Testing a core emotion-regulation prediction: Does early attentional persistence moderate the effect of infant negative emotionality on later development?

To test the hypothesis that early attentional persistence will moderate the effect of infant negative emotionality on social competence, problem behav ior, and school readiness at age 3, data collected as part of the NICHD Stu dy of Early Child Care were subject to structural equation modeling analyse s (N = 1,038). Consistent with Eisenberg et al.'s data on older children, h igh levels of negative emotionality were associated with low levels of soci al competence only when attentional persistence was poor. No such moderatin g effects of attentional persistence emerged in the case of behavior proble ms. And in the case of school readiness, findings indicated that high level s of negative emotionality predicted high levels of school readiness when a ttentional persistence was high, a result opposite to that found with respe ct to the prediction of social competence.