Stability and Variation of Children’s Self-Regulation in Classroom Contexts

• In Event: Examining Variability of Young Children’s Self-Regulation Across Context: Findings From Naturalistic Approaches in Four Countries

Abstract

Self-regulation encompasses regulating emotions, thoughts and attention (McClelland & Cameron, 2012). Children’s ability to self-regulate can be explained with the bidirectional model of self-regulation (Blair & Ursache, 2011). On one hand, children’s executive functions, the cognitive processes that support self-regulation, assist top-down regulatory processes. On the other hand, factors such as stress, emotional arousal or noise influence children’s ability to regulate from a bottom-up direction (Blair & Ursache, 2011). Researchers typically assume that children’s self-regulations are relatively stable across different contexts. Little is known about intraindividual differences of children’s ability to apply self-regulation in various contexts. The aim of this paper is to explore children’s intraindividual differences in applying their self-regulation in contexts where they are supported by their teachers and free play where they are guiding their own behavior.
The sample consists of N = 174 4- to 5-year-old children (52.9% girls) from low-income schools in the United Kingdom. Children were videoed during regular teacher-led and child-led activities in their classroom and the recorded behavior was subsequently coded with a measure capturing children’s self-regulation (McCoy et al., 2017). Children also participated in a comprehensive executive function task battery at the beginning and at the end of the school year.
Observational data indicated that some children show stability across different contexts; whereas other children show larger variation. The variation could be explained by contextual or child factors. Preliminary analysis indicated that children who started the school year with higher levels of executive functions showed less variation across contexts (rs = -.22, p = .006). Children who had higher concurrent executive function abilities also indicated more stability (rs = -.22, p = .008). Contextual factors such as schedule or the type of activities that children were involved in were not associated with children’s self-regulation. This suggests that children with higher levels of executive functions show more stability across different contexts and can deal with a variety of situations. Children with lower levels of executive functions in turn seem to show more variation indicating that their ability to regulate their behavior might be influenced by other context related factors. Referring to the bidirectional model of self-regulation (Blair & Ursache, 2011), children with higher levels of executive functions might be better equipped to deal with a variety of bottom-up influence factors making their performance across contexts more stable. This suggests that children with lower levels of executive functions could benefit from less challenging environments or additional support from their teachers.

Authors

• Janina Eberhart, University of Tübingen
  Presenting Author

• Sara Baker, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author