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Intrapersonal Emotion Regulation Processes Influence What Children Remember About Their Emotional Experiences
Author(s) -
Parsafar Parisa,
Davis Elizabeth L.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.13070
Subject(s) - intrapersonal communication , sadness , psychology , recall , affect (linguistics) , developmental psychology , feeling , cognitive psychology , interpersonal communication , social psychology , anger , communication
Little work has tested how emotion regulation (ER) processes influence children's memory for negative experiences. We investigated how two intrapersonal ER processes (affect‐biased attention and changes in negative feelings) predicted children's ( N = 184, 93 girls, ages 3–11) memory. Recall of a sad or scary film was tested after a delay. The way discrete emotional information was remembered varied with ER and children's age. Older children with greater affect‐biased attention or less reduction of fear demonstrated privileged memory for central information from the scary film. Older children with greater affect‐biased attention but greater reductions in sadness recalled more from the sad film overall. Findings suggest ER processes should be considered when examining children's memory for negative emotional information.