Mothers' teaching strategies and children's effortful control: A longitudinal study.

Abstract

Findings on the relation of maternal verbal teaching strategies to children's effortful control (EC; i.e., self-regulation) are limited in quantity and somewhat inconsistent. In this study, children's EC was assessed at 18, 30, and 42 months (ns = 255, 229, and 209, respectively) with adults' reports and a behavioral measure. Mothers' verbal teaching strategies were assessed while the mother and child worked on a task together. Children's general vocabulary also was measured. In a structural panel model taking into account prior levels of constructs and correlations within time, as well as the relations of EC and teaching strategies to children's vocabulary, socioeconomic status, age, and sex of the child, 18-month EC positively predicted mothers' 30-month cognitive assistance and questioning strategies and negatively predicted 30-month maternal directive strategies. In addition, high 30-month EC predicted greater 42-month maternal cognitive assistance and fewer directive strategies. Thus, mothers' teaching strategies were predicted by individual differences in self-regulatory skills, supporting potential evocative child effects on mothers' teaching strategies. Keywords effortful control; regulation; teaching strategies; socializationThe goal of this study was to examine within-and across-time bidirectional relations between young children's dispositional self-regulatory skills (i.e., effortful control) and the quality of maternal verbal strategies during teaching interactions using longitudinal models that provide a relatively strong test of potential causal relations (i.e., by controlling for initial Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nancy Eisenberg, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104. nancy.eisenberg@asu.edu. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptDev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 January 11. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript levels of constructs when predicting over time). Because of the relevance of individual differences in children's self-regulatory capacities for many domains of functioning (see below), it is important to understand the role of potential environmental influences such as parenting in the development of self-regulation, as well as to examine if children's selfregulation predicts parents' verbal interactions with their children in a teaching context. Effortful ControlRothbart and Bates (2006) defined effortful control (EC) as "the efficiency of executive attention-including the ability to inhibit a dominant response and/or to activate a subdominant response, to plan, and to detect errors" (p. 129). EC is believed to regulate temperamental reactivity; it includes the ability to willfully deploy attention (attention focusing and shifting) and inhibit or activate behavior (inhibitory and activational control, respectively). EC appears to emerge in rudimentary forms in the first year of life. For example, 6-to 7-month-olds exhibit anticipatory looking, which is view...

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