Mothers’ efforts to extrinsically regulate toddlers during a frustrating wait: Immediate and longitudinal associations with toddlers' self-regulation
Open Access
- Author:
- LeDonne, Emily N
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 18, 2015
- Committee Members:
- Pamela Marie Cole, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Pamela Marie Cole, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Ginger A Moore, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Alysia Blandon, Committee Member
Nilam Ram, Special Member - Keywords:
- self-regulation
early childhood
multilevel modeling
observational data
maternal structuring
wait task - Abstract:
- Multiple theoretical perspectives define self-regulation as a dynamic process characterized by deploying executive processes (EP) to limit, modulate, or change initial, automatic, or habitual prepotent responses (PR). As such, it is most strongly inferred when change in PR is shown to occur as a function of EP (Cole & Ram, 2015). Prevailing theory posits that self-regulation develops in early childhood as a result of parents’ sensitive efforts to support children’s emerging self-regulation (Kopp, 1982). Yet, few studies have explicitly tested parenting effects using dynamic (i.e., time-series) measures of children’s EP and PR and parenting behaviors as they unfold during situations designed to tax children’s regulatory skills. This dissertation addresses this gap in the early childhood literature by modeling associations between children’s EP and PR behaviors during a waiting task. We tested whether the association between 24 month-old children’s EP and PR was strengthened by mothers’ efforts to extrinsically support children’s EP during the task. An expected inverse relation emerged between children’s EP and PR (Cole, Bendezú, Ram, & Chow, unpublished manuscript). However, contrary to expectations, children’s EP and the strength of the association between children’s EP and PR decreased in the context of mothers’ efforts to support children’s regulation; furthermore, within-task estimates of mothers’ influence on children’s self-regulation did not predict children’s self-regulation at 36 months of age. Associations between children’s PR and EP at 24 months were not moderated by children’s gender, temperament, maternal education, or family income. Results are discussed in terms of implications and directions for future research.