Bidirectionality in behavioral regulation, emotional competence, and expressive vocabulary skills: Moderation by preschool social-emotional programs

The Joint Development of Self-Regulation and Expressive Language in Preschool Classrooms: Preliminary Evidence from a Low-Income Sample

Self-regulation and expressive language are theorized to develop in tandem, shaped by children's social interactions in context, including interactions with teachers and peers in the preschool classroom. In the present study, we examined reciprocal associations between two components of self-regulation (behavior regulation and emotion regulation) and two components of expressive language skills (expressive vocabulary and narrative language) across two time points during the preschool year. We also explored whether individual children's interactions with teachers and peers moderate these associations. Participants were 767 preschool children (49% female; M = 53 months old; 49% Black, 22% White, 13% Hispanic, 14% multiracial/other) from low-income households. A multivariate latent change score model provided evidence that early self-regulation predicts increases in expressive language; fall emotion regulation predicted increases in narrative language and fall behavior regulation predicted increases in expressive vocabulary. Empirical support was also found for early expressive language predicting increases in self-regulation; fall expressive vocabulary predicted increases in behavior regulation. Moderation analysis indicated that some of these associations depended on individual children's interactions with peers, but not with teachers. Results provide preliminary evidence for the joint development of expressive language and self-regulation in early childhood classrooms.

Social emotional ability development (SEAD): An integrated model of practical emotion-based competencies

Social emotional abilities (i.e., specific skills), defined as the set of cognitive abilities, emotion-based knowledge, and behavioral competencies (i.e., skill levels) that facilitate adaptively employing prosocial processes and behaviors (i.e., "actions"), such as emotional regulation and sympathetic and empathetic response behaviors, is contemporarily modeled and measured as emotional intelligence. This conceptualization can be problematic, however, as the two concepts are not the same and traditional methods of measuring emotional intelligence can have limited practical utility. The social emotional ability development (SEAD) theoretical model introduced in this treatise represents a pragmatic and simplified approach to the development of social emotional ability and competency as abstracted from constructs of emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and sociocultural learning theory. Further, the SEAD model reaches beyond the individual as the unit of analysis to explore, conceptualize, differentiate, investigate, and define the hierarchal, bi-directional, and contextual nature of the dimensions of social emotional ability within close relationships. Implications for how the SEAD model can be used by researchers, practitioners, educators, individuals, families, and couples across a broad spectrum of domains and interventions are discussed.