Parent Provision of Choice Is a Key Component of Autonomy Support in Predicting Child Executive Function Skills

Abstract

Although previous work has linked parent autonomy support to the development of children’s executive function (EF) skills, the role of specific autonomy-supportive behaviors has not been thoroughly investigated. We compiled data from four preschool-age samples in the Midwestern United States (N = 366; M age = 44.26 months; 72% non-Hispanic White, 19% Black/African American, 5% Multiracial) to examine three relevant autonomy-supportive behaviors (supporting competence, positive verbalizations, and offering choice) and their associations with child EF. We coded parent autonomy-supportive behaviors from a 10-min interaction between parent and child dyads working on challenging jigsaw puzzles together. Children completed a battery of EF. Overall, child EF was most consistently correlated with the offering choice subscale. Additionally, only the offering choice subscale predicted child EF while controlling for the other autonomy support subscales and child age. These results suggest that parent provision of choice is an especially relevant aspect of autonomy-supportive parenting and may be important to the development of EF in early childhood. Future research should directly measure children’s experience with choice and how it relates to emerging EF.

Let Me Choose: The Role of Choice in the Development of Executive Function Skills

“…Previous research points to a robust association between autonomy-supportive parenting and early childhood EF, above and beyond other positive parenting behaviors (Valcan et al, 2018), although longitudinal associations are not always found (Hughes et al, 2020). As reviewed in Castelo et al (2022), my students and I found this relation includes fathers and homeless families. Furthermore, we discovered that autonomy-supportive behaviors mediate the concurrent link between a parent’s own EF and their child’s EF, supporting the idea of intergenerational transmission of self-regulation through parenting behaviors (Deater-Deckard, 2014).…”

“…This pertained across mothers and fathers and diverse race and SES samples, with correlations ranging from .22 to .43. The Supporting Competence subscale of autonomy support also was significantly related to child EF, however, only the Offering Choice subscale predicted children’s EF over and above age and the other autonomy support subscales (Castelo et al, 2022). Hence, although positive and autonomy-supportive parenting behaviors tend to co-occur, to the extent that they can be disentangled, provision of choice appears to play a key role for EF development.…”

“…Most investigations of autonomy-supportive parenting and child EF report results for an overall autonomy support score using this task, which does not provide insight into which aspect is most strongly related to EF. We reanalyzed our data across several studies ( N = 366 dyads) on the main subscales separately: Supporting Competence, Positive Verbalizations, and Offering Choice (Castelo et al, 2022). Examples of this last subscale include the caregiver asking which puzzle to begin with, which piece fits better, and whether to do another puzzle if they completed the first one.…”

Moulding environmental contexts to optimise neurodiverse executive function performance and development: A goodness‐of‐fit account

“…In the light of the above, we can consider the role of caregivers as a particularly important aspect of the child's environment, as they have the potential to moderate the dynamic interactions between the child and their environmental context (Bronfenbrenner, 1977, 2005). Several studies have illustrated that a parenting style which values child autonomy, taking the child's perspective, and providing them with choices is associated with higher child EF performance (Castelo et al, 2021; Distefano et al, 2018; Meuwissen & Carlson, 2019), while educators who foster goodness‐of‐fit in relationships with children by adjusting their teaching approach to match the temperament and interests of each individual child, lay the foundations for strong cognitive and social–emotional development (Driscoll & Pianta, 2010; Keogh, 1986; O'Connor et al, 2014; Vandenbroucke et al, 2018). Consistent with this, frustration induced in classroom settings has been shown to generate intra‐individual differences in actualised EF sufficient to overshadow underlying differences in upper‐limit EF (Pnevmatikos & Trikkaliotis, 2013), while high self‐reported levels of school belonging are associated with higher working memory performance among adolescents (Wang et al, 2021).…”

Impasses in the wild: Autonomy support in naturalistic, parent-child outdoor play

“…Parents rated on these dimensions might be instructed to let the child do as much as he/she can, and help only when needed (Meuwissen and Carlson, 2018). This rating system has been employed in several studies (Bernier et al, 2010;Matte-Gagné and Bernier, 2011;Whipple et al, 2011;Matte-Gagné et al, 2013;Meuwissen and Carlson, 2015, 2018, 2019Distefano et al, 2018), and autonomy supportive parenting has been linked to children's improved executive functioning and academic achievement (Bernier et al, 2010;Fay-Stammbach et al, 2014;Bindman et al, 2015;Distefano et al, 2018;Castelo et al, 2021).…”