The development of strategies that support autonomous self-regulation of emotion is key for early childhood emotion regulation. Children are thought to transition from predominant reliance on more automatic or interpersonal strategies to reliance on more effortful, autonomous strategies as they develop cognitive skills that can be recruited for…

The timing of events (e.g., how long it takes a child to exhibit a particular behavior) is often of interest in developmental science. Multilevel survival analysis (MSA) is useful for examining behavioral timing in observational studies (i.e., video recordings) of children's behavior. We illustrate how MSA can be used to answer 2 types of research…

Researchers have suggested that as children's language skill develops in early childhood, it comes to help children regulate their emotions (Cole, Armstrong, & Pemberton, 2010; Kopp, 1989), but the pathways by which this occurs have not been studied empirically. In a longitudinal study of 120 children from 18 to 48 months of age, associations…

Examined the emotional reactions of toddlers to two mishaps. Children's reactions varied along two dimensions: tension and frustration and concerned reparation. Mishaps elicited more negative emotions than did free play, and most toddlers attempted to correct the mishap. Findings indicate that children's styles of emotional response to mishaps may…