Tantrums, Toddlers & Technology PDF: Temperament, Media Emotion Regulation & Early Childhood

Advanced Developmental Psychology 17.04.2023 Handout: Tantrums, toddlers and technology: Temperament, media emotion regulation, and problematic media use in early childhood Sarah M. Coynea, Jane Shawcrofta, Megan Galea, Douglas A. Gentileb, Jordan T. Etheringtona, Hailey Holmgrena, Laura Stockdale...

Advanced Developmental Psychology 17.04.2023 Handout: Tantrums, toddlers and technology: Temperament, media emotion regulation, and problematic media use in early childhood Sarah M. Coynea, Jane Shawcrofta, Megan Galea, Douglas A. Gentileb, Jordan T. Etheringtona, Hailey Holmgrena, Laura Stockdalea • Purpose of the study • examine association between temperament, parental media emotion regulation and problematic media use in young children, using both questionnaires and observational data • What is Media Emotion Regulation? • the practice of using media to regulate difficult emotions • Infants and toddlers rely on external support to learn emotion regulation skills. When they are offered screens while in a distressed state their ability to learn positive emotion regulation strategies may be hindered • Problematic Media use • excessive media use that interferes with the child’s functioning • captures dysfunctioning in social, behavioral, and/or academic development due to excessive or maladaptive media use • example: loss of interest in other activities → due to a lack of self-regulation • Emotional Reactivity = strong emotional reaction • Emotional reactivity to the removal of media potentially indicates developing problematic media use patterns in infants and young children. • e.g. toddler throws tantrums, whines, or resists ending media use • Bioecological Theory • proximal processes are the enduring patterns of interaction which drive human development • Interactional Theory of Childhood • acknowledges proximal processes are the central component in shaping patterns of long-term problematic media use in young children (Domoff, Borgen & Radesky, 2020) • the consistent reciprocal interactions between the child, the parent, and the media make up the proximal processes which impact media emotion regulation • proximal processes are influenced by both environmental and biological factors and either positively or negatively affect child long-term development Weiler, Hagemann, Winter, Ciloeva Advanced Developmental Psychology 17.04.2023 • Temperament and Media Emotion Regulation • temperament as mediating variable • characteristics of a child (e.g. temperament) may have an impact on the patterns in a child’s life which, over time, teach emotion regulation skills → influence parents responses to and treatment of their child • Opinions differ on the stability of temperament over an individual’s lifespan • Hypothesis & Study aim • Parents utilize media more to manage children’s difficult emotions if children have a difficult temperament. • Children who engaged in media emotion regulation more often would show more problematic media use and strong emotions when media are taken away • Results • Media emotion regulation was positively associated with problematic media use • Temperament did not directly predict problematic media use once media emotion regulation was added to the model • parental media time was positively associated with media emotion regulation and negatively associated with extreme emotional reactivity • parental education was negatively associated with media emotion regulation (with higher scores indicating higher levels of parental education) • Marital status was positively associated with problematic media use (with higher scores indicating unmarried status) • Conclusion • media emotion regulation may be problematic in promoting healthy infant media use and emotion regulation. Weiler, Hagemann, Winter, Ciloeva