Cognitive Control Moderates Associations Between Domains of Temperamental Reactivity and Preschoolers' Social Behaviors

Abstract

Temperamental characteristics and emerging cognitive control are meaningful predictors of children's development of adaptive and maladaptive social behaviors during the preschool period. However, knowledge of the interplay of these pathways, when examined concurrently to highlight their individual contributions, is limited. Using a cross-sectional sample of 3-year-old children, we examined parent-reported discrete traits of negative (anger, fear, sadness, and shyness) and positive (low- and high-intensity pleasure) temperamental reactivity as predictors of children's prosociality and physical aggression. Further, we tested whether the effects of discrete temperament were moderated by cognitive control, as indexed by the N2 event-related potential, during a go/no-go task. Analyses focus on a subsample of children with an observable N2 (n = 66). When controlling for other relative temperament traits, several significant main effects emerged. Moreover, at low cognitive control (smaller N2), fear was negatively associated with aggression, whereas at high cognitive control, sadness was positively associated with aggression. Heightened anger was linked to reduced prosocial behavior when cognitive control was low but linked to greater prosocial behavior when cognitive control was high. The results highlight that discrete temperament traits predict individual differences in child outcomes but that associations depend on concurrent levels of cognitive control.