Abstract
Attachment relationships are important facets to a child’s healthy developmental trajectory. In part, these attachment relationships affect the emerging emotion regulation abilities of children. This research aimed to examine the interrelationships between temperament, attachment, emerging new relationships in a young child’s life, and his or her emerging emotion regulation strategies. A sample of 19 children (10 females and 9 males, Age: M=44.16 months, SD=14.95) was recruited from a daycare center to participate in the study, along with each child’s primary caregiver and the two head teachers in each classroom. Primary caregivers completed tasks reflecting their child’s temperament and attachment style; teachers completed a relationship assessment for each child in their class participating in the study; children completed two emotion regulation tasks and a task indicating their peer sociability. Results indicated that higher levels of both attachment security and dependency predicted more negative emotional tone during an emotion regulation task, and difficult temperament was found to moderate the relationship between attachment dependency and emotional tone. These results suggest that high levels of dependency, particularly in combination with difficult temperament, can adversely affect emotion regulation abilities. It may be beneficial to educate parents and teachers about the importance of developing certain attachment relationships with their children and students.