Observed Peer Problems Moderate Links between Self-Regulation and Academic Achievement in Preschool

• In Event: 1-214 - Self-Regulation and Early School Success: New Perspectives and Methodologies

Integrative Statement

Early school achievement lays the groundwork for subsequent trajectories of academic, social, and economic success (e.g., Duncan et al., 2007; Ursache, Blair, & Raver, 2012), yet little is known about the mechanisms through which children’s self-regulation and peer functioning in the classroom interactively contribute to achievement outcomes. Links between children’s self-regulatory capacities are associated with academic achievement (Blair, Granger, & Razza, 2005; Lin, Lawrence, & Gorrell, 2003). Early peer problems have implications for socio-emotional, cognitive, and academic development (Rubin, Bukowski, & Bowker, 2015), and such negative peer experiences as rejection are associated with poor academic functioning (Schwartz, Gorman, Nakamoto, & Toblin, 2005). The current study contributes to this literature by examining the extent to which peer functioning in the classroom (e.g., sociability and communication) moderates the relations between self-regulation and academic performance. Using data from a sample of 102 preschoolers, the current study uses an innovative approach to observationally assessing children’s peer interactions in the classroom using the Individualized Classroom Assessment Scoring System (inCLASS; Downer, Booren, Lima, Luckner, & Pianta, 2010) and assessments of children’s self-regulation included research assistants’ reports of observed behaviors across executive functioning and challenge tasks (Smith-Donald, Raver, Hayes, & Richardson, 2007). We examined the extent to which observed peer problems moderate the links between children’s self-regulation and performance on the Letter-Word (i.e., broad reading) and Applied Problem (i.e., broad math) clusters on the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement (WJ-III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001).
Preliminary confirmatory factor models guided our use of observed peer sociability, peer communication, peer conflict, and peer assertiveness as an indicator of peer functioning in preschool, var(η) = .77, p < .01; γ = .84 - .96. Next, variables were centered to aid interpretation and hierarchical path models were estimated using Mplus 7.1 (Muthén, 2002) to test hypothesized direct and interactive associations. Full information maximum likelihood was used to account for missingness (Enders & Bandalos, 2001). Children’s gender, ethnicity, and family income were included as covariates; the Letter-Word and Applied Problem clusters were allowed to covary as outcomes. Significant main effect associations indicated that children’s self-regulation, but not peer functioning, significantly predicted both the Letter-Word and Applied Problem clusters, β = .45, p < .01 and β = .42, p < .01, respectively. Tests of moderating relations yielded significant interactions between observed peer functioning and self-regulation in the prediction of applied-problem performance, β = -.27, p < .01, but not letter-word performance. Simple slopes analyses (Figure 1) revealed that the positive association between children’s attention/impulse control and performance on the applied problems cluster of the WJ-III was significant only for children demonstrating low scores on the observed measure of peer functioning. Findings support the notion that various aspects of the classroom environment, and in this case that adaptive peer functioning, may support poor academic performance for children with poorer self-regulation, and that the combination of low observed peer functioning and low self-regulation may constitute risk for poor achievement during the transition to formal schooling.

Authors

• Nicholas Wagner, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Christina Danko, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer L Coffman, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cathi Propper, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author