Red Light, Purple Light! Results of an Intervention to Promote School Readiness for Children From Low-Income Backgrounds

Abstract

Considerable research has examined interventions that facilitate school readiness skills in young children. One intervention, Red Light, Purple Light Circle Time Games (RLPL; Tominey and McClelland, 2011; Schmitt et al., 2015), includes music and movement games that aim to foster self-regulation skills. The present study (N = 157) focused on children from families with low-income and compared the RLPL intervention (SR) to a revised version of RLPL that included literacy and math content (SR+) and a Business-As-Usual (BAU) control group. In both versions of the intervention, teachers were trained to administer the self-regulation intervention in preschool classrooms with coaching support. Although not statistically significant, children receiving either version of the intervention gained more in self-regulation on the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS) over the preschool year compared to the BAU group (β = 0.09, p = 0.082, Cohen’s d = 0.31). Effect sizes were similar to previous studies (Schmitt et al., 2015; Duncan et al., 2018) and translated to a 21% difference in self-regulation over and above the BAU group at post-test. Furthermore, children participating in either version of the intervention gained significantly more in math across the school year compared to children in the BAU group (β = 0.14; p = 0.003, Cohen’s d = 0.38), which translated to a 24% difference in math over and above the BAU group at post-test. Results were somewhat stronger for the SR+ version, although effect sizes across intervention conditions were comparable. There were no statistically significant differences across groups for literacy skills. Results extend previous research and suggest that the RLPL intervention, which includes an explicit focus on self-regulation through music and movement games, may improve children’s self-regulation and math scores over the preschool year.

Children’s Self-Regulation in Norway and the United States: The Role of Mother’s Education and Child Gender Across Cultural Contexts

“…There are many ways to stimulate children’s early self-regulation, and prior research has shown that social play ( Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2011 ) as well as teacher-initiated games targeting self-regulation improves children’s self-regulation ( McClelland et al, 2019 ). However, as girls and boys are likely to select different activities when the learning environment is unstructured, the varying experiences could promote self-regulation differently in girls compared to boys.…”

Everyday Practices and Activities to Improve Pre-school Self-Regulation: Cluster RCT Evaluation of the PRSIST Program

“…A compromise between these options, however, could involve mentoring and coaching, which may expedite and strengthen educators' self-efficacy and fidelity in implementation. Indeed, there is ample evidence for the effectiveness of mentoring and coaching when attempting to influence the practices of the current educator workforce (Lambert et al, 2015), and this form of induction is a common feature of other curricular approaches (Barnett et al, 2008;McClelland et al, 2019). However, further research is needed to evaluate whether similar benefits would confer if applied to the PRSIST Program.…”

“…For instance, the Red Light, Purple Light Circle Time Games Program (Tominey and McClelland, 2011) organizes children into small-to-large playgroups for 20 min, twice per week, during which children play one of five group games that invoke self-regulatory challenge (e.g., doing the opposite of a natural response, such as dancing slow to a fast song). Evaluations have shown feasibility and benefit, such as increases in self-regulation for children initially low in self-regulation (Tominey and McClelland, 2011), and improvement in literacy (Tominey and McClelland, 2011;Schmitt et al, 2015) and math (McClelland et al, 2019). Other programs, such as Kids in Transition to School (KITS), have shown similar success when integrating selfregulation activities (as well as early literacy and prosocial skills) into group activities for children with developmental disabilities (Pears et al, 2015).…”

Promoting EF With Preschool Interventions: Lessons Learned From 15 Years of Conducting Large-Scale Studies

“…These interventions provide children with repeated opportunities to train on EF exercises or tasks, theorizing that short-term improvements in performance on an EF task will generalize to more global improvements in self-regulation (Posner et al, 2006 ). Programs use either direct EF tasks (often in more lab-based settings) or EF games (for e.g., Red Light/Purple Light; McClelland et al, 2019 ) to achieve this purpose. Studies demonstrate that training on a specific EF task may lead to improvements in task performance (Klingberg et al, 2002 ; McClelland et al, 2019 ; Scionti et al, 2020 ).…”