Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

The Development of Emotional and Behavioral Control in Early Childhood:Heterotypic Continuity and Relations to Early School Adjustment

Hyein Chang^1*, Daniel S Shaw² and JeeWon Cheong³

¹Department of Psychology, Sungkyunkwan University, 25-2 Sungkyunkwan-Ro, Jongno-Gu, Seoul, South Korea

²Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh

³Department of HealthBehavior, University of Alabama, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Hyein Chan
Department of Psychology
Sungkyunkwan University
25-2 Sungkyunkwan-Ro, Jongno-Gu
Seoul, South Korea
Tel: 82-2-760-0490
E-mail: hyeinc@gmail.com

Received Date: February 23, 2015; Accepted Date: April 28, 2015; Published Date: May 04, 2015

Citation: Chang H, Shaw DS, Cheong J (2015) The Development of Emotional and Behavioral Control in Early Childhood:Heterotypic Continuity and Relations to Early School Adjustment. J Child Adolesc Behav 3:204. doi:10.4172/2375-4494.1000204

Copyright: © 2015 Chang H, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

We examined heterotypic continuity of emotional and behavioral control (EBC) across early childhood and related early manifestations of EBC to children’s school adjustment in 310 low-income, ethnically diverse boys. Multiple informants and methods were used to measure different indicators of EBC at 18, 24, 42, and 60 months, which were chosen to reflect salient regulatory challenges children face across development. Teachers rated boys’ externalizing and internalizing behaviors, and social skills at 72 months. Results indicated a modest degree of heterotypic continuity of EBC, with different constructs of EBC associated between adjacent time points and, in some instances, across more distant time points. Further, children who had struggled with early EBC demonstrated higher externalizing problems and lower social skills in school. Findings suggest that early deficits in EBC may be a target for early identification and prevention, as they may forecast continued difficulty in later-developing EBC skills and socioemotional problems.

Keywords