| Growing interest in emotion regulation is reflected in the studies of cognitive and social development. The definitions of emotion regulation are diverse and distinctive. Bell and Wolf suggest that emotion regulation includes the changes in the emotion itself and the relevant psychological process. Cole and his colleagues (2004) emphasize the social function of emotion regulation in daily problem solving. The definition which proposed from Gross and Levenson (1993) is most widely accepted, and they define emotion regulation as an integration of physiological, cognitive, and behavior process. Specific regulatory strategies contribute to different period of emotion-generative process such as reappraisal, rumination, suppression, and revealing. The focus on social function from the studies of emotion regulation makes the studies of social development of children become possible. However, the extant studies mainly highlight how different emotion regulatory strategies contribute to their related developmental construct and ignore the development of emotion regulation itself.Recent studies suggest that change of emotion experience, emotional intelligence, and emotion regulation attitude could predict and explain the development of emotion regulation. Based on the framework of process model (Gross,1998), our present studies explored the contribution from emotion experience, emotional intelligence, and emotion regulation attitude to emotion regulation in a development scope. Considering the problem of ecological validity and dynamic nature of emotion, we modified the Chinese Version of Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) (Huang, Guo,2002) and Emotion Regulation Attitude Questionnaire (ERAQ). By using a longitudinal design, we examined the development trend of emotion regulation, emotion experience, emotional intelligence, and emotion regulation attitude and discussed the adaptive function of different emotion regulatory strategies.Firstly, the present studies modified the Chinese Version of ERQ and ERAQ by item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and reliability analysis. Secondly, we adopted the longitudinal studies and examined 569 junior students (Grade 6 and Grade 8 students from Shanghai junior middle school). After ten month, we examined these students again. There are several important results and conclusion, such as: (1) After adding the portraits of daily emotional episodes, the modified ERQ improved the internal and external (ecological) validity of our longitudinal study. Also, the modified ERQ was still valid to discriminate, sufficiently reliable, and able to represent the theoretical structure.(2) After the modification, the modified ERAQ was still valid to discriminate, sufficiently reliable, and able to represent the theoretical structure. Also, adding the regulatory attitudes to 4 types (Reappraisal, Rumination, Suppression, and Revealing) made it correspond with the ERQ more strongly.(3) In the adolescence, individual experience less positive emotion, report weaker up-and down-regulation attitude, and use less up-regulation.(4) Development of emotion experience, emotional intelligence, and emotion attitude were significant predictors of the changes of emotion regulation.(5) Adolescents who presented a higher-change of emotional intelligence and more positive emotion experience (Positive Development Group) used more down-regulation when encountering both positive and negative emotional episodes in Phase 1.That is saying, down-regulation might be a more adaptive regulatory strategy in human development.
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