EC and reactive control both appear to relate to maladjustment, albeit not always in the same ways or to the same degree. Eisenberg et al. (2001) argued that children prone to externalizing problems would be expected to be low in all or most aspects of EC (e.g., inhibitory or attentional control) and high in impulsivity. Such deficits could account for externalizing children’s lack of behavioral control and diminished attentional and sociocognitive functioning (i.e., information processing; Dodge, Coie, & Lynam, 2006). In contrast, children prone to internalizing problems were hypothesized to be low in effortful attentional control (which can be used to modulate emotionality), but not effortful inhibitory control (recall inhibitory control is not the same as behavioral inhibition), and to be very low in impulsivity and prone to reactive overcontrol (i.e., unlikely to be pulled by attractive stimuli in the environment and likely to be involuntarily rigid and constrained). Well-adjusted children were predicted to be high in all types of EC and moderate in levels of reactive control—not overly controlled or highly impulsive, but able to be spontaneous and perhaps even somewhat impulsive when situationally appropriate.
