Emotional Reactivity and Attentional Control: Physiological Predictors of Peer Relationships in Kindergarten

Introduction: Children who enter elementary school exhibiting elevated aggression are at increased risk for peer rejection, initiating a negative socialization cascade that often leads to adolescent violence and antisocial behavior. The risk for peer rejection appears greatest for aggressive children who exhibit concurrent deficits in social competence and difficulties regulating emotion and attention.  However, the nature and source of these regulatory deficits are not well understood. Research suggests that heightened emotional reactivity may impede the development of self-regulatory skills, contributing to emotion dysregulation and inattention in the school context, and undermining social competence and peer relations.  For example, children who respond to stress with amplified physiological arousal may more often react aggressively (taking the “fight” rather than “flight” option) than children who are more well-modulated physiologically.  Alternatively (or in addition), children who are cognitively distracted and derailed by goal-blocking frustration may more often turn to aggression to solve problems than children who are able to marshal effortful cognitive resources to cope with goal-blocking frustration.   Because so few studies of young aggressive children have included measures of these biological processes, little is known about whether or which of these processes may be associated with the social behavior and peer difficulties of aggressive children at school entry.    

Methods: In this study, 339 kindergarten children, oversampled for elevated aggression, were recruited for a prevention study targeting early aggression (66% male; 68% African American, 22% Hispanic, 10% Caucasian).  At the pretreatment assessment, teachers rated their emotion regulation skills and attention problems.  Peer sociometric nominations assessed their social competence (friendly, nice), aggression (fights, mean), peer acceptance, and peer rejection.  In addition, physiological measures indexed two biological systems implicated in emotional reactivity: 1) physiological arousal when exposed to a sad emotional video (heart rate, skin conductance), and 2) event related potential (ERP) when exposed to a frustrating change in reward contingencies during a computer game (P300). 

Results: Correlations revealed significant concurrent associations between the biological measures of emotional reactivity, teacher ratings of emotion dysregulation and inattention, and peer nominations of social reputations and peer preference.  Additional SEM analyses will examine associations among latent constructs and determine whether behavioral patterns of emotional dysregulation and inattention mediate the relationship between emotional reactivity and poor peer relations.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that, whereas physiological over-arousal is associated with aggression and peer dislike, weak event related potential during the frustrating task predicts low social competence and peer liking.