TY  - JOUR
TI  - Children’s Emotional Reactivity and Effortful Control at Different Developmental Stages
T2  - Psychology. Journal of Higher School of Economics
IS  - Psychology. Journal of Higher School of Economics
KW  - temperament
KW  - effortful control
KW  - positive emotionality
KW  - negative emotionality
KW  - children
KW  - adolescents
AB  - The objective of this study was to examine the balance between emotional reactivity and effortful control across different developmental stages from early childhood to adolescence. Participants included primary caregivers of 2,316 children (52% girls) aged 2 to 17 years (M = 8.5, SD = 3.0). The study used abbreviated Russian versions, validated by the authors, of internationally recognized parental questionnaires: the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ) for preschoolers, the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ) for primary school children, and the modified Early Adolescence Temperament Questionnaire-Revised (EATQ-R) for adolescents. The results indicated that parents rated their children as showing higher levels of effortful control than emotional reactivity, and higher levels of positive emotionality than negative emotionality. The predominance of effortful control over emotional reactivity was significantly greater in girls than in boys. Among the components of effortful control, inhibitory control was higher than both attention control and activation control after school entry; boys showed a greater predominance of inhibitory control over activation control compared to girls. Parents rated primary school children as having higher levels of activation control than attention control, whereas adolescents showed the opposite pattern. Gender and age differences were relatively small, accounting for less than 2% of the variance in the balance between reactive and regulatory traits. The obtained results can be used to design educational and preventive programs that account for individual differences in typical and atypical development throughout childhood and adolescence.
AU  - Elena Slobodskaya
AU  - Elena Kozlova
AU  - Evgenia Petrenko
UR  - https://psy-journal.hse.ru/en/2025-22-4/1110857040.html
PY  - 2025
SP  - 634-649
VL  - 22