UC Irvine

The costs of child maltreatment are staggering with deleterious effects on children emerging in every developmental domain, including cognitive, psychological, and social functioning. The mechanisms underlying these effects are complex and multifaceted, being shaped not only by characteristics within children, but also by their experiences during and after exposure to maltreatment. One mechanism that has the potential to interact with children’s experiences to affect a range of outcomes is emotion regulation. Emotion regulation is associated with psychological well-being, behavioral functioning, delinquency, and physical health in nonmaltreated samples as well as samples of young maltreated children. Given that adolescence is a unique time, cognitively and emotionally, it may be a time when maltreatment experiences play a critical role in shaping emotion regulation. In the present study two samples of children, ages 6-17, one with a substantiated history of maltreatment (N = 262) and one without (N = 133), completed a battery of measures, including those that tap emotion regulation and behavioral functioning. Information about the children’s family, maltreatment, and background were collected via case files. Overall, maltreated children reported using more disengagement and antisocial regulation strategies relative to comparison children who reported more primary control strategies. Moreover, differences between the two groups in emotion regulation increased with age. Finally, the use of disengagement strategies predicted poorer behavioral functioning, particularly during adolescence. Findings have the potential to inform the treatment and intervention of maltreated children by determining the precise ways in which they differ from comparison children in their ability to regulate emotions, and how these emotion processes influence their functioning across age.