Infant emotion regulation: relations to bedtime emotional availability, attachment security, and temperament

Abstract

The present study examines the influences of mothers' emotional availability toward their infants during bedtime, infant attachment security, and interactions between bedtime parenting and attachment with infant temperamental negative affectivity, on infants' emotion regulation strategy use at 12 and 18 months. Infants' emotion regulation strategies were assessed during a frustration task that required infants to regulate their emotions in the absence of parental support. Whereas emotional availability was not directly related to infants' emotion regulation strategies, infant attachment security had direct relations with infants' orienting toward the environment and tension reduction behaviors. Both maternal emotional availability and security of the mother-infant attachment relationship interacted with infant temperamental negative affectivity to predict two strategies that were less adaptive in regulating frustration.

Keywords: Attachment security; Emotion regulation; Infant temperament; Maternal emotional availability.

Figure 1

Moderation of the relation between maternal bedtime emotional availability and the strategy of looks to mother by infant temperamental negative affectivity at 12 months.

Figure 2

Moderation of the relation between infant attachment security and the probability of avoidance by infant temperamental negative affectivity.