Executive Function and Trajectories of Emotion Dysregulation in Children with Parent-Reported Behavior Problems.

The current study examined whether a variety of dimensions of executive function predicted trajectories of emotion dysregulation among preschool children with behavior problems. This study focused on 199 3-year-old children with parent-reported behavior problems who took part in a larger longitudinal study. Results revealed that response inhibition and working memory were not predictive of later emotion dysregulation. Gender differences emerged for delay aversion and attentional control. Boys who performed better on delay aversion tasks exhibited lower emotion dysregulation related to threat 2 years later, whereas girls who performed better on delay aversion tasks exhibited higher threat-related emotion dysregulation 2 years later. Better performance on a visual attention task significantly predicted decreasing threat-related emotion dysregulation slopes for boys but not for girls. Finally, girls who made more omission errors on a continuous performance task exhibited higher emotion dysregulation related to frustrative-nonreward 2 years later. Results suggest that specific facets of executive function may play an important role in difficulties with emotion dysregulation during the preschool years and that this pattern may differ across boys and girls.

Community Integration in Traumatic Brain Injury: The Contributing Factor of Affect Recognition Deficits.

OBJECTIVE: Individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) can experience social isolation, which is damaging to well-being and counterproductive to successful rehabilitation. It has been proposed that social cognitive deficits that commonly result from TBI may contribute to weakened social integration. However, the consequences of specific social cognitive deficits in TBI are still being delineated. The current work sought to better characterize the relationship between community integration and facial affect recognition (FAR) in TBI. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: A total of 27 participants with moderate to severe TBI and 30 healthy controls (HCs) completed two tests of FAR, which employed either static photographic stimuli or dynamic video stimuli (The Awareness of Social Inference Test). The Community Integration Questionnaire was also administered to participants. RESULTS: Participants with TBI were significantly impaired on both the static and dynamic FAR measures, yet the deficits were most pronounced within the dynamic task. Furthermore, participants with TBI reported lower community integration compared with HCs. FAR was positively associated with community integration in both groups, such that participants with proficient affect recognition skills were better integrated into their communities. CONCLUSIONS: FAR deficits may contribute to the lack of community integration often observed in TBI; thus, interventions designed to improve FAR may be beneficial to this population's ability to successfully reintegrate into society.