Multimethod Approach in Child Emotion Regulation Research: Examining the Relationship Between the Emotional Go-NoGo Task and the Child's Emotion Regulation Strategies and Behavioral Problems

Recent reviews highlight the need for a multimethod approach to study child emotion regulation owing to the multifaceted nature of the construct. The emotional Go-NoGo task objectively measures the ability to maintain cognitive control in the context of potentially interfering emotional information, which is considered an aspect of emotion regulation. The aim of the study was to examine the associations between child emotion regulation, emotion recognition, and cognitive control measured by the emotional Go-NoGo task, as well as child emotion regulation strategies in addition to behavioral problems as assessed by parent (mostly mother) reports. We tested 58 children aged 6-8 years (M = 80.71 months; SD = 7.99 months) with an emotional Go-NoGo task that consisted of neutral, fearful, and happy facial expressions, to which the children were instructed to respond (Go trials) or withhold their response (NoGo trials). The child's emotion regulation strategies as well as behavioral problems were assessed by parent (mostly mother) reports on a short version of the FEEL-KJ and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), respectively. Linear mixed models revealed that children showed a higher cognitive control (as indicated by fewer commission errors) and a better emotion discrimination (as indicated by higher d-prime values) in blocks with happy faces, in contrast to neutral and fearful facial expressions, irrespective of task condition. Parent (mostly mother) reports of the child's habitual use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies were positively correlated to the child's behavioral problems (also parent/mother reports). No association between the behavioral measures of the emotional Go-NoGo task and the rating scales on child emotion regulation and behavioral problems was identified. Our results indicate that the emotional Go-NoGo task and rating scales (parent/mother reports) on emotion regulation capture different aspects of the underlying construct. This is in line with several previous studies, which also reported weak correlations between questionnaires and performance-based measures for a variety of constructs, such as executive functions or impulsivity. Future studies may examine whether such a computerized task is a useful addition to parent/mother report batteries when predicting developmental outcomes or evaluating treatments.