The Relationship Of Primary School Children's Emotional Regulation And Social Competence And Its Influencing Factors

The relations of Emotion Regulation (ER) and Social Competence (SC) has been one of the major issues that researchers concern. Recent researches focus on the mechanism of the relations between ER and SC. Eisenberg proposed two provocative models to reveal the relationships between Emotionality, Emotion Understanding (EU), ER and SC.Emotionality generally has been considered as a temperamental variable which reflects the intensity of emotional responding and reactivity. It's hypothesized and proved that there are additive effects of Emotion Regulation and Emotionality while predicting Social Competence. Emotion Understanding is ability mainly to aware of one's emotional state and to discern others' emotions. It has close contact with Emotion Regulation and Social Competence.The purpose of the present study was to examine the attributions of Emotion Understanding and Emotionality to the relations of Emotion Regulation and Social Competence. Ninety-one primary school children were examined. Teachers reported their Emotionality, Emotion Regulation and Social Competence and the children's emotional comprehension were measured indipendently. The conclusions are:(1) Emotion Understanding of primary school children are increasing with the grade, with incensement varying in different components. Significant differences among grade were found while no significant differences between genders were found.(2) Emotion Regulation of primary school children increase with the grade. Effort Control (EC) increases with the grade while Impulsivity is decreasing. Research revealed no significant effect of gender but a highly significant effect of grade.(3) Emotion Understanding uniquely and directly predicted Social Competence and Emotion Regulation and indirectly predicted Social Competence (through Emotion Regulation).(4) The moderation of Emotionality differs between the relations of Emotion Regulation and Social Competence and the relations of Impulsivity and Social Competence. Emotionality moderates the formal relations while has no moderation effect on the latter relations. Therefore, it's necessary to separate Effortful Control and Impulsivity when exploring the relations of Emotion Regulation and Social Competence.