Cognitive-emotional interplay : implications for children’s development of self-aware emotion regulation as the last developmental phase of emotional intelligence

Abstract

Cognitive and emotional developmental trajectories account for individual differences in children. Individual variations of emotional intelligence may be a result of various factors. For the purpose of this work children’s development of emotional intelligence is examined through individual developmental aspect related to development of cognition and emotion. The ability to be aware of own emotions and emotions of others and being able to regulate own emotions facilitates the highest developmental levels of emotional intelligence. Therefore this work employs emotional intelligence and self-aware emotion regulation as concepts of interchangeable meaning.

The developmental courses of emotion and cognition are inter-related to an extent at which it is unrealistic to categorize them into separate developmental processes. This thesis focuses on multilevel interplay between emotion and cognition in the course of their development. The theories by LeDoux and Levental are integrated to provide a comprehensive theory of interplay between emotion and cognition in children’s development.

While consensus exists about emotional and cognitive development exerting influence over enhancement of emotional intelligence, there is little evidence of how exactly the enhancement is enabled. The structural overview of the emotion-cognition interplay aims at filling the literature gap by recognizing processes which may account for the development of emotional intelligence in children.

This thesis provides implications for the development of emotional intelligence by integrating the levels of emotional awareness model with model of emotional intelligence as an ability. Increasingly more complex mental representations of past events with emotional content enable advancement of emotional awareness. Therefore processing of emotional information shifts from implicit to explicit which enables employment of cognitive function when dealing with emotional information.

As a result of acquired ability of reasoning about emotions child is not only aware of own emotions and emotions of others, but is also able to regulate own emotions according to specific social situations. Self-aware emotion regulation is thereof possible result of cognitive-emotional development and a facilitator for highest levels of emotional intelligence in children.