this classification is het-erogeneous. We know little about how childrenwhose Strange Situation behavior is classifiedas disorganized manage negative affect in in-teraction with the mother in less stressful sit-uations. It is possible, for instance, that whentheir attachment systems are not activated theytend to inhibit the expression of negative af-fect in the presence of their mother~i.e., apattern opposite that observed in infants clas-sified as avoidant!. A shift in the type of in-secure attachment associated with affectdysregulation is already detectable by 36months, 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 findingsare consistent with her speculation that morepreschoolers will begin to use the more coer-cive strategies that are available to them as aresult of their increasing cognitive and linguis-tic competence.

Given the importance of affect regulationfor the acquisition of competence in multipledomains~Campos, Campos, & Barrett, 1989;Campos, Mumme, Kermoian, & Campos 1994;Dodge, 1989; Garber & Dodge, 1991; Kopp,

1989; Thompson, 1994!, it is perhaps unsur-prising that the developmental outcomes inlater preschool and the early school years weremuch less positive for children in the affect-dysregulation groups. Children who were dys-regulated as toddlers or young preschoolerswere less cognitively and socially competentat 54 months, kindergarten, and Grade 1, andwere more likely to be rated higher on behav-ior problems than were never dysregulatedchildren. Notably, this was true even after con-trolling for earlier and concurrent family andchild characteristics that were associated withaffective dysregulation, including maternal ed-ucation, vocabulary, depressive symptoms,partner in the home, income, and caregivingquality, and child ethnicity and 6-month neg-ative mood. Thus, early affect dysregulationin the context of the mother–child relation-ship apparently is associated with continuingproblems in both cognitive and social devel-opment through preschool and into the earlyschool years.

Mothers of affectively dysregulated chil-dren reported feeling less closeness with theirchildren in later years, compared with moth-ers of children who were not dysregulated. Incontrast, teachers did not report differentialfeelings of closeness across the groups of chil-dren although they did report differences insocial skills and behavior problems. Perhapsthis pattern of results reflects teacher profes-sionalism. It will be interesting to test in fu-ture analyses whether observations of thequality 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 withthose of three smaller studies that also re-ported links between negativity and conflictin 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 theNICHD Study of Early Child Care have per-mitted us to control for a number of possibleconfounding factors and to extend the find-ings from previous research in several impor-tant ways:~a! we included multiple measuresof affect dysregulation in different contexts of



mother–child interaction that embodied differ-ent kinds of emotional demands or challenges;~b! we identified several demographic, mater-nal, and family antecedents and concurrentcorrelates of affect dysregulation;~c! our de-velopmental outcome measures included notonly behavior problems, but also more gen-eral measures of social and cognitive compe-tence, and were obtained using multiple formsof assessment and multiple informants; and~d! we followed the children longitudinallythrough preschool and into the school years asdemands for affective and behavioral self-regulation steadily increased.

The effects reported here are notable fortheir longevity and for their breadth. The con-vergence across very different assessments ofcompetence as well as across informants makesus confident in concluding that affect dysreg-ulation in the early years constitutes a sig-nificant risk for later social and cognitivedevelopment. What might account for theseeffects enduring into the preschool and earlyschool years? Interestingly, dysregulated tod-dlers and preschoolers had not been identifiedby their mothers as more temperamentally dif-ficult as infants than were children who exhib-ited no dysregulation. However, these childrenwere more likely than their nondysregulatedcounterparts to become affectively negativewith their mothers during play interactions asearly as 6 months of age. We cannot rule outthe possibility that negativity was characteris-tic of these children early on, which could ex-plain their difficulties with negative emotionsin the mother–child relationship at 24 months~Mangelsdorf, Gunnar, Krestenbaum, Lang, &Andreas, 1990!. However, it is equally likelythat the early negativity was a child responseto the less sensitive and stimulating maternalcaregiving that they received at every age. Justas Ainsworth et al.~1978! concluded that du-ration of infant crying in the first quarter oflife reflected differences in maternal respon-siveness to crying, it is possible that somemothers induced or elicited negative affect intheir infants, thereby creating an emotionallydysregulated relationship by either 24 or 36months. Higher infant negativity with moth-ers was observed by 6 months for the childrenwho would be in the dysregulated group at 24

months. It emerged later for children classi-fied as dysregulated at 36 months. For bothgroups, mothers of dysregulated toddlers wereless sensitive and stimulating beginning ininfancy. Thus, infants of such mothers experi-enced higher rates and0or intensities of nega-tive affect in the very relationship on whichthey depend for reducing and managing theirnegative affect, and they would receive lesssensitive responsiveness and scaffolding to helpthem learn to manage their negative emotionsindependently. Amplified during the emotion-ally difficult transitions of the toddler years,such dyads may be more likely to establish apattern of mutual negativity and coercion~Pat-terson, DeBaryshe, & Ramsey, 1989! that be-comes progressively more difficult to escape.With less effective socialization of attentioncontrol~Raver, 1996; Raver, Blackburn, Ban-croft, & Torp, 1999! and compliance~Kochan-ska, 1994; Londerville & Main, 1981! in suchdyads, in addition to increasingly negativeaffect, children’s cognitive and achievement-related outcomes as well as their social com-petence could be compromised; deficits couldeasily cumulate and further exacerbate the dif-ficult mother–child relationship.

As appealing as such an account may be, itfails to tell the whole story. Among motherswho were in the lowest quartile of maternalcaregiving from 6 through 36 months, only24% of their infants were in the affect-dysregulated group at 24 months, and only 16%were in the affect-dysregulated group at 36months. This suggests the still more complexpossibility that the roots of affect dysregula-tion are truly dyadic—that is, that some moth-ers and infants are a poor affective fit for oneanother~Crockenberg & Litman, 1990; Kopp,1989; Mangelsdorf et al., 1990; Seifer, Schiller,Sameroff, Resnick, & Riordan, 1996!. The ef-fects of such mismatches may not be readilyapparent until the second or third year of lifewhen the young child’s emotions are bothquickly differentiating and intensifying~Cam-pos et al., 1994; Lewis, 1993!, when demandsfor self-regulation increase~Kopp, 1989;Thompson, 1994!, and when autonomy bidsemerge as issues for children and for their par-ents~Belsky et al., 1998; Crockenberg & Lit-man, 1990!. Under these conditions, dyads that



have not effectively negotiated the affect reg-ulation challenges of infancy may be particu-larly susceptible to affect dysregulation in thetoddler and early preschool years. This sus-ceptibility is perhaps especially likely to beexpressed in adverse ecological conditions thatplace additional psychological stresses on fam-ilies, and make it more difficult for mothers tosupport and manage their children’s changingemotional 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 inpoverty 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 forconceptualizing affect regulation in the earlyyears. 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 tooperationalize early affect dysregulation in ex-plicitly dyadic terms and is the largest andmost complex. The findings that dysregu-lated toddlers and preschoolers differ with re-spect to both antecedent and concurrentcorrelates as well as social and cognitive se-quelae several years later confirm the valueof observing and studying early affect regu-lation in a dyadic context. Similarly, thereare implications for predictive relationshipsamong early child, maternal, and environmen-tal characteristics and later developmental out-come. The findings of the current studysuggest that it is perhaps not so much childor even maternal affective characteristics thatare most predictive, but relationship qualitiesto which both partners contribute and whichare best captured at the dyadic level. By ob-serving child affect with the mother in un-demanding play settings and more demandingcompliance settings, we have gained a uniqueperspective on the extent to which the mother–child relationship serves as an effective or anineffective regulator of the child’s negativeemotions across contexts. This account sug-gests that future researchers should focus ondyadic measures of affective dysregulation be-

ginning in infancy, and not on assessments ofinfants 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’saffect dysregulation in a dyadic context, wehave not evaluated mothers’ contributions tothe dyadic interactions. We do not know forwhich dyads the negative affect in interactionwas mutual, thus reflecting a true coercive cy-cle, and for which dyads it was one-sided onthe part of the child only. Thus, we are unableto examine the dyadic processes that contrib-ute to affect dysregulation in mother–child re-lationships or to identify which particularqualities within the dyadic relationship are mostcritical to effective or ineffective affect regu-lation. The finding that affect dysregulation inthe mother–child dyad at 24 months predictedmore broadly to later outcomes than did 36-month affect dysregulation further suggests theneed for research to discern which features ofmother–child interaction at age two are dis-rupted in affectively dysregulated dyads, andhow they differ from disruptions at age 3. Per-haps the requirements for a good fit betweenmother and child vary somewhat at the twoages, so that some dyads are particularly atrisk for dysregulation at particular develop-mental stages.

This study suggests several additional ave-nues for future investigation. First, althoughwe found a significant association betweenaffect-dysregulation at 24 and 36 months, infact most children were classified as affec-tively dysregulated at a single age. Either af-fect dysregulation trajectories are variable orour measurement is still imprecise. We did notfind that using continuous measures of dysreg-ulation made significant differences in our find-ings, but finer grained observations might makea difference. Second, although we assessed af-fect dysregulation in the toddler years, we havenot examined later features of self-regulationsuch as resistance to temptation, delay ofgratification, sustained attention, and affectregulation strategies that emerge during thepreschool years. These may be important me-diators of the longitudinal associations be-tween early affect regulation and later cognitiveand social development. Third, we have pri-



marily considered underregulated rather thanoverregulated emotion. We found few associ-ations between early dysregulation and laterinternalizing behavior, perhaps because we didnot look for early indicators of overregula-tion. It is interesting to speculate that childrenwhose emotions are consistently checked intheir relationships with mothers during the nor-mative emotional upheavals of the toddler yearsmay also be at risk for later deficits in func-tioning, perhaps especially in the socioemo-tional domain.

In conclusion, we are encouraged by theintriguing and important findings of the cur-rent investigation and the potential value ofthe construct of affect dysregulation for un-derstanding associations between emotions inthe parent–child relationship and children’s

social and cognitive development. These dataalso may have implications for prevention andintervention. For example, they suggest theimportance of intervening early in poorly reg-ulated mother–toddler relationships to helpmothers learn to calm and scaffold toddlerswho are upset and difficult to console, and tosupport sensitive responsiveness in mothersof young children who may be at risk forbehavioral or learning problems. Because thesample is being followed into later primarygrades, we will be able to identify longerterm developmental trajectories for childrendysregulated as toddlers and preschoolers,permitting us to determine both how stableand pervasive these effects are, and whetherthey are amplified or reduced by schoolingexperiences.

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