Origins of Effortful Control: Infant and Parent Contributions

Abstract

Effortful control (EC) refers to the ability to inhibit a dominant response to perform a subdominant one and has been shown as protective against a myriad of difficulties. Research examining precursors of EC has been limited to date, and in this study, infancy contributors to toddler EC were examined. Specifically, parent/family background variables (e.g., education, income), maternal temperament, perceived stress, and internalizing symptoms were addressed, along with infant temperament: positive affectivity/surgency (PAS), negative emotionality (NE), and regulatory capacity/orienting (RCO); and laboratory observation-based indicators of attention. Infant attention indexed by the latency to look away after initially orienting to the presented stimuli emerged as an important predictor of later EC, after accounting for other child and parent/family attributes, with shorter latencies predicting higher levels of EC. Mothers’ extraversion and parenting stress were the only parent/family attributes to significantly contribute to the prediction of toddler EC, with the former promoting and the latter undermining the development of EC. Infant temperament factors were also examined as a moderator of parent/family influences, with results indicating a significant interaction between mothers’ EC and infant RCO, so that children with greater RCO and mothers high in EC exhibited the highest EC scores in toddlerhood.

The Development of Infant Temperament and Its Relationship With Maternal Temperament

“…Second, therefore, we also examined the relationships between different dimensions of maternal and child temperament. Thus far, some evidence for influences of maternal positive emotion on the child's effortful control and the infant's negative emotion has been reported (Gartstein, Bridgett, Young, Panksepp, & Power, 2012;Mangelsdorf, Gunnar, Kestenbaum, Lang, & Andreas, 1990;Valiente et al, 2006).…”

El rol predictor de la regulación emocional, la empatía y la alexitimia en el control intencional de niños y niñas de educación inicial

“…El predictor más evidente del desarrollo del control intencional es la edad (Gartstein et al, 2013), dado que el control intencional está vinculado a la red atencional ejecutiva (Petersen y Posner, 2012), que sigue un patrón madurativo establecido (Posner y Rothbart, 2007).…”

“…El sexo, por otro lado, no juega un papel predictor relevante (Gartstein et al, 2013), aunque en un metanálisis de 205 estudios y 1758 tamaños del efecto, Else-Quest, Hyde, Goldsmith y Van Hulle (2006) encontraron diferencias relevantes entre hombres y mujeres. Otras variables como el nivel socioeconómico de la familia y la educación total de la madre no alcanzan valores significativos (Gartstein et al, 2013).…”

“…Otras variables como el nivel socioeconómico de la familia y la educación total de la madre no alcanzan valores significativos (Gartstein et al, 2013).…”

“…Asimismo, otras tendencias conductuales en la infancia como la latencia para retirar la mirada de un objeto (i.e. tiempo de mirada a un estímulo) y la dirección de la atención en la infancia son también predictores significativos (Gartstein et al, 2013). Sin embargo, podría argüirse que estas mediciones atencionales son mediciones de control intencional en sí y por tanto, no son predictores en sentido estricto, sino dos mediciones de un mismo constructo.…”