Early Self-Regulation and Long-Term Outcomes: Why Does Childhood Self-Regulation Predict Adult Success?

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

The proposed panel can significantly advance our understanding of the role that early self-regulation plays in shaping long-term developmental trajectories. The panel would include three papers that each rely on longitudinal datasets with diverse samples. The first paper conceptually replicates the highly-cited Moffitt et al. (2011) findings that link childhood self-control to adult outcomes. Using two prospective longitudinal datasets (i.e., SECCYD from the US and the NCDS from the UK), the authors probe the previously-reported findings by testing whether relations between early self-control and adult success extend to different developmental stages or various sub-domains of self-control. The second paper complements the first by testing whether the famous Marshmallow Test, administered at age 4, predicts a broad set of age 26 outcomes in the aforementioned SECCYD dataset. The final paper challenges our current theoretical understanding of these predictive findings by evaluating the factor structure of various early skills and capacities using longitudinal data from the Chicago School Readiness Project. This study relied on a sample of minoritized youth growing up in low-income neighborhoods to examine whether key measures of educational attainment are best explained by a general factor of school readiness skills across domains of self-regulation, achievement, and executive function. These findings suggest that self-regulation may draw its predictive power from shared variance with other domains of early skills and capacities. The symposium will include comments from a Discussant who is an expert in early childhood education and self-regulation, and will feature presentations from a diverse group of doctoral students.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chair

• Tyler Watts, Teachers College, Columbia University

Discussant

• Dana Charles McCoy, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Behavioral Regulation Problems in Childhood Predict Adult Financial Status, Health, and Criminal Activity: A Conceptual Replication and Extension of Moffitt et al. (2011) Using Cohorts from the U.S. and the U.K. - Presenting Author: Andrew E. Koepp, University of Texas at Austin; Tyler Watts, Teachers College, Columbia University; Elizabeth T. Gershoff, University of Texas at Austin; Sammy Ahmed, University of Rhode Island; Pamela Davis-Kean, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor; Greg J Duncan, University of California, Irvine; Megan Kuhfeld, NWEA; Deborah Lowe Vandell, University of California - Irvine

• Gratification Delay and Adult Outcomes: Does the Marshmallow Test predict adult functioning? - Presenting Author: Jessica Sperber, Columbia University; Deborah Lowe Vandell, University of California - Irvine; Greg J Duncan, University of California, Irvine; Tyler Watts, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Reconceptualizing the factor structure of school readiness: A bifactor model - Presenting Author: Xinyu Pan, Columbia University; Caroline Botvin, Columbia University; Tyler Watts, Teachers College, Columbia University