longitudinal relations among language skills, anger...

Longitudinal Relations Among Language Skills, Anger Expression, andRegulatory Strategies in Early Childhood

Caroline K. P. Roben, Pamela M. Cole, and Laura Marie ArmstrongThe Pennsylvania State University

Researchers have suggested that as children’s language skill develops in early childhood, it comes to help chil-dren regulate their emotions (Cole, Armstrong, & Pemberton, 2010; Kopp, 1989), but the pathways by whichthis occurs have not been studied empirically. In a longitudinal study of 120 children from 18 to 48 months ofage, associations among child language skill, observed anger expression, and regulatory strategies during adelay task were examined. Toddlers with better language skill, and whose language skill increased more overtime, appeared less angry at 48 months and their anger declined more over time. Two regulatory strategies,support seeking and distraction, explained a portion of the variance in the association between language skilland anger expression after toddlerhood.

Emotion regulation, defined as processes that con-tribute to the monitoring, evaluating, and modifyingof emotional reactions (Thompson, 1994), is broadlyregarded as critical to children’s socioemotional com-petence and mental health. In toddlerhood, quick,intense, and sustained angry reactions are typical oftoddlers’ tantrums (Potegal, Kosorok, & Davidson,1996). However, when preschool and school-age chil-dren have frequent angry reactions that are quick,intense, or sustained, they are viewed as emotionallydysregulated or as having behavior problems (Cole,Zahn-Waxler, & Smith, 1994; Shaw, Bell, & Gilliom,2000). Thus, the transition from toddlerhood to pre-school age in which angry reactions typicallydecrease in frequency, immediacy, duration, andintensity (Bridges, 1932; Cole et al., 2011) can beviewed as crucial to emotional development.

This developmental decline in anger reactivitycoincides with other changes that should contributeto children’s ability to self-regulate. By the 3rd year,children are thought to draw on new cognitive andlinguistic skills to regulate emotions (Kopp, 1989).From this perspective, self-regulation is defined by achild’s ability to initiate regulatory strategies in theabsence of adult instruction (Kopp, 1982). It is com-monly assumed that language development contrib-utes to the development of self-regulation althoughthis premise has not been studied to the degree thatattention control has been. Although there is nooverarching theory that has specified the variedways that language might contribute to self-regula-tion of anger, language skills arguably enhance achild’s ability to express needs with words ratherthan with emotion, to think before acting in a frus-trating situation, and to generate and sustain ideasthat serve attention control (Cole, Armstrong, &Pemberton, 2010). That is, young children whoacquire language quickly and well should be able tothink about rules (“Mommy said wait”), to commu-nicate needs calmly (language mitigates the need toexpress needs nonverbally), and, when needed, tosustain a shift of attention rather than focus onsomething they cannot have (language enriches thecontent of the activities, such as pretend play, thatdistract the child from the desired object or activity).

Present address: Caroline K. P. Roben, Department of Psy-chology, University of Delaware.

Present address: Laura Marie Armstrong, Department of Psy-chiatry and Human Behavior, The Warren Alpert Medical Schoolof Brown University.

This research was supported by the National Institute on Men-tal Health with R01-061388 awarded to the second author, thefirst and third authors’ fellowships on T32-070327 (PI: Pamela M.Cole), and an individual fellowship F31-088015 to the firstauthor, and by the National Institute on Child Health & HumanDevelopment with an individual fellowship F31-063318 to thethird author. We thank Keith Crnic and Clancy Blair for theircontributions to the study and comments on early versions ofthis manuscript. We also thank the many graduate and under-graduate students who contributed to the data collection andreduction, as well as the commitment and contributions of thefamilies that participated.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed toPamela M. Cole, Department of Psychology, The PennsylvaniaState University, 141 Moore Building, University Park, PA 16802.Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].

© 2012 The AuthorsChild Development © 2012 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2013/8403-0011DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12027

Child Development, May/June 2013, Volume 84, Number 3, Pages 891–905

Language develops rapidly between the firstbirthday and preschool age (Gleason, 2005) in par-allel with the normative decline in quick, intense,and prolonged angry reactions and the develop-ment of regulatory strategies. Several lines ofresearch suggest that these two domains are linked.First, child language delays and behavior problems,especially those involving poorly regulated anger,are associated (Baker & Cantwell, 1992; Cohen &Mendez, 2009; Irwin, Carter, & Briggs-Gowan,2002). Second, child use of emotion language pre-dicts their socioemotional competence (e.g., Den-ham et al., 2003; Dunn, Bretherton, & Munn, 1987;Fabes, Eisenberg, Hanish, & Spinrad, 2001). Third,children’s self-directed speech can guide theiractions (Berk, 1992; Luria, 1961; Vygotsky, 1962;Winsler & Naglieri, 2003). Fourth, preschool inter-ventions that teach children to use words to dealwith frustration improve their socioemotional com-petence (Domitrovich, Cortes, & Greenberg, 2007;Izard et al., 2008).

In addition to language skill, a child’s dispositionor temperament is associated with the developmentof emotion regulation. For example, effortful controlor the ability to shift attention and inhibit a prepo-tent response contributes to a child’s ability to mod-ulate negative emotional reactions (Kochanska,Murray, & Harlan, 2000; Rothbart, Ellis, Rueda, &Posner, 2003). Between 24 and 36 months, childrenare first observed to engage in effortful control oftheir behavior when frustrated (e.g., Calkins, Gill,Johnson, & Smith, 1999; Feldman, 2009), albeit withlimited effectiveness (Buss & Goldsmith, 1998).Thus far, effortful control has mainly been attrib-uted to the development of attention control (Gilli-om, Shaw, Beck, Schonberg, & Lukon, 2002; Sethi,Mischel, Aber, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 2000). Forexample, when young children are required to waitfor a reward, those who shift their attention awayfrom the reward and focus on another activityappear less angry than children who do not distractthemselves in this way. This use of distraction isregarded as an important self-regulatory strategyfor decreasing anger expression in a reward-delaysituation (Cole et al., 2011). As effortful control isalso related to a child’s language ability (Blair &Razza, 2007), we controlled for it in this study ofdevelopmental links among children’s languageskills, anger expressions, and strategy use.

Direct evidence for relations among growth inlanguage skills, decline in anger reactivity, andincrease in self-regulatory strategy use is limited.Preschoolers’ verbal skills are related concurrently totheir expressions of positive emotions and their

social competence (Cassidy, Werner, Rourke, Zub-ernis, & Balaraman, 2003). In terms of longitudinalevidence, toddler verbal skills predicted children’sbehavior during a later mental development test(Ayoub, Vallotton, & Mastergeorge, 2011). Vocabu-lary size at age 24 months, above and beyondgeneral cognitive skill, predicted the level and rate ofchange in self-regulation from ages 14 to 36 monthsfor boys and the level at each age for girls (Vallotton& Ayoub, 2011). These findings support the premisethat early language development influences self-regulation, but their assessment of self-regulationwas limited to behavior during the administration ofthe Bayley Scales, a task that is not designed to taxself-regulation specifically. Moreover, the findingsunderscore the need to consider cognitive skill andgender when assessing the relations between lan-guage and self-regulation. To further understandthese relations we chose to examine the degree towhich language skills predicted changes in theimmediacy, intensity, and duration of young chil-dren’s angry reactions, the degree to which changeswere associated with child-initiated regulatory strat-egies, and whether these strategies had a strongerlink to reduced anger at certain ages. In early stagesof language learning, such as first words and vocab-ulary spurt, children may be unable to integrateverbal and emotional expression (Bloom, 1993). Atlater ages, however, we assume that they can morereadily rely on words instead of nonverbalemotional expressions to convey their needs, whichis the premise of several interventions for promotingpreschoolers’ emotional competence (Domitrovichet al., 2007; Izard et al., 2008). Kopp (1989) sug-gested that the ability to draw on language in thetoddler years, the period of heightened anger reac-tivity, should contribute to the decline in angerreactivity because children can draw on languageskills to regulate anger. Conversely, children whoexpress less anger as toddlers may receive morelanguage input because they are easier conversationpartners for parents (Stern, 1985). Linking languagedevelopment to emotional development in thesevarious ways is consistent with the growing under-standing of the development of the brain’s role inthe integration of domains of psychological function-ing (Gunnar & Quevedo, 2007; Johnson & Munakata,2005).

In sum, in addition to appreciating the impor-tance of effortful control to the development of self-regulation, it is necessary to test the premise that achild’s language ability, conceptualized either as anindividual difference or in terms of intraindividualgrowth, contributes to the development of anger

892 Roben, Cole, and Armstrong

regulation in early childhood. The purpose of thisstudy was to investigate the contributions of earlylanguage development, over and above effortfulcontrol, gender, and intellectual ability in predicting(a) the normative decline in anger expressions and(b) the use of regulatory strategies (child-initiatedsupport seeking and distractions).

On the basis of the framework described by Coleet al. (2010), we predicted that (a) better languageskills and language skills that increase at a greaterrate over time would predict a developmentaldecrease in anger expressions, (b) better languageskills would predict use of support seeking tomother because language allows children to specifyneeds through words rather than affect, (c) betterlanguage skills would predict quicker and longerdistractions because language should enrich thefocus of redirected attention, and (d) toddler-agelanguage skills should have a prospective ratherthan concurrent influence on anger regulationbecause the influence of language should occur oncechildren’s language development is more establishedin early preschool, rather than in early languagelearning. This study tested the prediction thatlanguage status influenced developmental changesin anger expressions between ages 24 and 48 monthsduring a situation designed to frustrate young chil-dren, and that this relation was at least partlyexplained by the quality of young children’s regula-tory strategies.

Method

Participants

A multistage strategy was used to recruit ruraland semirural families whose incomes were belowthe national median income but above the nationalpoverty threshold. This strategy allowed variationin income, which is associated with socioeconomicstatus (Hart & Risley, 1995), without the manyconfounding influences of poverty or above aver-age economic advantage. In addition to publicadvertisements in targeted census tracts, letterswere sent to families in those communities withchildren in the recruitment age, identified throughbirth announcements.

The aim of recruitment was to enroll 125 familiesbased on power analysis. Using this recruitmentstrategy, 128 families enrolled; 124 were income eli-gible at Time 1 when the child was 18 months old.At 48 months, 120 families remained enrolled (65boys), a retention rate of 96.8% that we attribute toour efforts and to the values of the participating

families. Withdrawn families did not differ fromthose who completed on any demographic charac-teristic. Children were seen within 2 weeks of theirhalf or full birthday at four age points; Mage inmonths at each time were 18.44 (SD = 0.57), 24.39(SD = 1.30), 36.44 (SD = 0.80), and 48.33 (SD = 0.67)months. Most (93.3%) children were identified asWhite by their mothers; 6.7% were biracial. Includ-ing all sources of income, the average householdannual income when the child was age 18 monthswas $40,502.94 (SD = 14,480.73).

Procedures

Observations and questionnaires were conductedat four home visits (at child ages 18, 30, 36, and42 months) and four lab visits (18, 24, 36, and48 months). Each lab visit varied somewhat due tochild age but always included an alternating seriesof tasks to elicit anger (Cole, Teti, & Zahn-Waxler,2003; Goldsmith, Reilly, Lemery, Longley, & Pres-cott, 1993) and standard relief tasks such as freeplay. Only the lab task used to assess child angerand child-initiated regulatory strategies is describedin detail. Home observations were 90–120 min vis-its, conducted by trained research assistants, andscheduled for a time when most family memberswould be present and they were encouraged to doas they would normally. Observers limited theirinteractions with family members and no specificinstructions that constrained family interactions andactivities were given. Video recording was not usedbased on prior experience that cameras distractedtoddlers from their normal routines more thanobservers did.

Speech sample collection. The home observerused a digital audio recorder to record naturallyoccurring speech samples. In addition, the obser-ver conducted four 10-min observations of familyinteraction; the ratings from these observationswere not included in this study. The audio-recorded speech samples were subsequently tran-scribed by trained research assistants using theCHILDES system (MacWhinney, 2000). To derivescores for these speech samples, two or more10-min epochs were transcribed to reach 50 childutterances per epoch. A graduate student trainedin CLAN supervised transcription and checked100% of the narratives for formatting accuracyand 20% for content accuracy.

Anger expression and regulatory strategies. Childanger expressions and regulatory strategies wereobserved during a boring 8-min wait, often usedto observe child self-regulation (Dennis, 2006;

Language and Anger Expression 893

Kochanska, Murray, Jacques, Koenig, & Vandegeest,1996). Each mother was instructed to tell her childthat the child must wait to open a gift until shefinished her work (adapted from Vaughn, Kopp, &Krakow, 1984). Waiting is frustrating for typicalchildren in the ages studied (e.g., Cole et al., 2003;Cole et al., 2011). The task was administered in thefollowing manner at each age point. First, motherswere briefed in advance to avoid mothers laughingand in that way inadvertently inserting humor intoa frustrating situation for the child. First, the RAgave the mother “work” (questionnaires) and thechild a boring toy: a flat rubber “lilypad” (18 months),one of a pair of cloth cymbals (24 months), a smalltoy car with missing wheels (36 months), and a toyhorse with missing legs (48 months). Then the RAplaced a shiny gift-wrapped bag, tied tightly with aribbon, on the child’s table, saying “This is a sur-prise for you.” As the RA left, the mother told thechild to wait until she finished her work to openthe gift. After 8 min, the RA returned and themother let the child open the gift.

Coding Systems

Two independent coding systems generateddata for this study. The first system involved atime-sensitive assessment of emotion expressions.The second system involved an independent buttime-linked assessment of several behaviors,including regulatory strategies. For each system, adifferent coding team was trained to 80% accuracywith master coders; once trained, 15% of caseswere checked for reliability at random times.

Anger expressions. To determine the total amountof anger displayed and its temporal qualities, wecoded emotion expressions in 15-s epochs in allchallenging tasks. For this study, we only reportdata from the boring wait. At 8 min long, it pro-vides a lengthier behavioral record than the othertasks. In addition, it was the only task that wasused at all four ages. The focus of this study wason anger, but we also recorded neutral, nonangryperiods in which the child was either happy or neu-tral. Each emotion was coded in terms of its pres-ence and intensity (except neutral) in each 15-sepoch. We inferred emotion expressions from facial(brow and mouth movements), vocal, and selectpostural or gestural cues (Cole et al., 1994). Forexample, anger was coded if the brow was fur-rowed, the jaw clenched or set, lips were pressed,vocalizations conveyed protest, irritation, or fussi-ness, and the body appeared restless, squirmy, withagitated arm and leg movements. Across ages, the

average j for emotion = .88 (range = .81–.94). Foranalyses, we created the following variables foranger: average intensity of bout of anger, latency tofirst bout, and average bout duration. The numberof anger bouts at each age were 3.50 (SD = 1.91),3.13 (SD = 2.20), and 1.68 (SD = 1.95) at 24, 36, and48 months, respectively. More details about thedevelopmental changes in anger are included inanother article (Cole et al., 2011), but the numberssuggest that children were frustrated by this task atall ages and that changes in this expression of angerover time in response to the boring wait warrantsinvestigation.

Regulatory behavior. In the same 15-s epochs, anindependent team coded 10 child behaviors typi-cally studied in emotion regulation studies. Forthis study, we focused on 2: (a) support-seekingbids to mother about the challenge (e.g., “Mom,are you almost done?” or “I wonder what’s in it”),and (b) distraction, which was further distin-guished as either (a) focused, that is, child becameabsorbed in alternative activity (e.g., making sillyfaces in the one-way mirror) or (b) unfocused, thatis, child diverted attention from focus on challengebut did not become absorbed in an alternativeactivity. Each behavior was classified as child initi-ated, mother initiated (and child complied), ordisruptive. For this study, only nondisruptive,child-initiated behaviors were examined. In addi-tion, we only included calm support seeking tomother about the challenge because these bidswere not disruptive and could arguably beregarded as appropriate regulatory strategies(Gilliom et al., 2002). The average kappa acrossages was j = .82 (range = .73–.91.). We analyzedtotal time, bout frequency, latency to first bout,and average bout duration for each code. For theseanalyses, latency to the first and duration of sup-port seeking and latency and duration of focuseddistractions were included.

Language

Spontaneous sampling procedures. Linguistic com-plexity was assessed using spontaneous samplingprocedures (e.g., Miller, 1981), which capturedunconstrained speech during natural interactionsbetween parent and child in the home or during theunstructured free play, reading task, and clean-uptask in the laboratory. The index of linguistic com-plexity derived from transcriptions of this naturalspeech was the mean length of utterance (MLU). TheMLU is a measure of syntactic complexity, first intro-duced by Brown (1973), and is computed as the


average number of morphemes in a child’s utter-ances. Morphemes include each word in the sentence(including repetitions), as well as affixes or grammat-ical inflections such as un-, -s, -ed. Each morphemerepresents linguistic knowledge, and thus childrenwith similar number of morphemes per utterance arethought to have language at the same level of com-plexity or maturity (Gleason, 2005). MLU begins tolose value as an index of language development ataround the fourth year and thus is not used as anindex of complexity after 36 months of age.

Speech samples were transcribed from home vis-its when the child was 18 months and 30 months ofage and in the lab when the child was 24 and36 months. Previous research has shown MLU to bereliable across home and laboratory settings at24 months (Bornstein, Haynes, Painter, & Genevro,2000). Moreover, for the sample being used in thisstudy, MLU was reliable across settings, as evi-denced by a significant relation between the 30-month home visit and 36-month lab visit, suggestingthat MLU is related across setting and time for theseages, r(99) = .52, p < .001. The MLU for each childwas calculated using CLAN, a language analysissoftware package (MacWhinney, 2000).

Laboratory Tasks Assessing Language

MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory(MCDI). The MCDI—Words and Gestures (Fensonet al., 1993) was administered at 18 months. TheMCDI is an 889-item form on which mothers indi-cate how many gestures, words, and phrases thechild understands and uses. Although the childrenwere 18 months of age, the Words and Gesturesform, which is normed up to 16 months of age,was used. We used this form of the MCDI becausethe version for older children was normed onchildren from advantaged households, unlike thechildren from homes that are economically strained.Because the MCDI—Words and Gestures wasnot normed for 18-month-olds, only the raw scoresfor words understood and words produced wereused in the analysis (alphas of .95 and .96, respec-tively).

Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals 3(CELF–3). The Sentence Structure Standard Scorefrom the CELF–3 (Semel, Wing, & Secord, 1995)was administered at the 36-month lab visit.

TOLD–P:3. The Sentence Imitation and Gram-matical Understanding Scores from the Test ofLanguage Development–Primary Third Edition(TOLD–P:3; Newcomer & Hammill, 1997) wasadministered at the 48-month lab visit.

Covariates

Child gender. Boys were coded as 0 and girls as 1.Effortful control. Child temperament was assessed

annually by mother report. For this study, theToddler Behavior Questionnaire (TBAQ–R; Gold-smith, 1996) Effortful Control scale, defined by 5 ofthe TBAQ–R’s 14 subscales, was used. The EffortfulControl scale comprises inhibitory control, attentionshifting, low-intensity pleasure, perceptual sensitiv-ity, and attention focusing, but preliminary analy-sis for this sample indicated that perceptualsensitivity and low-intensity pleasure had inade-quate internal consistencies. We removed them anduse an Effortful Control scale with Cronbach’s alphaof 0.82.

Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence(WPPSI) Performance IQ. Children’s intellectualstatus was assessed at 36 and 48 months duringlaboratory visits with the WPPSI–III (Wechsler,2002). The Performance IQ (Block Design and ObjectAssembly subtests), a composite of 36 and 48 months(r = .44, p < .01), was used as an index of generalintellectual functioning to avoid shared variancebetween language skills and Verbal IQ. The correla-tions of Performance IQ and Full Scale IQ for thesample were 0.87 at 36 months and 0.80 at48 months.

Income-to-needs ratio (INR). The INR is an indexof household income relative to national norms. Amiddle-income family has an INR of 3.0, and by defi-nition, an INR of 1.0 indicates that the householdincome represents poverty. The mean INR was 2.37(SD = 0.94), indicating households ranged betweenpoverty and middle income.

Results

Descriptive Data and Overview of Analyses

The means and standard deviations for variablesused in data analyses are presented in Tables 1(language status indices) and 2 (anger expression,support seeking, and distraction). Log transforma-tions were used to improve skewed distributions ofanger expression and regulatory behaviors. Descrip-tive statistics and zero-order correlations were con-ducted in SPSS 18.0 (IBM Software, Armonk, NY).

To examine how levels and change in lan-guage skill influenced levels and change in angerexpression, linear growth of each construct wasmodeled using LISREL 8.80 (Jöreskog & Sörbom,1996). Structural equation models were executedwith covariance matrices of observed variables,


using THEIL (Molenaar, 1996), a FORTRANprogram for robust covariance matrix estimation.It improves the condition of a covariance matrixand handles missing data using the maximumlikelihood estimate while leaving its underlyingstructure intact.

Analyses first examined whether (a) the initiallevel and change of language skill influences theend level and change of anger expression (seeFigure 1), or (b) the initial level and change ofanger expression influences the end level andchange of language skill. In the presence of signifi-cant associations, we next tested whether the path-ways could be partially associated with supportseeking and focused distractions. To understand atwhat time the strategies most mattered, we lookedat each assessment as an independent predictor(see Figure 2). In all models, child gender, childeffortful control, child Performance IQ, and INRwere included as covariates. Covariates wereentered into the model as predictors of both pre-dictor and outcome initial level and growth vari-ables. Nonsignificant covariates were systematicallyremoved to improve power, whereas marginal andsignificant covariates were included in the finalmodel.

Model Fit

Model fit was assessed using the root mean squareerror of approximation (RMSEA), the comparative fitindex (CFI), and the normal theory weighted leastsquares chi-square (v2). The RMSEA index includesadjustments for model complexity and is less influ-enced by the number of parameters in the modelthan other indicators of fit. The CFI compares thecovariance matrices predicted by the model to theobserved covariance matrix, and compares the nullmodel with the observed covariance matrix. LikeRMSEA, CFI is among the measures least affected bysample size (Fan, Thompson, & Wang, 1999). ForRMSEA, a value less than .05 is considered a goodfit, and below .08 an adequate fit (Kline, 2004). Byconvention, the CFI should be equal to or greaterthan .90 to accept the model. Chi-square is influencedby sample size and indicates good fit when p > .05.

Composites

Associations between growth models for bothchild language skill and anger expression were

Table 1Minimums, Maximums, Means, and Standard Deviations for Lan-guage Variables

Min. Max. M SD

Toddler age18m Home Visit MLU 1.00 2.25 1.43 0.2918m MCDIVocabularyComprehension

14.00 396.00 242.19 89.75

18m MCDIVocabulary Production

0.00 323.00 75.01 71.79

24m Lab Visit MLU 1.00 2.98 1.45 0.38Early Preschool age30m Home Visit MLU 1.02 3.29 1.84 0.4736m Lab Visit MLU 1.20 3.78 2.35 0.5536m CELF-3Sentence Structure

0.00 19.00 9.38 3.45

Preschool ageTOLD-P:3 GrammaticalUnderstanding

4.00 15.00 9.64 2.43

TOLD-P:3 SentenceImitation

5.00 16.00 9.05 3.07

Note. m = month; MLU = mean length utterance; MCDI =MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory; CELF–3 =Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals 3; TOLD–P:3 = Testof Language Development–Primary Third Edition.

Table 2Means and Standard Deviations for Temporal Dynamics of AngerExpression and Regulatory Strategies

Age in months

24 36 48

Anger expressionLatency to 1st boutM 4.11 10.38 18.04SD 7.51 11.47 12.56

Average intensityM 2.22 1.53 0.94SD 0.78 0.92 0.85

Average lengthM 6.01 1.87 1.21SD 8.36 1.91 1.47

Support seekingLatency to 1st boutM 15.90 5.31 3.73SD 12.87 8.50 8.51


Focused distractionsLatency to 1st boutM 10.34 7.25 3.23SD 10.23 8.32 4.82



examined using composites of each construct createdat three ages: 24, 36, and 48 months. Variables in theLanguage Skill composite changed across ages toreflect important elements of developmental changein language skills (vocabulary size, MLU, receptiveand expressive grammatical understanding). Thetoddler-age Language composite included vocabu-lary size (receptive and expressive based on theMCDI) at 18 months and natural speech MLU at 18and 24 months, and the early preschool-age compos-ite included natural speech MLU at 30 and36 months and receptive grammar at 36 months. Werefer to these as 24- and 36-month composites for

ease of reading. We took this approach to generate arobust index of child language skill at each age forthat 6-month period. This avoided basing estimatesof language skill on a single index, especially onesuch as MLU, which could vary across child moodand situational context. Finally, at 48 months, pre-school age, we used a developmentally appropriatetest of receptive and expressive language, the TOLDGrammatical Understanding and Sentence Imitationsubtests. MLU is a less sensitive index of languageskill by this age. Anger Expression compositesincluded latency to the first bout, duration, andintensity of anger expressions at each age.

Figure 1. Example full model of language initial level and slope predicting anger end level and slope.Note. Circles represent latent variables and squares represent manifest variables. Numbers on the unidirectional arrows from latent vari-ables to manifest variables indicate loadings in the lambda matrix for the creation of linear growth models.

Figure 2. Example full model of language initial level and slope predicting strategies at all three ages, which in turn predict anger endlevel and slope.Note. Bidirectional arrows between latent language and anger levels and manifest strategy variables represent correlations between vari-ables measured at the same assessment. Unidirectional arrows among latent language variables, strategy variables, and latent angervariables represent predictions. Note that there was no unidirectional or bidirectional association tested between 48mo strategy andanger slope, because a later event cannot predict or be correlated with change preceding it in time.


Composites were created by standardizing eachmeasure into a Z score and then summing thestandardized variables. Language measures weregenerally moderately correlated at each age(24 months, rs = .06–.58; 36 months, rs = .12–.53;and 48 months, r = .31; see Table 3). Not unexpect-edly, standardized measures were more highlycorrelated with other standardized measures thanwith MLU. The lowest correlations were betweenthose measures without shared method variance.We hope that by including both types of measures,we are including the most accurate picture of chil-dren’s language skill as possible and includingseveral different constructs within language devel-opment. Anger expression variables were signifi-cantly correlated with each other at each age(24 months, rs = .39–.67; 36 months, rs = .57–.86;and 48 months, rs = .61–.92).

Initial Level and Change in Language Skill PredictingEnd Level and Change in Anger Expression

In this model, the initial level at 24 months andchange in language skill from 24 to 48 months weretested as predictors of the end level at 48 monthsand change in anger expression. Growth models oflanguage skill and anger expression each indicatedthat variance estimates of level and slope were sig-nificant (p < .05). After first testing the model withall possible paths (Figure 1), nonsignificant pathswere systematically removed. The trimmed modeland its standardized betas are presented in Fig-ure 3. Please note that although some standardizedbetas are larger than 1, this does not indicate anerror. Unlike in classical exploratory factor analysiswhere factors are standardized and uncorrelated, ifthe factors are correlated, the factor loadings are

Table 3Zero-Order Correlations Among Variables in the Language Composites

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. 18m MLU —

2. 18m MCDI Comprehension .06 —

3. 18m MCDI Production .19 .58** —

4. 24m MLU .29** .32** .51** —

5. 30m MLU .29** .24* .42** .53** —

6. 36m MLU .22* .16 .26** .40** .53** —

7. 36m CELF .12 .22* .33** .10 .20 .12 —

8. 48m TOLD Grammatical Understanding .12 .17 .25** .25** .13 .11 .23* —

9. 48m TOLD Sentence Imitation .11 .23* .39** .26** .41** .33** .38** .31**

Note. m = month; MLU = mean length utterance; MCDI = MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory; CELF = Clinical Evalua-tion of Language Fundamentals; TOLD = Test of Language Development.*p < .05. **p < .01.

Figure 3. Trimmed model of language skill predicting anger expression.Note. For clarity, covariates are not pictured.*p < .05.


regression coefficients and not correlations and canbe larger than 1 in magnitude (Jöreskog, 1999). Itmay indicate a degree of multicollinearity in thedata, which would not be unexpected in this modelwhere we have related constructs of both initiallevel and growth all in one model. The testedmodel was an excellent fit by all measures,RMSEA = .0, CFI = 1.0, v2(26) = 25.07, p > .05. Lan-guage Skill initial level predicted Anger Expressionend level (b = �.72, p < .05) and change in AngerExpression over time (b = �1.02, p < .05). LanguageSkill change over time predicted Anger Expressionend level (b = �.80, p < .05) and change in AngerExpression over time (b = �1.29, p < .05). LanguageSkill level and slope were negatively correlated(r = �.63, p < .05), and the relation between AngerExpression level and slope was not significant.

Initial Level and Change in Anger ExpressionPredicting End Level and Change in Language Skill

To determine whether an alternative path betweenearly language skills and change in anger expressioncould be shown, that is, early anger expression pre-dicting language skills, a reverse model was built.The initial level at 24 months and change in AngerExpression from 24 to 48 months were tested as pre-dictors of the end level at 48 months and change inLanguage Skill. The trimmed model was an excellentfit (see Figure 4), RMSEA = .0044, CFI = 0.99,v2(28) = 28.06, p > .05. However the reverse pathsdid not reach the p < .05 level of significance. Therewere trends for Anger Expression change over timeto predict to both Language Skill end level (b = �.42,p < .10) and change in Language Skill over time

(b = �.45, p < .10). Neither Language Skill level andslope nor Anger Expression level and slope were sig-nificantly correlated. Therefore, we concluded thatlanguage skill was a stronger predictor of angerexpression across toddlerhood than was the reversehypothesis. Our next steps were to examine whethereach of two specific regulatory strategies—supportseeking and distraction—could contribute to thepathway between language and the decline in angerexpression.

Support Seeking as a Factor in the Path BetweenLanguage Skill and Anger Expression

The latency to and duration of support seeking tomother adequately loaded as a single latent SupportSeeking factor, which was used at each age (rangeof loadings = �.46–1.0, all significant). After firsttesting the model with all possible paths (as seen inFigure 2), nonsignificant paths were systematicallyremoved. The trimmed model is presented withstandardized betas (Figure 5) and was an adequatefit by most measures, RMSEA = .05, CFI = 0.93,v2(94) = 122.30, p = .027. There was moderate stabil-ity in Support Seeking across time (bs = .29 and .25,respectively, both ps < .05). A steeper increase inLanguage Skill across time was associated withquicker and longer Support Seeking to mother at36 months. Support Seeking at 24 months was asso-ciated with an increase in Anger Expression acrosstoddlerhood (b = .32, p < .05), but Support Seekingat 36 months was associated with a lower end levelof Anger Expression (b = �.72, p < .05) and adecrease in Anger Expression across time (b = �.97,p < .05).

Figure 4. Trimmed model of anger expression predicting language skill.Note. Dashed lines indicate marginal findings where p < .10. For clarity, covariates are not pictured.


Distraction as a Factor in the Path Between LanguageSkill and Anger Expression

Latency to and average duration of distractionsdid not load as a single latent factor. Althoughbeing able to quickly distract in the context of wait-ing is important (Cole et al., 2011), the longer achild can sustain a distraction the less likely thechild will become frustrated again. Therefore, weused distraction duration in this model.

The trimmed model was an adequate fit by mostmeasures (Figure 6), RMSEA = .07; CFI = 0.90,

v2(51) = 78.40, p = .0081. Higher initial levels ofLanguage Skill were associated with longer distrac-tions at 36 months (b = .69, p < .05), as was steeperincrease in slope in Language Skill (b = .98,p < .05). Steeper increase in Language Skill slopewas also marginally associated with longer distrac-tions at 24 months (b = .21, p < .10), and signifi-cantly associated with longer durations at 48 months(b = .76, p < .05), as was marginally the initial levelof language (b = .40, p < .10). Longer distractions at24 months were associated with a steeper increasein Anger Expression over time (b = .75, p < .05).

Figure 5. Trimmed model for language skill, support seeking, and anger expression.Note. Covariates and manifest variables that create the latent support seeking factor (latency to first bout of support seeking and aver-age length of support seeking) are not pictured for clarity.*p < .05.

Figure 6. Trimmed model for language skill, distraction, and anger expression.Note. Dashed lines indicate marginal findings where p < .10. For clarity, covariates are not pictured.*p < .05.


However, by 48 months, distraction duration wasnegatively correlated with the end level of AngerExpression (r = �.27, p < .05).

Discussion

Children’s growth in language development shouldcontribute to the decline in anger expression in earlychildhood and enhance the strategies they can initi-ate to regulate frustration (Cole et al., 2010; Kopp,1989). These findings are the first to examine pro-spective associations among children’s languageskills, the quality of child anger expression, andchild-initiated regulatory strategy use. Specifically,individual differences in language skill in thetoddler years (18–24 months), as well as a child’slanguage growth, were associated with less quick,intense, and sustained anger by preschool age andwith a decline in anger over time. In addition, therate of language growth contributed to better angerregulation. Children whose language skills increasedmore than other children’s appeared less frustratedby a delay for a reward by preschool age, and thenature of their anger expressions improved moreover time. Moreover, these relations between lan-guage skill and anger expression were partiallyexplained by children’s initiation of regulatory strat-egies. Language skills were associated with initia-tion of calm support seeking at 36 months of ageand of distraction at 48 months of age, both ofwhich were associated with less angry expressionsby preschool age.

The findings support the view that languageskills in toddlerhood could help children regulatetheir emotion as they reach preschool age (Kopp,1989), and lead to new questions about the specificways that these skills may influence the decline inanger reactivity. Understanding the timing and roleof language skill and specific regulatory strategiescould better inform the creation of developmentallytailored interventions for emotion regulation diffi-culties. The present evidence is consistent with theview that the child who has a vocabulary fromwhich to draw, and the ability to put wordstogether to communicate, may learn to regulateanger well because they can verbalize their needswithout expressing frustration nonverbally duringearly childhood (Cole et al., 2010; Vallotton &Ayoub, 2011). Moreover, the steeper the child’s lan-guage growth across early childhood the sooner thechild may be able to reflect on and understandemotional experience and to share meaning withcaregivers (Cole et al., 2010; Prizant & Wetherby,

1990; Stern, 1985). Thus, it appeared that early lan-guage abilities increased the likelihood that thechild would calmly seek support from mother,during an age when support seeking appears to bea bridge between complete reliance on parents forregulating negative affect and more self-reliance(Kopp, 1989).

By 48 months, children seem to rely less on theirmothers for support and more on themselves, andthis too may be helped by a child’s languagedevelopment. The fact that toddler language con-tributed to the duration of child-initiated distrac-tions at 48 months, and not at earlier ages whenchildren are more reliant on their parents for regu-lation (Grolnick, Bridges, & Connell, 1996), supportsthe view that a fund of words and the ability toput words together to generate ideas helps childrendistract themselves from something they want butmust wait to have. Possibly, a verbally rich innerlife enriches the degree to which children becomeabsorbed in new activities when they shift attentionaway from the thing they desire (Cole et al., 2010).Although these analyses did not reveal the qualita-tive aspects of how children used words to distractthemselves, we can perhaps gain more insightusing an anecdotal example taken from a 48-month-old during the Wait Task. After approxi-mately 3 min of waiting, he began to expressfrustration. Then he started pushing chairs aroundthe table, but this only briefly interrupted his frus-tration. He began to count the chairs next, sooncounting more generally. “I counted!” he said. Thenhe turned attention back to the gift, “Now can Iopen my prize?” When told no, he resumed count-ing, up to 38, until he said, “I can’t count anymore.I need my prize.” This child was able to distracthimself for a full minute, longer than the averageduration of toddlers in this task, which is less than30 s. The longer duration of distraction may beaided by the ability to verbally elaborate the activ-ity of counting. Thus, it is possible that childrenwith early verbal skills may have more opportuni-ties to learn how to use language in this way, suchthat his ability to shift attention is sustained by hisability to use language while distracted.

An alternative hypothesis to language develop-ment influencing emotional development is thatearly individual differences in anger expressioninfluence the development of language skills(Bloom, 1993). Trend level associations between thedegree of decline in anger and subsequent languageskill suggested that being high in anger reactivitymay interfere with language acquisition beyondfirst words and vocabulary spurt (Bloom, 1993).


Greater anger may interfere with interactions orrelationships between caregivers and children, lim-iting language learning experiences (e.g., Claussen,Mundy, Mallik, & Willoughby, 2002). Poorly regu-lated anger may also compromise higher order cog-nitive and linguistic processing, recruiting resourcesneeded for different stages of language learning(Blair, 2002; Bloom, 1993). However, in this study,associations between early anger and later languageskills were not as strong as prospective relationsbetween early language ability and a decline inanger reactivity. These findings and studies of con-current relations between emotion regulation andlanguage skill (Graziano, Reavis, Keane, & Calkins,2007; Stansbury & Zimmerman, 1999) underscorethe need to more closely examine reciprocal rela-tions between language and emotional develop-ment in early childhood.

It is notable that regulatory strategies did not con-tribute to the associations between language skill andanger expression at all ages. The steeper the children’sgrowth in language, the more they sought supportfrom their mothers at 36 months, which then contrib-uted to a steeper decline in anger reactivity and lessexpressed anger by age 48 months. In this study,mothers were instructed to do as they normally didwhen requiring their children to wait. Mothers tendedto become absorbed in completing questionnaires andtypically ignored children’s bids about the demandsof the wait. They may have thought that attending tothe child would make it more difficult to complete thework or for the child to tolerate the wait. When theydid interact with the child, mothers usually remindedthe child to wait. For toddlers, this may render sup-port seeking ineffective in reducing anger. However,as children mature, support seeking may change, sup-ported by better established language skills and cogni-tive skills such as working memory (Wolfe & Bell,2007). Indeed, children’s bids for support with thechallenge become calmer and less angry by age36 months, suggesting change in how bids function(Cole et al., 2011). Parent-focused interventions coulduse this line of study to better inform suggested strate-gies for parents’ of toddlers and children who strugglewith challenging situations like waiting.

Similarly, toddler language skill predicted theduration of children’s distractions at both 36 and48 months. Moreover, distraction duration wasassociated with less anger expression only at48 months, perhaps because at this age children’sdistractions were becoming more effective. Thisrelation was found over and above the influencesof effortful control, suggesting both language andeffortful control contribute to a child’s ability to

exert attention control during a delay task. Lan-guage skills and attention control both develop inthis age period (Rueda, Acosta, & Santonja, 2007;Ruff & Rothbart, 1996) and are related to each other(Blair & Razza, 2007). Language may facilitate dis-traction as an emotion regulation strategy only afterexecutive attention has matured, which may explainwhy infant and toddler regulatory efforts are lim-ited in effectiveness (Buss & Goldsmith, 1998; Stifter& Braungart, 1995) and more dependent uponmaternal warmth and responsiveness (Graziano,Calkins, & Keane, 2011). Future research shouldinvestigate both of these skill domains, includingmore direct assessment of executive function, howthey influence one another over time, and how theycontribute, uniquely or conjointly, to better angerregulation skills. Carefully planned interventionstudies could play a key role in delineating the lon-gitudinal influences of one domain on another.

Given the present findings, the next step is toinvestigate the specific aspects of language develop-ment that contribute to emotion regulation. Vocabu-lary size, rather than talkativeness, predictedquality of self-regulation in one study (Valloton &Ayoub, 2011). Such work must grapple with thechallenge of using developmentally sensitive mea-sures across a period of rapid language growth. Asingle index, for example, MLU, may be more sen-sitive at early ages but less so at later ages. Weused both naturalistic and standardized assess-ments appropriate to each child age as a robustmethod of assessing individual differences in lan-guage over time, which yielded stability in lan-guage level. However, this approach impeded ourability to determine which specific aspects of lan-guage (e.g., grammatical understanding, receptivevs. expressive skill) contribute at which ages.Understanding the specific aspects of language thataid anger regulation would contribute to both basicand applied research. Furthermore, disentanglingthe associations between language, attention, inhibi-tory control (Carlson & Wang, 2007), and tempera-mental factors such as effortful control will beimportant for creating effective intervention in theseearly years and understanding how these processeswork together. Our measure of effortful control islimited in that it is a parent-rated questionnaire,and future work could use multiple measuresacross domains to create more robust comparisons.

Because we studied a group of children who areunder represented in the literature—children whosefamily income was above the poverty threshold butless than middle income—the generality of the find-ings is not known. We focused on families with


economic strain to capture variability that is associ-ated with income, but in a range of income that isnot correlated with the significant advantages ofwealth and profound disadvantages of poverty (Hart& Risley, 1995). Studies that embrace the full diver-sity of conditions in which children’s language andemotion regulation develop are critically needed.

We did not investigate mothers’ contributions tochild emotion regulation and language developmentin this study given our focus on self-regulation andthe child’s ability to initiate and maintain regulatorystrategies. Hart and Risley (1995) noted that care-giver responsiveness to young children’s verbal bidsdeclined rapidly once children acquired language;the modal caregiver response to child bids by36 months was ignoring. However, a large literatureon the role of emotion discourse and parental sensi-tivity underscores the need to understand the roleof caregivers in relations among language skills,anger regulation, and strategy use in early child-hood. Further research about parental input in thisprocess as well as additional “third variables” willfurther determine the extent and process of how lan-guage influences emotion regulation development.This study establishes longitudinal relations amonglanguage development, anger expression, and regu-latory strategy use that can guide future studies thatexamine caregiver contributions.

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