Pathways from maternal effortful control to child self-regulation: The role of maternal emotional support.

Abstract

This study examined the direct and indirect pathways from maternal effortful control to two aspects of children’s self-regulation – executive functioning and behavioral regulation – via maternal emotional support. Two hundred and seventy eight children and their primary caregivers (96% mothers) participated in laboratory visits when children were 4 and 5 years, and teachers reported on children’s behavior at kindergarten. At the 4-year assessment, maternal effortful control was measured using the Adult Temperament Questionnaire (ATQ; Evans & Rothbart, 2007) and maternal emotional support was observed during a semi-structured mother-child problem-solving task. At the 5-year assessment, children’s executive functioning was measured using laboratory tasks designed to assess updating/working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, whereas behavioral regulation was assessed via teacher-report questionnaires on children’s attention control, discipline and persistence, and work habits. Results from structural equation modeling indicated that, after controlling for child gender and minority status, and maternal education, maternal effortful control was indirectly associated with both child executive functioning and behavioral regulation through maternal emotional support. Maternal effortful control had a direct association with children’s teacher-reported behavioral regulation but not observed executive functioning. These findings suggest that maternal effortful control may be a key contributing factor to the development of children’s self-regulatory competencies through its impact on maternal emotional support.

Biological and Psychosocial Processes in the Development of Children’s Appetitive Traits: Insights from Developmental Theory and Research

“…What would be beneficial is not just research on how self-regulation influences eating and weight or what contributes to self-regulation of energy intake, but attention to the developmental course of self-regulation of energy intake over the early years. Zeytinoglu et al [ 178 ] noted that “by 5 years of age, most children demonstrate an increasing capacity for regulating their own arousal, attention, emotional responses, cognitive processes, and goal-oriented behaviors” (p. 170). Advances in child executive functioning in early childhood could initiate a cascade of effects on parenting and contribute to beneficial effects for children [ 86 ].…”

Contributions of mothers’ and fathers’ parenting to children's self‐regulation: Evidence from an adoption study

“…Although earlier studies largely relied upon cross-sectional designs, longitudinal studies have supported and extended these findings by showing that parenting behavior contributes to the intergenerational transmission of executive functioning (e.g., Cuevas et al, 2014). Likewise, longitudinal findings also demonstrate the effects of maternal effortful control on maternal parenting (e.g., Bridgett, Laake, Gartstein, & Dorn, 2013), and have implicated maternal caregiving behavior in the intergenerational transmission of effortful control (Zeytinoglu, Calkins, Swingler, & Leerkes, 2017). Moreover, experimental animal models support the mostly correlational findings that have appeared in the human literature (e.g., Afonso, Sison, Lovic, & Fleming, 2007;Lovic & Fleming, 2004).…”

Maternal behavior predicts neural underpinnings of inhibitory control in preschoolers

“…One possibility is that mothers who are more emotionally supportive may also exhibit more appropriate IC behavior and strategies themselves that children can model in their own behavior. Support for this idea comes from recent work demonstrating that maternal self‐report of effortful control, defined as a process that enables one to voluntarily shift and focus attention and inhibit or activate a response, predicted observed measures of maternal emotional support during mother–child interaction in the preschool period (Zeytinoglu et al, ). A second possibility is that mothers with greater IC may pass this capacity to their children biologically, as EFs have been identified as among the most heritable psychological traits (Friedman et al, ).…”

“…Although the development of IC across the preschool period is clearly supported by normative brain development, recent theoretical and empirical work has suggested that developing EF skills are also influenced by the child's caregiving environment (Bernier et al, 2010;Towe-Goodman et al, 2014;Valcan et al, 2017;Zeytinoglu, Calkins, Swingler, & Leerkes, 2017). Given that the development of IC depends heavily on underlying neural development also occurring in the preschool period, one way in which the environment may impact the development of IC abilities is through an influence on neural processes which support them.…”

“…Several studies have examined motherchild interaction in the context of joint problem-solving tasks as a way of examining the role of maternal behavior on child cognitive and emotional development and associated outcomes. This work has demonstrated that maternal behavior in these contexts predicts child performance on tasks measuring EF abilities like IC (e.g., Blair et al, 2011;Conway & Stifter, 2012;Cuevas et al, 2014 2014; Rogoff, 1990;Zeytinoglu et al, 2017). In particular, maternal use of emotional support, defined as encouraging autonomy, providing positivity, encouragement, and praise when needed, and helping the child to manage frustration and negativity, has been shown to uniquely relate to these, even when other aspects of parenting behavior like cognitive support and general emotional responsiveness were also measured (Leerkes et al, 2011;Valcan et al, 2017;Zeytinoglu, Calkins, & Leerkes, 2018).…”