The idea for this volume grew out of a series of discussions among the members of the two editors' laboratories. Kenneth A. Dodge has been investigating aggressive conduct disorders in children, and Judy Garber has been examining internalizing disorders (depression and somatization) in children. It became readily apparent in our discussions that a common problem in these disorders is the children's inability to control, or regulate, their arousing and emotional states. Aggressive children fail to inhibit their responses and experience anger in the extreme. Depressed children withdraw in the face of emotional distress, and somatizing children excessively inhibit their expression of strong emotion. Collaborative empirical research by the two laboratories revealed the interesting finding that a significant number of children display both externalizing and internalizing problems. We then realized that despite the many books on emotion, our understanding of the developmental processes involved in successfully regulating emotions and failing to do so (called dysregulation) was at an infant stage.

These discussions led us to seek external funding from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) for a working conference of researchers in the field. We gratefully acknowledge the society's support for conferences of this sort.

On May 26-28, 1988, 11 investigators representing a variety of disciplines assembled to discuss the concepts of emotion, regulation, development, and dysregulation.