Socio-emotional regulation in children with intellectual disability and typically developing children in interactive contexts

This study examined similarities versus differences in socio-emotional regulation in 45 children with intellectual disabilities compared to 45 typically developing children, matched for developmental age (ranging from 3 to 6 years). The impact of children's characteristics (chronological age and developmental age), of three types of dyadic context (neutral with an adult, competitive or cooperative with a peer) and of three temporal sequences in dyadic interactive play on socio-emotional regulation was studied. The results showed that the children with intellectual disabilities did not express or regulate their emotions less than the typically developing children but they displayed less social behavior. In both groups, socio-emotional regulation varied depending on the context, on the sequence and on some children's characteristics. The mean scores of socio-emotional regulation in competitive and cooperative contexts (when the target-child played with a peer) were higher than the mean score in a neutral context (when the target-child played with an adult). In the group with intellectual disabilities, the children's emotional expressions in a competitive context and their behavior towards social rules in a neutral context varied depending on their chronological age. In both groups, several behavioral categories of socio-emotional regulation in the different contexts varied depending on the children's developmental age. (C) 2012 Association ALTER. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.