Our findings were not as straightforward for the relation of EC to internalizing problems. In general, low EC was related to internalizing problems primarily when we examined patterns of change (see Table 7), not direct relations between the constructs (as in Table 5). In the analyses related to change, deficits in attentional control predicted more internalizing problems over time or consistently high levels of internalizing problems. Unexpectedly, EC predicted improvement in, rather than consistently low levels of, internalizing problems, but for the most part, this pattern of findings appeared only when we controlled for T1 EC (which tended to be higher for stably low than for improving children) and may have been a suppression effect. It is noteworthy, however, the pattern for inhibitory control was fairly weak when we controlled for change in externalizing, likely because inhibitory control is associated with externalizing but not with pure internalizing problems (Eisenberg et al., 2001; Eisenberg, Sadovsky, et al., 2005).
