1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«The present study was designed to examine the development of emotion regulation behaviours across infancy and into toddlerhood.» (p. 23) «The first objective was to examine age-related changes in the use of self-, mother-, and environment-reliant regulation behaviours through infancy and into toddlerhood.» (p. 9) «The second objective was to identify the individual stability and trajectories of emotion regulation behaviours across early development. [...] The third objective was to extend previous findings on the effects of interaction context on emotion regulation behaviours across the first 18 months of life. […] The final objective was to examine differences in regulation strategies used by full-term and VLBW [Very-Low-Birthweight]/preterm toddlers.» (p. 10) «By addressing these gaps in the literature, we aimed to provide increased insight into normative early emotion regulation, as well as how this regulation is impacted by developmental changes, contextual factors, and risk to the mother child dyad.» (p. 11)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
A total of 63 «[m]other-infant dyads participated in home visits when infants were 5 ½, 12, and 18 months of age.» (p. 14) These «dyads were recruited using birth records from a major community hospital in Montreal, Quebec.» (p. 12) Les interactions mère-enfant ont été captées et codées par caméra vidéo.

Instruments :
- Questionnaires
- Grille d’observation

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique
Analyse de contenu

3. Résumé

«Firstly, the early development of emotion regulation appears to be characterized by change at both group and individual levels. That is, our findings suggest a lack of both group mean-level continuity and individual-order stability in the use of independent and dyadic emotion regulation strategies from infancy to toddlerhood.» (p. 32-33) «Second, [o]ur findings suggest that from infancy to toddlerhood, children actually use increasing amounts of parent-reliant regulation strategies as they become increasingly adept at social signalling and replace less effective strategies with more effective ones.» (p. 33) «Our results also point to the importance of considering context when examining emotion regulation behaviours. […] Indeed, when parents are available to their infant, these parent-reliant strategies may be more effective and more adaptive than independent strategies […]. Findings from our study suggest that these are used to a greater extent than self- or environment-reliant strategies by both infants and toddlers. […] Finally, our results provide preliminary evidence that, in the absence of medical risk, prematurity may not be as disruptive to the development of emotion regulation as hypothesized, at least in the way it was measured.» (p. 34)