This study is a descriptive report of the capability to exercise self-control in very young children. 2 aspects of self-control were assessed (delay/response inhibition in the presence of an attractive stimulus and compliance with maternal directives in a cleanup task) for 72 children between the ages of 18 and 30 months. The results indicated that both aspects of self-control show age-related increases. However, a factor analysis of the behaviors observed in the cleanup task suggested that compliance could not be adequately described with a unitary, bipolar dimension (noncompliance vs. compliance). 2 patterns of non-compliance were observed, and 1 of these also increased with age. Cross-task consistency for the delay measures) and coherence across the 2 aspects of self-control showed a positive relationship with increasing age. Finally, correlational analyses of the self-control measures and developmental test data showed that individual differences in self-control were associated with differences in cognitive-developmental status (DA). The results are interpreted as evidence that the achievement of self-control can be considered as a major developmental accomplishment and as evidence that individual differences in self-control emerge and are consolidated during the second and third years of life.

This study is a descriptive report of the capability to exercise self-control in very young children. 2 aspects of self-control were assessed (delay/response inhibition in the presence of an attractive stimulus and compliance with maternal directives in a cleanup task) for 72 children between the ages of 18 and 30 months. The results indicated that both aspects of self-control show age-related increases. However, a factor analysis of the behaviors observed in the cleanup task suggested that compliance could not be adequately described with a unitary, bipolar dimension (noncompliance vs. compliance). 2 patterns of non-compliance were observed, and 1 of these also increased with age. Cross-task consistency for the delay measures) and coherence across the 2 aspects of self-control showed a positive relationship with increasing age. Finally, correlational analyses of the self-control measures and developmental test data showed that individual differences in self-control were associated with differences in cognitive-developmental status (DA). The results are interpreted as evidence that the achievement of self-control can be considered as a major developmental accomplishment and as evidence that individual differences in self-control emerge and are consolidated during the second and third years of life.

In Kopp's model of self-regulation, 2-year-old children are consolidating cognitive advances, which enable them to elaborate a sense of self. These advances also enhance the capacity to control behavior in response to demands from the environment. With increasing age, advances in self-control capacity are expected, and these increases are accompanied by the use of behavioral "strategies" serving to help the child maintain self-control. In this article, two studies are presented that describe the behavior of very young children in tasks demanding self-control. In Study 1,27 2-year-olds were observed in one task. Behavior during the task was described using a 10-category coding system, and proportion scores derived from the 10-category coding system were correlated with total time in the task. Five of the 10 correlations were significant. Behaviors bringing the goal into attention were negatively correlated with total delay time, whereas behaviors taking the goal out of attention tended to be positively associated with delay. In Study 2, 82 children between the ages of 24 and 36 months were observed in three delay tasks. The behavioral strategy studied was "directing attention away" from the goal object during delay periods. Significant effects were found for age and task type. When the sample was divided into "shorter" versus "longer" waiters, we found that the longer waiters looked away from the goal for a larger proportion of the time (than did shorter waiters). These results suggest that very young children use implicit strategies for controlling their behavior in the face of a social demand.By 18 to 24 months of age, developmental changes are becoming consolidated, which enable children to construct and elaborate a sense of self. Advances in language capacity, mental representation, classification, and memory (e.g., Brown, 1973;DeLoache & Brown, 1984;Myers & Perlmutter, 1978;Sugarman, 1983) all enhance the child's emerging skills for controlling and regulating ongoing behavior so as to comply with demands from the social and physical environments. With increasing age, both the capacity for self-control and the consistency with which control is exercised are expected to increase (e.g., Vaughn, Kopp, & Krakow, 1984). Recently, Kopp

The development of developmentally delayed young children is similar to that of normal children in sequence and organization. The hypothesis of this research was that delayed children do differ from the norm when tasks involve discerning nuances, balancing competing stimuli, or acquiring and retaining selected information. Using a videotaped free-play situation, we examined attention deployment behaviors of 3 groups: normally developing (ND), Down syndrome (DS), and developmentally delayed with uncertain etiology (UE). Gesell DQ scores ranged from 50 to 75 in the latter 2 samples. In Study 1, infants had developmental ages of 12-24 months. The UE subjects spent less time engaged with toys than ND or DS subjects, and both delayed groups had less simultaneous appraisal of the environment, more time unoccupied in any way, and more throwing behavior than the ND group. In Study 2, at the 22-30-month developmental age range, DS and UE subjects had patterns of play that included many primitive activities such as banging and mouthing. Taken together, the results show reductions in ongoing acquisition and elaboration of information during play; these in turn may have significant developmental ramifications.

No abstract