Relatedly, infants differ in their ability to modify the intensity and duration of an emotion; some children are better at using behavioral strategies, such as gaze aversion, self-soothing, or proximity seeking to a caregiver in order to modify an emotional experience. It appears that infants are born with varying predispositions to adaptively and effectively use emotion regulation strategies to some extent (Buss & Goldsmith, 1998). These characteristics may be precursors to later individual differences in emotional lability and emotion regulation skills. Together, this constellation of individual differences in reactivity appears to anticipate the later emergence of positive and negative urgency.
