Poster #182 - Emotional and Cognitive Predictors of Learning Engagement Across the Transition to School

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - School Readiness/Childcare

Integrative Statement

Although current research strongly supports the importance of young children’s engagement with learning for future school adjustment and academic achievement (e.g., Ladd & Dinella, 2009), less is known about the factors that promote learning engagement in young children. Executive functioning, emotion regulation, and social-cognitive understanding are three factors that may influence how children engage with learning. Executive functioning may allow children to attend to and transition between tasks, recall expectations, and work strategically; the ability to regulate emotions may promote persistence and on-task behavior during boring, frustrating, or challenging tasks and contexts; and social-cognitive understanding may help children understand the needs, desires, and goals of teachers and peers. We examined these factors in relation to learning engagement from preschool through first grade in a single model, which allowed us to control for correlations among these areas of functioning and explore the comparative effect of each on engagement.

Children (N=278, 55% females, 59% European American) were recruited as part of a longitudinal study investigating predictors of school adjustment. Learning engagement, emotion regulation, and executive functioning were assessed at preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Learning engagement was measured as a composite of six behaviors (attention to instructions, on-task behavior, persistence, enthusiasm/energy, monitoring/strategy use, and negative affect-reversed), observed during two learning-based tasks. Emotion regulation was measured as a composite of observed emotion regulation (global regulation, verbal negativity & latency to distress) and mother-reported emotional reactivity. Executive functioning was measured as a composite of working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. Social-cognitive understanding, assessed at preschool only, was measured as a composite of labeling emotions, affective perspective taking, theory of mind, and display rules.

The effects of social-cognitive understanding, emotion regulation, and executive functioning on learning engagement were examined by a longitudinal structural equation model that demonstrated acceptable fit (See Figure 1, X2=36.344, df=16, p<.01; RMSEA=.075 [.042, .107], CFI=.949, SRMR=.071). After controlling for age, income-to-needs ratio, and minority status, learning engagement in kindergarten was positively associated with preschool emotion regulation (B=.06, SE=.03, p=.04). Preschool social-cognitive understanding (B=.07, SE=.04, p=.08) and executive functioning (B=.07, SE=.04, p=.07) also demonstrated a marginal positive effect on kindergarten learning engagement. Learning engagement in first grade was positively associated with emotion regulation in both preschool (B=.10, SE=.03, p=.001) and kindergarten (B=.07, SE=.03, p=.01) but not with social-cognitive understanding or executive functioning at either time point.

The results indicate that learning engagement is supported by children’s early emotion regulation skills. When all three predictors were investigated in the same model, emotion regulation predicted learning engagement over and above executive functioning and social-cognitive understanding in kindergarten and first grade, whereas executive functioning and social-cognitive understanding were only marginally associated with learning engagement in kindergarten. Moreover, as emotion regulation in preschool was associated with first grade engagement even after considering kindergarten emotion regulation, a child’s ability to regulate emotion before the start of school may have particularly enduring ramifications for children’s engagement with learning. Promoting young children’s early emotion regulation skills may therefore encourage greater learning engagement into early elementary school.

Authors

• Simone Halliday, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Selin Zeytinoglu, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elif Isbell, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Calkins, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Esther Leerkes, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author