Family Poverty and Trajectories of Children’s Emotional and Behavioural Problems: The Moderating Roles of Self-Regulation and Verbal Cognitive Ability

Socio-economic disadvantage is strongly associated with children’s emotional (internalising) and behavioural (externalising) problems. Self-regulation and verbal cognitive ability have been related to children’s emotional and behavioural resilience to socio-economic disadvantage. Despite being inter-related, self-regulation and verbal cognitive ability have not been examined jointly as promoting resilience in young children. This study investigated the roles of self-regulation and verbal cognitive ability in children’s emotional and behavioural resilience to family socio-economic disadvantage from early to middle childhood (ages 3, 5, and 7 years; N?=?16,916; 49 % girls). Using multivariate response growth curve modelling, we found that the relationship between socio-economic disadvantage and internalising problems was stronger for children with lower verbal cognitive ability. Also, poor children with high and low levels of self-regulation showed a widening gap in both emotional and behavioural problems over time. Poor and non-poor children alike benefited from self-regulation, but poor children appeared to be more vulnerable to low self-regulation. Self-regulation and verbal cognitive ability seem to be important protective factors for young children growing up in poor families.     

3～4岁幼儿冷热自我调节的发展趋势及性别差异——一项纵向研究

自我调节是个体发展和社会化的重要标志,在学前阶段发展迅速。研究选取白天-黑夜、头脚任务、延迟等待等实验范式,考察219名3岁幼儿一年内（3次测试）冷热自我调节的发展趋势及性别差异。结果表明：（1）二因素模型拟合显著好于单因素模型,冷热两成分中度相关;（2）幼儿的冷自我调节中度稳定,热自我调节中低度稳定;（3）幼儿的抑制控制与延迟等待随年龄增加而提高,女孩的延迟等待提高后保持稳定;（4）整体来看,幼儿的抑制控制和延迟等待存在显著性别差异,但具体来看,女孩的抑制控制仅在早期高于男孩,在延迟等待方面却始终高于男孩。结论：3~4岁女孩的冷热自我调节发展不同步,女孩的“性别优势”只在热自我调节上始终存在。     

3～4岁幼儿冷热自我调节的发展趋势及性别差异——一项纵向研究

自我调节是个体发展和社会化的重要标志,在学前阶段发展迅速。研究选取白天-黑夜、头脚任务、延迟等待等实验范式,考察219名3岁幼儿一年内（3次测试）冷热自我调节的发展趋势及性别差异。结果表明：（1）二因素模型拟合显著好于单因素模型,冷热两成分中度相关;（2）幼儿的冷自我调节中度稳定,热自我调节中低度稳定;（3）幼儿的抑制控制与延迟等待随年龄增加而提高,女孩的延迟等待提高后保持稳定;（4）整体来看,幼儿的抑制控制和延迟等待存在显著性别差异,但具体来看,女孩的抑制控制仅在早期高于男孩,在延迟等待方面却始终高于男孩。结论：3~4岁女孩的冷热自我调节发展不同步,女孩的“性别优势”只在热自我调节上始终存在。     

The effects of cognitive-behavior modification on private speech and task performance during problem solving among learning-disabled and normally achieving children

Recent research has supported the hypothesis that poor performance among learning-disabled (LD) children is frequently the result of deficits in self-regulation of strategic behaviors, rather than structural or ability deficits. As a result, cognitive-behavior modification (CBM) techniques that emphasize development of self-regulation through self-verbalizations (private speech) have been strongly recommended. The present study examined the natural occurrence of regulatory private speech among LD and normally achieving children during problem solving, as well as the effects of CBM training on private speech and task performance. Results indicated significant deficiencies in private speech and task performance among LD children; CBM training resulted in significant improvements. These results provide further verification of deficits in self-regulation of cognitive activity among LD children and import implications for intervention.The author would like to thank Gerald Halpin, Glennelle Halpin, and Ronhie Wilbur for their assistance throughout this study.     

Preschoolers' magnitude comparisons are mediated by a preverbal analog mechanism

We report a study of 3- to 5-year-olds who performed a magnitude-comparison task. Stimuli were a series of pairs of arrays that sometimes differed in numerosity, and the children were asked to point to the more numerous array in each pair. The proportion of accurate responses was above chance for all age groups. However, error patterns were consistent with analog models of magnitude representation. Errors varied systematically with the ratio of stimulus pairs. Items with a 2:3 ratio were harder than items with a 1:2 ratio. Performance on posttests of verbal counting ability was variable, but did not predict performance on the numerical discrimination task. We argue that neither verbal counting nor nonnumerical perceptual strategies can explain these results. This study supports the hypothesis that adults and children share preverbal, analog representations of magnitude.     

Age differences in executive functioning across the lifespan: the role of verbalization in task preparation

Age-related changes in executive functioning across the lifespan were assessed in children (mean age=9.4 years), younger adults (mean age=21.5 years), and older adults (mean age=65.3 years). Executive functioning was investigated with a task-switching paradigm that permits the separation of two control components: to select and to switch between task sets. The specific aims of this study were (a) to determine developmental functions in both control components across the lifespan; and (b) to examine whether age-related changes in these components are influenced by verbal prompts during task preparation. The results revealed an inverted u-shaped developmental function for the ability to select between task sets but not for the ability to switch between task sets. In contrast to younger adults and children, older adults generally benefited from verbalizations during task preparation. Children, but not older adults, showed a facilitation of task execution when verbal prompts were task-compatible. Conversely, older adults, but not children, showed stronger interference when verbal prompts are task-incompatible. Our findings suggest that inner speech in an important modulator of developmental changes in executive functioning across the lifespan.     

Children's search strategies and accompanying verbal and motor strategic behavior: Developmental trends and relations with task performance among children age 5 to 17

Children's reported use of single and multiple search strategies during a matching numbers task, along with accompanying verbal (private speech, self-talk) and motoric (finger pointing, place-holding) strategic behaviors were examined with a large, nationally representative cross-sectional sample (n = 1979) of children between the ages of 5 and 17. Strategic searching increased with age, especially between the ages of 5 (15% strategic) and 9 (63%), with 9-year-olds’ strategy use being similar in many ways to that of 17-year-olds. Use of multiple search strategies similarly increased with age. Relations between reported strategy use and task performance were positive for 5- to 7-year-olds, nonexistent for 8- to 12-year-olds, and slightly negative for adolescents. Self-talk, although relatively rare during this task, was a performance asset for young children who were strategic and a liability for young children who were non-strategic. Pointing was negatively related with performance for those who were strategic and irrelevant for those non-strategic.     

Children’s strategy use when playing strategic games

Strategic games require reasoning about other people’s and one’s own beliefs or intentions. Although they have clear commonalities with psychological tests of theory of mind, they are not clearly related to theory of mind tests for children between 9 and 10 years of age “Flobbe et al. J Logic Language Inform 17(4):417–442 (2008)”. We studied children’s (5–12 years of age) individual differences in how they played a strategic game by analyzing the strategies that they applied in a zero, first, and second-order reasoning task. For the zero-order task, we found two subgroups with different accuracy levels. For the first-order task, subgroups of children applied different suboptimal strategies or an optimal strategy. For the second-order task only suboptimal strategies were present. Strategy use for all tasks was related to age. The 5- and 6-year old children were additionally tested on theory of mind understanding and executive functioning. Strategy-use in these children was related to working memory, but not to theory of mind after correction for age, verbal ability and general IQ.     

Developmental Changes In Switching Between Mental Task Sets: The Influence Of Verbal Labeling In Childhood

Age-related changes in the use of verbal processes for the efficient switching between tasks were investigated in 5-year-old children (N = 32, M age = 5.9 years) and 9-year-old children (N = 32, M age = 9.4 years). Task switching was assessed by means of a cued switching paradigm to examine two switching components: (a) to maintain and select and (b) to switch between task sets. The aim of this study is to determine (a) developmental changes in both switching components during childhood, (b) whether age-related changes in these components are influenced by verbalizations in terms of “thinking aloud” (Ericsson & Simon, 1993) during task performance, and (c) age changes in the content of the self-verbalizations. Results show an age-related impairment of the 5-year-old group on the level of task-set maintenance and selection. Children mainly verbalized the response labels. However, whereas 5-year-olds more often labeled their perceptions (Zelazo, 1999), 9-year-olds used language to maintain the currently relevant task set. Both age groups relied on the same verbal strategy facilitating task switching, supporting the view that language can be used to plan and guide actions (Luria, 1969).     

Preschoolers’ Motor and Verbal Self-Control Strategies During a Resistance-to-Temptation Task

Although prior research has shown that young children exhibit enhanced self-control when they use verbal strategies provided through adult instructions, little work has examined the role of children's spontaneous verbalizations or motor behavior as strategies for enhancing self-control. The present study examined the usefulness of spontaneous verbal and motor strategies for 39 3- and 4-year-old children's ability to exercise self-control during a resistance-to-temptation task. After a 2-min play period, participants were asked by an experimenter not to touch an attractive train set while he was out of the room. Children were videotaped during the 3-min waiting period and videos were coded for frequency and duration of touches, motor movements, and verbalizations. Results indicated that self-control was improved by using both motor and verbal strategies. Children who were unable to resist touching the forbidden toy used limited motor or verbal strategies. These findings add to the growing literature demonstrating the positive role of verbalizations on cognitive control and draw attention to motor behaviors as additional strategies used by young children to exercise self-control.     

Parenting and toddler self-regulation in low-income families: What does sleep have to do with it?

Toddlerhood is a sensitive period in the development of self-regulation, a set of adaptive skills that are fundamental to mental health and partly shaped by parenting. Healthy sleep is known to be critical for self-regulation; yet, the degree to which child sleep alters interactive child–parent processes remains understudied. This study examines associations between observed parenting and toddler self-regulation, with toddler sleep as a moderator of this association. Toddlers in low-income families (N = 171) and their mothers were videotaped during free play and a self-regulation challenge task; videos were coded for mothers’ behavior and affect (free play) and toddlers’ self-regulation (challenge task). Mothers reported their child's nighttime sleep duration via questionnaire. Results revealed significant Sleep × Maternal Negative Affect and Sleep × Maternal Negative Control interactions. Children who did not experience negative parenting had good self-regulation regardless of their nighttime sleep duration. For children who did experience negative parenting, self-regulation was intact among those who obtained more nighttime sleep, but significantly poorer among children who were getting less nighttime sleep. Thus, among children who were reported to obtain less nighttime sleep, there were more robust associations between negative parenting and poorer self-regulation than among toddlers who were reported to obtain more sleep.     

Analyzing the latent factor structure of self-regulation in preschoolers: New directions regarding a differentiation of cool self-regulation

ABSTRACT

Self-regulation in preschool-aged children is a much-researched topic, but there are still disagreements regarding the dimensionality of the construct. Most studies distinguish between hot and cool self-regulation and consider self-regulation as two-factorial. Hot self-regulation tasks refer to the ability to adapt appropriately to emotional stimuli, while cool self-regulation tasks are emotionally neutral. Our study contributes to the understanding of self-regulation at preschool age and reveals new insights concerning a more differentiated view of cool self-regulation. With a total sample of 434 preschool-aged children, we conducted confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses that demonstrated a three-factorial solution. In accordance with the variables that determined the factor structure, we inferred one hot and two cool self-regulation dimensions. We identified a time component in task scoring as a potential reason for the differentiation in cool self-regulation. The novelty of our findings and study limitations are considered.     

Understanding of others’ knowledge in French and Japanese children: A comparative study with a disambiguation task on 16–38-month-olds

In order to explain the cultural differences reported in the results of false-belief tasks, we attempted to verify the ‘task bias hypothesis’ suggested by certain studies (e.g. Tardif et al. (2004). Journal of Child Language, 31, 779–800; Rubio-Fernandez & Geurts (2013). Psychological Science, 24(1), 27–33. doi 10.1177/0956797612447819). At the same time, we aimed to observe the theory of mind (ToM) ability of infants and young children under the age of three in verbal communication. To this end, we propose a new protocol to test young children's ToM ability, with particular attention paid to the linguistic aspect of the task. This original disambiguation task using proper nouns (first names) was tested on a total of 32 children aged between 16 and 38 months, in France and Japan. The results revealed that after the age of 30 months children begin to correctly interpret nouns while simultaneously taking into account their partner's knowledge (50% of the French and 29% of the Japanese children were successful), whereas this remains difficult for younger children (no child under 30 months was successful). The analysis of error types has shown that ‘memory bias’ was dominant in younger children in particular and ‘association bias’ was rarely observed across all ages. Given that the results of French and Japanese children did not differ significantly, we assume that this new task design could minimise the influence of cultural difference caused by the characteristics of different languages.     

The roles of self-regulation and partner regulation on romantic relationship quality

Research into self-regulation and partner regulation strategies has largely involved parallel lines of research, thus, it is difficult to determine the relative contribution of both forms of regulation when it comes to relationship outcomes. Therefore, the question remains as to which form of regulation is more strongly associated with relationship quality; is it more important to focus on adaptive self-regulation or adaptive strategies to regulate one's partner? The current research addresses this important gap by comparing the relative associations of adaptive self-regulation and adaptive partner regulation strategies on romantic relationship quality. A community sample of mixed gender couples (N = 114) who were predominantly satisfied with their current relationships – but nonetheless still experienced relationship conflict – were administered self-report assessments of various self-regulation and partner regulation strategies as well as a measure of relationship quality. Couples also participated in a videotaped discussion of an unresolved relationship issue that was scored by trained coders for verbal and nonverbal indicators of self-regulation and partner regulation strategies. Actor–partner interdependence modeling revealed that for both men and women, adaptive self-regulation strategies were positively associated with their own evaluations of relationship quality as well as their partner's relationship quality. In contrast, engaging in adaptive partner regulation strategies was not significantly associated with men's or women's own, or their partner's relationship quality. Findings highlight the importance of focusing on self-regulation in relationships, as it is these strategies, over partner regulation strategies, that have more positive implications for the relationship quality experienced by typically satisfied couples.     

Developmental differences in the use of task goals in a cued version of the stroop task

The ability of children (M= 8.8 years) and adults (M= 25.6 years) to maintain task goals was examined by comparing their performance on a cued version of the Stroop colour‐word task. The experimental task presented a cue on each trial that instructed the participant to either read aloud the forthcoming word or name the colour of the word's lettering. Participants were tested with each of two cue‐stimulus delays (1,000 and 5,000 ms). Analysis of error rates in the colour‐naming condition revealed that children experienced greater interference than adults at each of the cue‐stimulus delays. In an effort to separate the relative contributions of colour‐naming and word‐reading processes, additional analyses were performed based on the process dissociation procedure of Lindsay and Jacoby (1994) . While colour‐naming process estimates did not vary with age group or cue‐stimulus delay, word‐reading process estimates were found to vary with age group and cue‐stimulus delay. Specifically, adults were superior to children in the inhibition of irrelevant word information only during a long cue‐stimulus delay. Collectively, these findings indicate that children have difficulty maintaining task goals in order to suppress stronger, goal‐irrelevant responses.     

Attentional differences between groups of preschool children differentiated by teacher ratings of attention and hyperactivity

This study aimed to extend earlier work ( Wilding, Munir, & Cornish, 2001 ; Wilding, 2003 ) which showed that children (aged 6–15) who were rated by their teachers as having poor attentional ability made more errors on a visual search task than children rated as having good attentional ability. The present study used a simpler version of the search task which had previously been used to study attention in children with Fragile X syndrome ( Scerif, Cornish, Wilding, Driver, & Karmiloff‐Smith, 2004 ) and studied performance in normal children from a younger age group. Children aged 3 and 4 were rated by teachers for attention and hyperactivity. Regression analyses, with verbal mental age (VMA), chronological age (CA), and attention rating as independent variables, found that children with higher VMA made fewer false alarms in visual searches, as did children given a better attention rating. However, none of the independent variables was related to time or distance travelled for correct responses. The relation between attention rating and error rate was non‐linear, with the error rate increasing once the attention rating fell below the mean. The results are discussed in relation to explanations of poor attention in terms of weak inhibition.     

A lag between understanding false belief and emotion attribution in young children: Relationships with linguistic ability and mothers' mental‐state language

This study examines the contribution of children's linguistic ability and mothers' use of mental‐state language to young children's understanding of false belief and their subsequent ability to make belief‐based emotion attributions. In Experiment 1, children (N = 51) were given three belief‐based emotion‐attribution tasks. A standard task in which the protagonist was a story character and the emotional outcomes were imagined, and two videos in which the story protagonist was a real infant and the emotional outcomes were observable (high and low expressed emotion conditions). Children's verbal ability (semantic competence) was also measured. In Experiment 2, children (N = 75) were given two belief‐based emotion tasks: the standard story task and the high expressed emotion video. In addition, children's verbal ability (syntactic competence) and mothers' use of mental‐state attributes when describing their children were also measured. The results showed that: (1) the lag between understanding false belief and emotion attribution was a stable feature of children's reasoning across the three tests; and (2) children who were more linguistically advanced and whose mothers' described them in more mentalistic terms were more likely to understand the association between false belief and emotion. The findings underline the continuing importance of verbal ability and linguistic input for children's developing theory‐of‐mind understanding, even after they display an understanding of false belief.     

SENTIMENT D'AUTO-EFFICACITÉ ET EXERCICE DES PROCESSUS D'AUTORÉGULATION CHEZ DES ÉTUDIANTS DE NIVEAU COLLÉGIAL*

This study examines the influence of self-efficacy on the self-regulatory mechanisms exercised during a verbal concept formation task. High or low-self-efficacy is experimentally induced among sixty four college students who subsequently have to solve, aloud, different problems of concept formation. Self-regulation was examined based on the utilization of the cognitive strategies required to solve the task, the monitoring strategies applied over the cognitive enterprise and the metacognitive experiences emerging along the resolution. Both groups exhibite similar cognitive strategies, yet some of their monitoring strategies and metacognitive experiences are affected by their self-efficacy judgments. The nature of self-efficacy should be considered when studying the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and self-regulation as applied during the task resolution.     

Predictors of Quantitative and Qualitative Halstead Finger-Tapping Scores in Low Socioeconomic Status School-Age Children

Two hundred and thirteen low socioeconomic school-age children in grades 1 through 8 were administered the Halstead Finger Oscillation (or Tapping) Test (HFTT). All children were age appropriate for their grade in school and were not requiring special education services. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that a composite age/grade classification score, gender, and estimated level of intelligence accounted for approximately 40% of the variability in dominant and nondominant hand scores for these children (multiple R?=?.627, R ²?=?+.393 for the dominant and multiple R?=?+.607, R ²?=?+.368 for the nondominant hand). Only the age/grade level of the child (R ²?=?.168) predicted the ability to inhibit adjacent finger movements when performing the HFTT task. Regional normative data for low socioeconomic school-age children are presented. Neurodevelopmental changes in the cortical and subcortical systems underlying finger movement may account for some of the variability observed in children when performing the HFTT.