Teaching Self-Regulatory Strategies: The Importance of Model Social Group Status

• In Event: 14.022 - Sensitivity to Subtleties in Children's Early Learning and Teaching

Abstract

While research has consistently demonstrated the importance of social influences on children’s self-regulation development (McCabe, Cunnington, & Brooks-Gunn, 2004), most of the literature has focused almost exclusively on correlational studies documenting the relationship between general parental characteristics and children’s self-regulation (von Suchodoletz et al., 2011; Schweitzer & Sulzer-Azaroff, 1988; Lee et al., 2008). We recently conducted the first study to experimentally examine children’s acquisition of self-regulatory strategies from a social learning perspective (Corriveau, Min, Chin, Doan, under review).
Specifically, we explored how children’s ability to delay gratification is influenced by observation of two social cues: the adult’s communicative intent to delay, whether she stated that she would or would not wait, and the adult’s behavioral outcome, whether or not she waited. In some conditions, the cues were consistent, but in other conditions participants were exposed to conflicting information. Interestingly, the findings from the study indicate that the outcome, even in cases when it conflicted with the communicative intent, significantly predicted children’s strategy imitation and task completion, and also increased the likelihood of participants extending the strategies to a novel delay of gratification task.

In the current study, we explore the importance of another cue: the match between the social group membership of the teacher and the learner. Research indicates that children are sensitive to social group status (e.g., accent, race) when making decisions about from whom to learn (Chen, Corriveau & Harris, 2013; Corriveau, Kinzler & Harris, 2013). Learners may conclude that the skills being taught are more relevant when there is perceived similarity and affiliation with the teacher (Baylor & Kim, 2004). However, the effects of model and student match on learning outcomes are not clear. Some research indicates that teacher-student congruence improves learning outcomes (Brewer, Ehrenberg, & Goldhaber, 1994), while others show no effects (Pigott & Cowen, 2000). Importantly, research suggests that congruence matters more for minority learners than for majority-group students (Oates, 2003).
Here, we systematically examine how ethnic congruence might influence learning of self-regulatory strategies. Participants watched either an adult who was of their same or different racial group perform a delay-of-gratification task across the same four conditions in Study 1. After the observation phase, participants then completed the same task and were coded for whether they imitated the strategies, and whether they completed the task.

As of now, our sample consists of 12 four-and five-year-old (9 female and 3 male) Asian American children and 64 four-and five-year-old (35 female 29 male) White children. We are in the process of collecting data for both the in-group and out-group conditions and we will also have data from African American children before March of 2015. In the current sample we find children who observed an out-group model were less likely to imitate the strategies than children who observed an in-group model (Out-group: 16.7% imitation; In-group: 31.2% imitation) for all conditions with the exception of the Negative Communication-Negative Outcome condition.

We discuss the implications of these findings for promoting self-regulation development among minority children.

Authors

• Grace Min, Boston University

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University