Self-Regulation, Language Skills, and Emotion Knowledge in Young Children From Northern Germany

Research Findings: In order to examine the explanatory power of behavioral self-regulation in the domain of emotion knowledge, especially in a non-U.S. culture, 365 German 4- and 5-year-olds were individually tested on these constructs. Path analyses revealed that children’s behavioral self-regulation explained their emotion knowledge in the context of the less instructionally oriented German kindergarten, much like in the United States. In addition, behavioral self-regulation contributed uniquely to the explanation of German children’s emotion knowledge, even when language skills and a measure of verbal conflict inhibition as known predictors of emotion knowledge were included as covariates. The path model for the 4-year-olds underlined the importance of behavioral self-regulation and showed less integration among verbal conflict inhibition, language skills, and emotion knowledge than that for the 5-year-olds. Practice or Policy: Results underline the importance of self-regulation for young children’s learning about emotions in all cultures, alone and in tandem with receptive language skills and abilities for (verbal) inhibition.