Emotion Regulation and Psychopathological Symptoms in Chinese Children

International Journal of Psychology, 2016
DOI: 10.1002/ijop.12249
Emotion regulation and psychopathological symptoms
of Chinese school-age children: A person-centred
and multi-informant approach
Peipei Li and Zhuo Rachel Han
Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, School of Psychology, Beijing
Normal University, Beijing, China
Emotion regulation (ER) is a critical component of children’s development. Many previous studies have utilised a
single-assessment method to reflect child ER, which might result in losing important information regarding the unique
contribution of each informant. With a person-centred approach and multi-informant reports (mother, teacher and child),
the current study examined 196 children’s (age M = 9.21, SD = 1.10, range = 7–11 years; 51% girls) ER patterns and
their associations with psychopathological symptoms in a Chinese sample. A model-based clustering procedure resulted
in 3 ER groups: the poor family ER group (n = 36), poor school ER group (n = 120), and overall good ER group (n = 40).
Significant differences were found among ER clusters on teacher-reported child psychopathological symptoms compared
on the levels of withdrawn depression, somatic complain, thought problems and attention problems. No significant
differences were found on the mother-reported psychopathological symptoms. Compared with children in the poor school
or poor family ER clusters, children in the overall good ER group demonstrated fewer psychopathological symptoms at
school. Our results confirmed the advantage of adopting multi-informant assessments to fully capture children’s emotional
profiles and linked these profiles with children’s emotional and behavioural functioning at school.
Keywords: Child emotion regulation; Cross-informant; Person-centred; Psychopathological symptoms.
Although no consensus has been reached, many
researchers (e.g. Thompson, 1994, p. 27) agree that there
are shared, implicit notions of what is meant by ER: “it
consists of internal and external processes involved in
initiating, maintaining and modulating the occurrence,
intensity and expression of emotions.” The critical role of
ER in children’s development has been demonstrated by
numerous empirical studies (e.g. Han & Shaffer, 2013;
Kim & Cicchetti, 2010). Of particular interest in recent
years is the association of emotion dysregulation with
children’s psychopathological symptoms. First, emotion
dysregulation is regarded as a core aspect of most forms of
psychopathology. For example, mood and anxiety disor-
ders are primarily defined on the basis of disturbed emo-
tions (e.g. Mineka & Sutton, 1992). Second, most psy-
chopathological disorders are associated with many forms
of emotional disturbances. For example, dating back to
Abraham (1911), depressive disorder has been associated
with sadness, guilt and anger. Additionally, emotion
Correspondence should be addressed to Zhuo Rachel Han, Ph.D., Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, School of
Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. (E-mail: rachhan@bnu.edu.cn).
Rachel Han designed the study, collected data and revised the article. Peipei Li analysed the data and drafted the article. This study received support
from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31500898).
dysregulation is also a risk factor for psychopathology
because emotional deficits predict subsequent changes in
the symptoms of anxiety, aggressive behaviour and other
types of psychopathology (McLaughlin, Hatzenbuehler,
Mennin, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2011). Children who show
deficits in ER appear to be more vulnerable to many
forms of internalising and externalising problems. For
example, Folk, Zeman, Poon, and Dallaire (2014) linked
children’s ER with depressive symptoms, indicating that
poor ER ability may potentially deteriorate depressive
symptoms. Roberton, Daffern, and Bucks (2012) found
an association between aggression and anger regulation
among adolescents.
Although the critical role of ER and its effect on
children’s psychopathological symptoms has been rela-
tively well studied, several issues still remain unclear.
The first is cross-culture validity. Culture can impact both
ER-related behaviours as well as the relation between
ER and psychopathology. First, cultural values may have
© 2016 International Union of Psychological Science

2 LI AND HAN
different effects on people’s ER-related behaviours. It
has been argued that in collective cultures (e.g. Asian
countries), which tend to foster interdependent selves
thus encourage relatedness and communal relationships,
expressive suppression may be more encouraged. In con-
trast, in individualistic cultures (e.g. the United States),
which foster the development of independent construal of
self, open emotion expression might be preferred (Mat-
sumoto, Yoo, & Nakagawa, 2008). Second, the relation
between ER and psychopathology might also be affected
by cultural factors. Recent evidence has shown that the
frequency and psychological consequences of ER strate-
gies differ in ethnic/cultural groups, depending on differ-
ent cultural values. For instance, one study showed that
the habitual use of expressive suppression was associ-
ated with adverse psychological functioning in European
American, but not in Chinese participants (Soto, Perez,
Kim, Lee, & Minnick, 2011).
Although it has been postulated that culture may affect
the development and implementation of ER, many pre-
vious studies employed primarily European American,
middle-class samples. Given the recent research finding
indicating that the more normative a behaviour is in a spe-
cific culture, the fewer negative relations that exist with
negative child outcomes, and vice versa (Lansford et al.,
2006), there is reason to investigate whether and how
children’s ER in a specific cultural context affects their
behavioural outcomes.
In addition to the cultural context, other contextual fac-
tors may affect children’s ER and related psychopatho-
logical symptoms are micro-contexts (Bronfenbrenner’s,
1992; e.g. school or home). Micro-contexts are differ-
ent from macro-contexts (e.g. culture) in that most chil-
dren only live in one culture throughout development,
but constantly switch their micro-contexts (i.e. entering a
new school). Both dimensions (i.e. macro/micro-context)
require our attention when studying the children’s psy-
chological well-being.
When rating the emotional/behavioural problems of
children and adolescents in different micro-contexts,
Achenbach, McConaughy, and Howell (1987) found that
there were only modest correlations between different
informants (parents or teachers), which indicated that
child and adolescent problems might not be effectively
captured by a single informant under a specific situation.
However, a large proportion of studies on child ER only
used mothers as the single informant (see Adrian, Zeman,
& Veits, 2011). Although maternal reports of children’s
ER can be informative and convenient, they might not be
sufficient for school-age children. This is because most
mother–child interaction occurs in the family context
but school-age children spend most of their time at
school, that their ER in the school setting would be less
accessible for their mothers. Compared to the utilisa-
tion of family informants, less investigation has been
performed to explore children’s emotional competence
from informants at school (e.g. teacher reports). Teachers’
reports could be particularly important because they pro-
vide an opportunity to understand children’s ER in school
settings (Adrian et al., 2011). Research studies have indi-
cated that although some very deviant children may be
less affected by situational and informant variables (see
Loeber & Dishion, 1984), an assessment of most chil-
dren must account for the variance in the situations and
informants. Thus, it is necessary to incorporate teachers’
reports when examining the ER of school-age children.
In addition, many aspects of children’s emo-
tional world remain private, particularly during
middle-childhood, because they become more aware
of their own cultural rules for acceptable emotional
expression and begin to better regulate their own emo-
tions (Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Witherington, 2006).
Emotional activities of children at this age might become
more implicit, whereas maternal or teachers’ reports
largely rely on their own observation of their children’s
explicit behaviours. Thus, the self-report methodologies
for children appear to be indispensable because individ-
uals often have private access to internal feelings and
experiences. Recent emerging studies have emphasised a
multi-method approach in assessing children’s ER (e.g.
Adrian et al., 2011), and these studies have agreed upon
the advantage of multi-informant assessments.
Utilising multiple methods directly leads to another
question: how to better synthesise these multiple pieces
of information. Traditional analysis is mostly variable
centred, and researchers tend to average the sum of the
standardised scores reported by each informant, which
requires significant positive correlations among the stan-
dardised scores as a prerequisite. However, disagreement
among informants usually exists (e.g. De Los Reyes &
Kazdin, 2005) and these discrepancies might possess
useful information for the better understanding of child
ER. Researchers have recently begun to utilise more
person-oriented techniques to incorporate multiple ER
elements (e.g. Han & Shaffer, 2013); however, few studies
have incorporated teacher-report data from the school set-
ting to demonstrate children’s ER across micro-contexts.
If patterns of the children’s ER could be identi-
fied from a person-centred manner, then it should be
determined whether there is a linkage between chil-
dren’s psychopathological outcomes and their ER pro-
files. Many previous studies have only focused on broad
categories (e.g. externalising or internalising) or a spe-
cific type of problems (e.g. anxious, depressed). Some
psychopathological symptoms are relatively understudied
(e.g. somatic problems, attention problems), which might
result in the loss of important information regarding the
connection between ER and more nuanced psychopatho-
logical symptoms. The existing literature is potentially
important, but does not provide sufficient information for
us to understand how children’s ER is associated with
their psychopathological symptoms.

CHINESE CHILDREN’S EMOTION REGULATION 3
Taken together, the current study applied
person-oriented techniques to incorporate informa-
tion from multiple sources—children, mothers and
teachers—in a Chinese sample. Specifically, it had sev-
eral goals: (a) To utilise model-based cluster analysis to
identify the profiles of child ER based on ratings from
multiple informants (i.e. mother, teacher and child). On
the basis of the potential and reasonable existence of dis-
agreement among different informants (Achenbach et al.,
1987) as well as the children’s potential inconsistent per-
formance in different contexts, we expect the emergence
of at least two types of clusters: the consistent ER pattern
(in which children received all negative or all positive
evaluations from all informants) and the inconsistent ER
cluster pattern (in which children received inconsistent
evaluations from various informants). (b) To examine
the associations between children’s ER profiles and
psychopathological symptoms in this group of Chinese
children. It was expected that Chinese children with more
at-risk ER profiles might present more psychopatholog-
ical problems in both family and school settings.
METHODS
Participants
Participants were recruited from an elementary school
of a major city in northeastern China. A total of 208
two-parent families voluntarily participated in this study.
Twelve families were excluded due to a misunderstanding
of the instructions or a failure to return all scales. The rates
of the remaining missing data ranged from 0 to 2.9%, and
the expectation-maximisation (EM) imputation was used
to replace the missing values.
The remaining families included 196 fathers, (age
M = 40.32; SD = 3.46), 196 mothers, (age M = 37.54;
SD = 3.04), 96 boys (age M = 9.23, SD = 1.02) and 100
girls (age M = 9.06; SD = 1.02). In addition, 74.9% of
families reported having an annual household income at
or above average (i.e. approximately 10,000 USD) for
dual-income families in the city in which the information
was collected. All of the fathers and 194 of the mothers
were the children’s biological parents.
Procedure
Parents received the introductory and invitation letter
from their children’s head teachers at a school-wide
parental conference. For the parents who agreed to
participate, their children were asked to take home a
series of questionnaires with informed written consent
forms for the parents and children (the children’s written
consent forms were asked to be signed by their primary
caregivers on behalf of the children), which were sealed
in large envelopes. Parents returned the questionnaires
to their child’s head teacher after they had completed all
of the questionnaires. Participant ID numbers were used
to match the maternal and teacher’s reports. All of the
participating families were provided with two books on
parenting and child-rearing, which were selected by the
school president. In addition, each participating child’s
head teacher received a package of questionnaires and
was asked to respond to the questions for each child
based on their behaviours at school. All of the procedures
were approved by the authors’ university Institutional
Review Board.
Measures
Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC)
First, the children’s emotion regulation (ER) from the
teacher’s and mother’s perspectives was measured using
the Chinese translated version of the ERC (Shields &
Cicchetti, 1997). The ERC consisted of 24 items that
aimed to assess the child’s emotionality and regulation.
Mothers and teachers were asked to report on how often
the children emotionally reacted in a specific way using a
4-point Likert scale. The ERC originally consisted of two
subscales (i.e. the Emotion Regulation scale and the Lia-
bility/Negativity scale). Because this study targeted the
children’s regulation of emotions, only the emotion reg-
ulation subscale was selected (e.g. “Responds positively
to neutral or friendly overtures by adults”). Previous
studies using the Chinese version of the questionnaire
demonstrated acceptable internal reliabilities (e.g. Suveg
et al., 2014). The internal consistencies for the emotion
regulation subscale of the maternal report and teacher
report in the current sample were 𝛼 = .674 and 𝛼 = .804,
respectively.
Children’s Emotion Management Scales
(CEMS)
The children’s self-report measure of ER was mea-
sured using the Children’s Emotion Management Scales
(Zeman, Casino, Suveg, & Shipman, 2010). The Chinese
version of CEMS was translated and back-translated by
four bilingual translators. Differences in the original and
back-translated versions were discussed and resolved
through joint agreement. The CEMS consisted of 36
items that measured the children’s management of anger,
sadness and worry. The coping subscale of the CEMS
was used to ensure that all three measures captured
regulatory aspects of ER. This coping subscale measured
the children’s culturally appropriate and constructive
strategies to manage worry, sadness and anger (i.e. “I try
to calmly settle the problem when I feel worried”). Items
were rated on a 3-point Likert scale. Previous studies
adopting the CEMS with Chinese school-age children
demonstrated acceptable reliability, 𝛼 = .70 (Suveg et al.,

4 LI AND HAN
2014). The reliability for the coping subscale in the
current sample was good (𝛼 = .88).
The Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL)
The Child Behaviour Checklist (Achenbach, 1991)
was used as an index of the children’s psychopatho-
logical symptoms. The CBCL was a 118-item measure
of parent-reported psychosocial functioning of children
over the past 6 months that yielded eight subscales in
different behavioural domains: withdrawal, somatic
problems, anxious/depressed, social problems, thought
problems, attention problems, rule breaking and aggres-
sive behaviours. All of the items were rated on a 3-point
Likert scale. The Chinese version of the CBCL has been
widely used and has shown good test–retest reliabilities
and validity (Leung et al., 2006). The internal consisten-
cies of maternal-reported CBCL subscales in this study
were as follows: withdrawn/depressed, 𝛼 = .89; somatic
problems, 𝛼 = .97; anxious/depressed, 𝛼 = .91; social
problems, 𝛼 = .88; thought problems, 𝛼 = .83; attention
problems, 𝛼 = .91; rule breaking, 𝛼 = .92; and aggressive
behaviours, 𝛼 = .94.
Child Behaviour Checklist Teacher Report
Form (TRF)
The TRF was CBCL’s parallel form (Achenbach,
1991). A teacher familiar with the participating child
completed the Chinese version of the Teacher’s Report
Form for each youth. Similar to the other informant
versions, the TRF-generated broad scores and more spe-
cific subscale scores of the children’s anxious/depressed,
withdrawn problems, somatic complaints, social prob-
lems, thought problems, attention problems, aggressive
behaviours and delinquent behaviours. The Chinese
version of the TRF has been previously used within
Chinese samples and has proven to be reliable and valid
(Leung et al., 2006). The internal consistencies of all
of the subscales in this study were as follows: with-
drawn/depressed, 𝛼 = .86; somatic problems, 𝛼 = .97;
anxious/depressed, 𝛼 = .79; social problems, 𝛼 = .72;
thought problems, 𝛼 = .73; attention problems, 𝛼 = .74;
rule breaking, 𝛼 = .87 and aggressive behaviours, 𝛼 = .79.
Analytical plan
Descriptive statistics as well as correlational tests among
the study variables were examined as preliminary analy-
ses. Next, potential group differences in study variables
based on demographic characteristics were performed to
provide a basic index for further analysis. A model-based
cluster analysis using the Mclust program developed for
R software (Fraley & Raftery, 2006) was performed
on the multiple measurements of the children’s ER.
Model-based cluster analysis overcomes some of the
inherent liabilities of traditional cluster analysis. Specif-
ically, this type of cluster analysis is more data-driven,
thereby reducing difficulties in determining the number
of clusters by providing a fit index (the Bayesian Informa-
tion Criterion, BIC). Higher BIC values indicate a better
fit of the model. When comparing models, a difference in
the BIC of 0–2 is considered weak support for the better
fitting model; 2–6 is considered positive support; 6–10
is considered strong support and over 10 is considered
very strong support (Raftery, 1995). In this study, the ER
scores from mothers, teachers and children were entered
into the analysis. The best fitting model was selected for
further analysis. Finally, a series of one-way analyses of
variance (ANOVAs) were performed to examine potential
differences across the identified clusters on the children’s
psychopathological symptoms.
RESULTS
Correlational tests were performed among the children’s
ER as reported by different informants. No significant
correlations were found, including that between child and
mother, child and teacher and mother and teacher. As
for psychopathological symptoms reported by mothers
and teachers, the results demonstrated low concordance
between both sources on all of the subscale scores. Only
low to moderate correlations were found for thought
problems, r(196) = .23, p = .001, and attention problems,
r(196) = .20, p = .006. Correlations between the rest pairs
of subscales were not significant.
Model-based cluster analysis: Cluster results
As shown in Figure 1, the best fitting model (BIC
value = −1619.83) yielded a four-class solution with
diagonal clusters with a variable volume and equal shape
(characteristics of the distribution). The next best fit-
ting model (BIC value = −1630.09) yielded a two-class
solution with spherical clusters with a variable volume
and equal shape. According to the rule of thumb for
interpreting BIC value differences proposed by Raftery
(1995), the best fitting model was strongly supported
(ΔBIC = 10.26). Thus, the four diagonal clusters with a
variable volume and equal shape were selected. However,
because Cluster 4 only had five participants and the mean
was within 1 SD of Cluster 2, the samples in Cluster 2 and
Cluster 4 demonstrated the same trend of evaluation from
different informants (i.e. three informants all reported
positive ER abilities for children in these two clusters).
We recoded the children in Cluster 4 into Cluster 2 for
ease of discussion. Each participant was classified into an
appropriate group based on their ER profiles. The results
of the final three clusters were presented in Figure 1,
which displayed each of their score’s deviation from the
sample mean on standardised units.

Figure 1. Standard deviations from the overall sample mean of each cluster for all measures on child emotion regulation from the best fitting model
with four-cluster solution.
Three groups identified by the clustering procedure
were differentiated according to the ER information col-
lected from different informants. The majority of children
in the current sample (n = 120; 61.22% of the sample)
was classified as belonging to the overall good ER group
(Cluster 2), in which the individuals received, on average,
moderately positive evaluations from all three informants.
A number of children (n = 40; 20.41% of the sample) fell
into the poor school ER group (Cluster 3). The ER pat-
terns of the children in this cluster were characterised by
the most negative evaluations from their teachers, slightly
negative self-evaluations and moderately positive assess-
ments from their mothers. In contrast, the poor family
ER group (Cluster 1) consisted of 36 children (18.37%
of the sample) whose ER abilities were rated most nega-
tively by their mothers, slightly negative by themselves,
but were slightly above average based on their teacher’s
reports. Importantly, when giving low scores, informants
appeared to disagree with each other. For example, for
children in Cluster 1, their teachers reported significantly
higher scores than their mothers, t(35) = 8.08, p < .001,
whereas for children in Cluster 3, their mothers’ scores
were significantly higher than those of their teachers,
t(39) = 13.14, p < .001.
Cluster differences
Demographic variables
After the profiles were identified, subgroups were
first examined on a number of demographic variables,
including gender, age and annual household income.
These results showed that these groups did not differ on
maternal age, F(2, 186) =. 89, p = .412; child age, F(2,
191) = .89, p = .410; or annual household income, F(2,
188) = 1.88, p = .156. Gender differences were found in
Cluster 1, 𝜒2(1) = 4.00, p = .046, with more boys than
girls belonging to this cluster. No gender differences were
found in the other two clusters. The descriptive statistics
for the clusters and demographic variables are shown in
Table 1.
Clustering variables
A series of ANOVAs among the clustering variables
showed statistically significant differences across the
three subgroups on each informant’s report, including
maternally reported ER, F(2, 193) = 152.24, p < .001;
teacher-reported ER, F(2, 193) = 192.44, p < .001; and
children’s self-reported ER, F(2, 193) = 10.16, p < .001.
Post-hoc analyses indicated that on the teacher reports,
differences existed between any two groups; on the mater-
nal reports, differences existed between any two groups,
except between Cluster 2 and Cluster 3; whereas on the
child’s self-report, group differences only existed between
Cluster 1 and Cluster 2.
Psychopathological problems
The clusters were associated with psychopathological
symptom information collected from parents and teachers
to identify the associations between particular ER pro-
files and the children’s psychosocial functioning. Because

6 LI AND HAN
TABLE 1
One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) examining cluster differences on ER variables, demographic variables and teacher-reported
children’s emotional and behavioural problems
ER cluster
Cluster 1 (n = 36) Mean (SD) Cluster 2 (n = 120) Mean (SD) Cluster 3 (n = 40) Mean (SD) F
ER variables
Maternal report 3.17 (0.33) 3.99 (0.21) 3.93 (0.28) 151.24**
Teacher report 3.73 (0.28) 3.92 (0.21) 2.98 (0.37) 192.44**
Child self-report 1.93 (0.53) 2.32 (0.47) 2.04 (0.56) 10.16**
Demographic variables
Child age 9.29 (1.10) 9.16 (1.04) 8.98 (0.89) 0.90
Mother age 37.97 (3.85) 37.58 (2.74) 37.05 (3.03) 0.89
SES 6.47 (1.83) 6.02 (1.91) 5.59 (2.10) 1.88
TRF subscales
Anxious/depressed 54.15 (7.80) 53.05 (5.46) 54.23 (6.35) 0.81
Withdrawn 55.84 (7.24) 52.93 (4.70) 54.55 (7.19) 3.92**
Somatic complains 52.85 (5.84) 50.68 (3.30) 51.42 (4.37) 3.93**
Social problems 57.08 (9.13) 54.68 (6.40) 57.56 (10.29) 2.67*
Thought problems 55.69 (8.91) 52.19 (5.85) 52.13 (5.32) 4.40**
Attention problems 55.26 (8.28) 53.51 (5.68) 57.10 (10.37) 3.77**
Delinquent behavior 55.21 (8.16) 53.95 (6.03) 56.03 (9.13) 1.41
Aggressive behavior 56.25 (9.28) 53.65 (5.71) 55.21 (8.13) 2.19
*p < .05. **p < .01.
SES = Socleconomic
one goal of this study was to shed light on children’s
psychosocial behaviours under different contexts (home
or school), we performed ANOVAs separately among
mother-reported data and teacher-reported data. First, we
performed one-way ANOVAs on the family-reported psy-
chopathological information of their children. Unexpect-
edly, no significant group differences emerged on each
subscale in mother-reported CBCL. Next, we explored
whether the ER clusters generated from the data would
differ at the level of the children’s psychopathologi-
cal symptoms reported by teachers based on the chil-
dren’s behaviours at school. Significant differences were
found among the ER profiles when compared at the level
of withdrawal depression, F(2, 193) = 3.92, p = .022;
somatic complains, F(2, 193) = 3.93, p = .021; thought
problems, F(2, 193) = 4.40, p = .014; and attention prob-
lems, F(2, 193) = 3.77, p = .025. These group differences
are shown in Table 1.
Further explorations indicated that children who
belonged to the poor family ER group (Cluster 1) were
reported to have the highest levels of somatic complaints
(M = 52.85, SD = 5.84); thought problems (M = 55.69,
SD = 8.91) and withdrawal depression (M = 55.84,
SD = 7.24) by their teachers. Attention problems in
this subgroup were moderately higher than average
(M = 55.26, SD = 8.28). As for the individuals in the
other ER-inconsistent groups, children in the poor school
ER group (Cluster 3) were rated slightly more positively
than children in the poor family ER group (Cluster 1) by
their teachers, but they still were rated more negatively
than children in the Cluster 2. In Cluster 3, children were
reported to have the highest levels of attention problems
(M = 57.10, SD = 10.37), and they had the second highest
levels of withdrawal problems (M = 54.55, SD = 7.19)
and somatic complains (M = 51.42, SD = 4.37).
DISCUSSION
The current study utilised person-centred analyses to
characterise ER patterns in a Chinese school-age sample
as well as to examine how these profiles are associated
with children’s psychopathological symptoms demon-
strated at home and at school. This study has advanced
the literature by incorporating cross-informants reports on
children’s ER and dual perspectives on children’s emo-
tional and behavioural problems at home and at school in a
Chinese sample. Specifically, we adopted person-oriented
analyses to minimise problems with the heterogeneity
of child ER information from various sources. Com-
pared with the traditional variable-oriented approach,
the employment of model-based cluster analyses echoed
the call for multi-assessment of child ER in the litera-
ture (Adrian et al., 2011). Specifically, emotion and ER
are complex constructs that can be assessed at multi-
ple levels, including physiological and behavioural lev-
els. From a behavioural aspect, both reported obtained
from other studies and self-reports can provide mean-
ingful information on youth’s emotional functioning, but
either reporter per se can draw a full picture of children’s
ER profiles. Thus, the multifaceted nature of emotion
and ER lend themselves well to a multi-method assess-
ment. When information from multiple recourses were

collected, the utilisation of person-centred statistical tech-
niques became key, as it contributed to the interpretation
of these data without removing the unique contribution
from each reporter.
In this study, person-oriented analyses identified four
distinct groups of children based on the different infor-
mants’ assessments of the children’s ER (i.e. mother,
teacher and child). We combined two clusters with the
same trend for ease of discussion. More than half of
the participating children were placed into the overall
good ER group (Cluster 2), indicating that the major-
ity of our sample (i.e. a community sample of Chi-
nese school-age children) consistently displayed good
ER skills across contexts. Expectedly, there were also
children who received inconsistent ER assessments from
family and school raters (children in Cluster 1 and Clus-
ter 3). Such inconsistency between raters further con-
firmed the necessity of employing a multi-informant and
person-centred approach.
Individuals from these inconsistent ER groups together
occupied 38.78% of the overall sample. Although the
number was smaller than individuals in the consistent ER
cluster, these individuals occupied a considerable propor-
tion of the current sample. Special attention should be
paid to children in these two inconsistent clusters because
their emotional problems might only be observable under
a specific micro-context (family or school). For instance,
mothers of children in the poor school ER (Cluster 3)
group may miss their children’s difficulties with ER at
home, whereas teachers of children in the poor family ER
group (Cluster 1) may not notice the children’s problems
with ER at school.
Specifically, individuals in the poor family ER group
received the lowest ER scores from their mothers, which
were not confirmed by either the children themselves
or the teachers. In contrast, children in the poor school
ER group obtained the poorest ER scores from their
teachers and an average evaluation from their mothers.
These results suggest that many children performed dif-
ferently at home and at school in terms of using ER strate-
gies. However, another potential explanation for these
diverging results might also come from the mothers’
biased reports. Previous studies have shown that moth-
ers with higher levels of depression or anxiety were more
likely to provide biased reports on children’s emotional
problems, which were not consistent with other infor-
mants (Briggs-Gowan, Carter, & Schwab-Stone, 1996).
Future studies are strongly encouraged to include mater-
nal depressive symptoms in the analyses as well as to
incorporate paternal ratings and peer ratings, as fathers
may provide an evaluation under the family context in
addition to mothers and peers could rate the children’s
behaviours under school settings in addition to teachers.
In sum, consistent with our expectation, all three clus-
tering variables demonstrated statistically significant dif-
ferences across the final three clusters. These findings
helped to confirm the validity of the three profiles: indi-
viduals of each cluster showed distinct ER patterns when
incorporating the perspectives from the mother, teacher
and child per se. When investigating the demographic
variables, we found that the groups did not differ on
the child’s age, maternal age or paternal age. However,
girls appeared to slightly outperform boys on ER abili-
ties. There were more girls than boys in the overall good
ER group, whereas there were more boys than girls in the
poor family ER group and poor school ER group. This
finding was consistent with those obtained from Western
school-age samples (e.g. Larsson & Frisk, 1999), such
that girls appeared to be more emotionally competent than
boys at this developmental stage.
As for our hypotheses regarding the associations
between ER profiles and children’s psychopatholog-
ical symptoms, group differences were found only
on the teacher-reported but not the parent-reported
psychopathological symptoms of the children, which
suggested that ER patterns appeared to be more infor-
mative of psychological and behavioural adjustments
in the school context. It could be that when a teacher
was observing the child in the school context, she would
automatically regard other children as her references for
evaluation. Thus, teachers might be more likely to obtain
an integrative perspective when making evaluations.
Such overall perspectives might enable the teachers
to better differentiate the characteristics of one child
from another. In contrast, the majority of parents in this
Chinese sample were parents of an only child (89.80%),
such that these Chinese parents did not have easily
accessible children for reference in order for them to rate
their child’s behaviours. Thus, the differences between
having compared to not having available comparisons
may contribute to these distinct findings regarding the
association between ER patterns with teacher-reported
and family-reported psychopathological outcomes of
children.
As for the associations between ER patterns and
teacher-reported psychopathological symptoms, we
found a positive trend in the overall good ER group.
Specifically, children in the inconsistent subgroups were
reported as having more somatic complaints, thought
problems and withdrawal depressive symptoms as well
as attention problems compared to children in the over-
all good ER group. These results were consistent with
findings from Western samples, such that children with
more effective ER strategies demonstrated more adaptive
behaviours (e.g. Rubin, Coplan, Fox, & Calkins, 1995)
and fewer psychopathological problems (e.g. Kim & Cic-
chetti, 2010). More specifically, Schmeichel (2007) found
that maladaptive emotional expressions undermined per-
formance on subsequent tests of working memory span,
which was related to child attention problems and thought
problems (Mezzacappa & Buckner, 2010). Rubin et al.
(1995) discovered that children with poor ER abilities

8 LI AND HAN
displayed more wary and anxious behaviours during free
play and interaction with others, which could be observed
as typical symptoms of withdrawal depression. Lundh
and Simonsson-Sarnecki (2001) also linked somatic com-
plaints and emotional difficulties in youth samples. Our
results showed consistent findings in Chinese school-age
children with that obtained from Western samples; they
also confirmed that when we aim to describe the chil-
dren’s emotional world, a single informant might not be
sufficient.
In addition, it should be noted that consistent with
existing evidence (De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005), the
results of this study also indicated that there was a
fair amount of disagreement among various informants
regarding the children’s emotional competence and psy-
chopathological problems. There were no significant cor-
relations between any rater pairs on children’s emotional
competence. Similarly, teachers’ reports showed diverg-
ing results from those of their parents on most ratings on
psychopathological symptoms.
Although this study is among the first to depict
the emotional profiles of Chinese children with a
multi-assessment and person-centred approach, sev-
eral limitations must be considered. The first limitation
of this study is the lack of behavioural observation.
Although family- and school-reported data have previ-
ously demonstrated a relatively comprehensive picture
of children’s emotional and behavioural status across
contexts, behavioural observation from the professional
perspective of researchers would provide more useful
information. Second, the finding about the inconsistent
reports of mothers and teachers on children’s behavioural
and emotional functioning should be interpreted with
caution because it might also be due to rater difference
rather than the true context-specific performance of
children. In addition, it is important to note that no
conclusions about causal pathways or developmental
patterns can be drawn from the results of this study due
to its cross-sectional nature. Future studies on the pre-
dictive power of children’s ER abilities on their clinical
outcomes might significantly benefit from a longitudinal
design.
Manuscript received May 2015
Revised manuscript accepted November 2015
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