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The Role of Language Skills and Bilingual Proficiency in Emotion Regulation in Early Childhood
Ana Paula Cardenas
Faculty Advisor: Catharine Echols, PhD
Emotional and self-regulation skills are beneficial for children’s socioemotional states and proper development. The development of such skills is facilitated by high level cognitive skills like executive function (EF), as well as language which allows children to express their emotions as a form of regulation. Bilingual children benefit from higher levels of EF skills compared to monolingual children. This study aimed to understand if bilingual children are more proficient in emotion regulation (ER) in their dominant language. It was hypothesized that because children use language as a tool for ER, bilingual children would be better at ER in their most proficient language, as higher language skills facilitate better ER strategies. This study assessed expressive language skills in English and Spanish, degree of bilingualism, EF skills, and ER success in Spanish-English bilingual children in a within-subject study. The study looked at which language yielded more positive ER outcomes in two waiting tasks. The two waiting tasks consisted of children being primed for each language and asked to wait alone in a room for five and a half minutes to open a gift. Initial pilot data show similar waiting task performance in dominant and non-dominant language conditions, but there was a ceiling effect, such that children waited in both conditions. These initial observations did not provide any indication of whether language dominance affects ER. Modifications to the study design in the waiting tasks and language skill level assessments are needed as we move towards the full study.