Regulation of emotion after acute pain from 3 to 18 months: A longitudinalstudy

The object of this study is the stability of emotional regulation after pai nful events during early development. Thirty subjects' facial expressions w ere longitudinally observed at 3, 5, 11 and 18 months for 60 s before and 9 0 s after a paediatric vaccination. The results confirmed that regulation o f gain increases with increasing age. Stability was found between 3 and 5 m onths, but not between 3 and 11 months, thus suggesting that at 5-6 months, there may be a developmental shift towards better regulation of stress res ponses. In contrast to the existing literature, Italian infants showed much more sadness than anger during soothing time; they also showed little pain at 18 months. Differences in the medical procedures or maternal soothing s trategies may account for differences in soothing between Italian and US sa mples. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.