A Developmental Hierarchical‐Integrative Perspective on the Emergence of Self‐Regulation: A Replication and Extension

Abstract

This study replicated and extended the Feldman ( 2009) study by applying the developmental hierarchical-integrative model to understand the emergence of self-regulation. Participants included 360 children (48.6% boys; 62.8% identified as Caucasian and 36.9% African American) and their families, predominantly from a low-income, rural background. Families completed assessments on child physiological, attention, emotion, and selfregulation when children were 6-, 15-, 24-, and 36-month-old, when caregiver sensitivity was observationally assessed. A path model revealed that child attention regulation at 6 months predicted physiological regulation at 15 months, and child attention regulation at 15 months predicted emotion regulation at 24 months. Attention regulation at 24 months predicted better self-regulation at 36 months. Notably, caregiver sensitivity moderated several developmental pathways. Findings support a continuous model of early self-regulation development and the ongoing individual-environment interplay in early childhood.All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.No conflict of interest was disclosed by the authors.

A Hierarchical Integrated Model of Self-Regulation

“…Feldman (2009) demonstrated in a preterm sample including 125 participants followed from birth longitudinally until age 5 years a hierarchical sequential progression from physiological and emotion regulation in infancy to the regulation of attention in the toddler period and at age 5, increased executive function and reduced behavior problems, and the ability to show restraint in the presence of an enticing wrapped gift. Wu et al (2021) replicated and extended Feldman's (2009) findings to a normative low-income sample using data from a subsample of participants in the Family Life Project (FLP) who were randomly selected for longitudinal electrocardiogram data collection (n = 400 but resulted in n = 360 because of missingness). Extending Feldman's (2009) model in which one component of self-regulation predicted another component, Wu et al's (2021) autoregressive and cross-lagged model allowed for the investigation of possible interconnectedness and reciprocal relationships among various components of self-regulation, each of which was measured repeatedly from 6 through 36 months.…”

“…Wu et al ( 2021 ) replicated and extended Feldman's ( 2009 ) findings to a normative low-income sample using data from a subsample of participants in the Family Life Project (FLP) who were randomly selected for longitudinal electrocardiogram data collection ( n = 400 but resulted in n = 360 because of missingness). Extending Feldman's ( 2009 ) model in which one component of self-regulation predicted another component, Wu et al's ( 2021 ) autoregressive and cross-lagged model allowed for the investigation of possible interconnectedness and reciprocal relationships among various components of self-regulation, each of which was measured repeatedly from 6 through 36 months. This analysis also demonstrated a hierarchical sequential development of self-regulation but in this instance the regulation of attention in early infancy at 6 months was related to physiological regulation measured by a combination of respiratory sinus arrhythmia and heart rate in later infancy at 15 months.…”

Developmental foundations of physiological dynamics among mother–infant dyads: The role of newborn neurobehavior

“…Hierarchical regression models showed that higher levels of neonatal attention (i.e., ability to attend and respond to environmental stimuli) predicted a continued withdrawal of RSA during reunion, suggesting that these infants might take longer to recover from the stress of the still‐face episode. This result is surprising because we had hypothesized the opposite pattern based on the extant literature on the role of high attention in facilitating the development of regulatory abilities (Rothbart et al, 2011; Stępień‐Nycz et al, 2015; Wu et al, 2021). One explanation is that the stressor used in the present study is an attachment‐relevant stressor (i.e., the psychological separation from a caregiver that is the source of infants’ stress).…”

Psychometric Properties of the Italian Version of Sensory Processing and Self-Regulation Checklist (SPSRC)

“…This finding is in line with previous studies that suggested long and complex maturation trajectories, both with regard to selfregulation abilities [19] and with regard to sensory integration processes [20][21][22], between 3 and 8 years. As a matter of fact, the maturation of attention regulatory functions in response to stimuli from the surrounding environment follows the development of emotion regulation and also vice versa; thus, during the preschool years, children are gradually more able to internalize the behavioural expectations imposed by their environments because they can perform more complicated tasks that require more ability to process sensory stimuli [23]. Nevertheless, these processes are very long and evolve thanks to the relationships with other people, in school, across life transitions, and throughout their lifespan [24].…”