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. 2022 Jun 30:13:895557.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.895557. eCollection 2022.

Withdrawn Behavior in Preschool: Implications for Emotion Knowledge and Broader Emotional Competence

Samantha E Clark  1 , Robin L Locke  1 , Sophia L Baxendale  1 , Ronald Seifer  2   3   4
Affiliations

Withdrawn Behavior in Preschool: Implications for Emotion Knowledge and Broader Emotional Competence

Samantha E Clark et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

The present study investigated the respective roles of withdrawal, language, and context-inappropriate (CI) anger in the development of emotion knowledge (EK) among a subsample of 4 and 5 year-old preschoolers (n = 74). Measures included parent-reported withdrawn behavior, externalizing behavior, and CI anger, as well as child assessments of receptive language and EK. Ultimately, findings demonstrated that receptive language mediated the relationship between withdrawn behavior and situational EK. However, CI anger significantly interacted with receptive language, and, when incorporated into a second-stage moderated mediation analysis, moderate levels of CI anger rendered the indirect effect of withdrawn behavior on situational EK via receptive language insignificant. Cumulatively, these findings demonstrate a mechanism by which withdrawal may impact EK. They also indicate that such an effect may be attenuated in children with moderate levels of CI anger. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords: anger; context; development; emotion; emotion knowledge; language; preschoolers; withdraw.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Conceptual model of moderated mediation by CI anger.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Simple mediation model for the relationship between child withdrawn behavior and situational emotion knowledge, as mediated by receptive language. *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Moderation of association between receptive language and situational emotion knowledge by CI anger. Conditional effects are represented by groupings of the 16th, 50th, and 84th percentile. **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
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