Development
How Preschoolers' Emotions and Thinking Skills Are Linked
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Children's everyday emotional expressions in preschool predict their future self-control and thinking skills months later, revealing a close relationship between emotion and cognition.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Children's emotional expressions and their cognitive self-control are closely interconnected, showing a predictive, bidirectional relationship over time.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Children's everyday emotional expressions in preschool share a bidirectional relationship with their cognitive control, where early emotionality predicts future executive functioning and early self-regulation predicts future emotional expression.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
A child's emotional expressions during preschool can act as a longitudinal predictor of their future cognitive self-control and executive functioning skills months later.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Self-regulation and emotionality show a bidirectional developmental relationship over time, meaning early cognitive control predicts future emotional expression, and early emotionality predicts future cognitive control.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cohort — Fall-to-spring preschool observations of emotionality, attention/inhibition, and teacher-rated EF; PLS models
- N
- N=175 · Children aged 35–60 months from 10 Head Start and private childcare programs in northern Virginia; 36% Head Start
- Population
- US preschoolers in Head Start and private childcare
- Outcome
- Fall emotionality predicting concurrent attention/inhibition and spring teacher-rated EF, and fall self-regulation predicting spring emotionality
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Inspect source passages
How Preschoolers' Emotions and Thinking Skills Are Linked
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
143 children with complete data
Of these, complete data was obtained for 143 (81%) children.
6 months between assessments
Children were assessed in the fall and ~6 months later in the spring.
Key findings
The study found that a child's emotional expression in the fall significantly predicted their observed attention and inhibition during the same period, as well as their teacher-rated executive function in the spring. Similarly, the children's observed self-regulation in the fall predicted their observed emotional expressions in the spring. These findings indicate that emotionality and cognitive self-control are closely linked and influence each other over time.
Methodology
The researchers monitored 143 young children over a span of approximately 6 months from fall to spring. To measure emotionality, observers recorded children's behavior during four separate 5-minute sessions each season. Finally, researchers rated the children's self-control during assessments, and teachers completed a 63-item rating scale in the spring to evaluate overall cognitive control.
Limitations
The study's statistical model could not test for bidirectional influences within a single time point, meaning it cannot prove whether emotionality directly causes cognitive changes or vice-versa at any given moment. Additionally, because the researchers gathered all data within a school setting and did not collect ratings from parents, the findings might not generalize to how children behave at home. Finally, the authors could not rule out the influence of unmeasured confounding variables, such as a child's underlying temperament or family socioeconomic status.
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