Claims

Effortful regulation is maximized at moderate levels of emotional and physiological reactivity and declines at very low or very high levels

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r3 · q1
Currency · newest study 2015 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q1 i? Attention and effortful regulation follow an inverted U-shaped relation to emotional and physiological arousal, with executive function maximized at moderate neurochemical levels. → Blair 2015

Evidence

Blair 2015

Blair, Clancy & Raver, C. Cybele. (2015). School Readiness and Self-Regulation: A Developmental Psychobiological Approach. Annual Review of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015221

q1 · i? · review · r3

Theoretical neurobiological argument in the review: rising catecholamines and cortisol stimulate prefrontal activity up to a moderate level, beyond which prefrontal activity is reduced. The article maps this onto the inverted U-shaped Yerkes-Dodson curve relating anxiety to performance. No effect size is printed.

"At moderate increases in emotional and physiological reactivity, attention is increased and effortful regulation is maximized. At very low or very high levels of reactivity, however, control of attention is decreased and effortful regulation is less likely to occur."

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id inverted-u-arousal-executive-function
title Effortful regulation is maximized at moderate levels of emotional and physiological reactivity and declines at very low or very high levels
description Effortful regulation is maximized at moderate levels of emotional and physiological reactivity and declines at very low or very high levels
status review
evidence_strength weak
newest_evidence 2015
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-17
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — blair-2015

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