Linking Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) constructs to developmental psychopathology: The role of self-regulation and emotion knowledge in the development of internalizing and externalizing growth trajectories from ages 3 to 10

Identifying Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) constructs in early childhood is essential for understanding etiological pathways of psychopathology. Our central goal was to identify early emotion knowledge and self-regulation difficulties across different RDoC domains and examine how they relate to typical versus atypical symptom trajectories between ages 3 and 10. Particularly, we assessed potential contributions of children's gender, executive control, delay of gratification, and regulation of frustration, emotion recognition, and emotion understanding at age 3 to co-occurring patterns of internalizing and externalizing across development. A total of 238 3-year-old boys and girls were assessed using behavioral tasks and parent reports and reassessed at ages 5 and 10 years. Results indicated that very few children developed "pure" internalizing or externalizing symptoms relative to various levels of co-occurring symptoms across development. Four classes of co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems were identified: low, low-moderate, rising, and severe-decreasing trajectories. Three-year-old children with poor executive control but high emotion understanding were far more likely to show severe-decreasing than low/low-moderate class co-occurring internalizing and externalizing symptom patterns. Child gender and poor executive control differentiated children in rising versus low trajectories. Implications for early intervention targeting self-regulation of executive control are discussed.