The relation between early self-regulation and classroom context: The role of adult presence, the task's source of initiation, and social context.

BACKGROUND: Recent research emphasizes the role of the classroom context in promoting self-regulation development. However, the results are equivocal. Additionally, research tends to focus on studying the two extremes of classroom contexts (e.g., teacher fully involved vs. teacher absent during a task), which does not represent the everyday reality of the classroom. AIMS: To explore the extent to which children's self-regulation differs across activities with different instructional characteristics, while adopting a fine-grained approach, which explores the middle ground between the two extremes of classroom contexts. SAMPLE: The participants were 36 children aged 6-8 (50% female). METHODS: The children participated in a variety of activities in classroom contexts that differed in terms of: (1) level of teacher involvement, (2) whether activities were teacher-initiated and -led or child-initiated and -led, and (3) social context, that is, individual, pair, or group tasks. More than 15,000 micro-episodes of self-regulatory behaviours were coded, based on the C.Ind.Le coding framework. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The classroom context had an effect on children's self-regulation rates. The children showed significantly more self-regulation when the teacher was absent, compared to involved in the activity, and more self-regulation when the teacher was involved compared to just present. More self-regulation was evident when the activity was either completely teacher-initiated and led or child-initiated and led, compared to teacher-initiated but child-led. Finally, the rate of self-regulation was significantly higher in pair and individual activities, compared to larger-group activities. These findings could support policy and practice to promote contexts that encourage self-regulatory development.

Emotion regulation and well-being in primary classrooms situated in low-socioeconomic communities.

BACKGROUND: Although emotion is central to most models of children's well-being, few studies have looked at how well-being is related to the ways in which children regulate their emotions. AIMS: The aim of this study was to examine the associations among children's emotion regulation strategy choice and their emotional expression, behaviour, and well-being. The study also investigated whether contextual factors influenced the emotion regulation strategies children chose to use. SAMPLE: Participants (N = 33) were selected from four Year 5/6 composite classrooms situated in low-socioeconomic urban communities in New Zealand. METHOD: Questionnaires were used to measure children's well-being and teacher-reported emotional and behavioural problems. Emotional expression and emotion regulation strategies were measured through video-recorded observations in the classroom. A total of 1,184 instances of emotion regulation strategy use were coded using a framework based on Gross' process model of emotion regulation. RESULTS: The findings highlight the complexity of the relations among emotion regulation, emotion expression, and well-being. Some strategies, such as Cognitive Reappraisal, were effective at upregulating negative emotion in the short term, yet not strongly associated with well-being. Others, such as Situation Modification: Physical, were positively associated with well-being, yet not with an immediate change in a child's emotional experience. The findings also suggest children flexibly use different strategies in relation to different contextual demands. CONCLUSION: These findings may be used to guide future intervention efforts which target emotion regulation strategy use as well as those which focus on teachers' support of children during emotionally challenging situations.

The Role of Regulatory, Social, and Dialogic Dynamics on Young Children's Productive Collaboration in Group Problem Solving.

This qualitative study explored the interactions of six triads of Year One students in the United Kingdom (n = 18; mean age = 5 years, 7 months; 9 female) investigating interpersonal regulation of learning, social dynamics, and group dialogue, evident in instances of productive collaboration during problem-solving activities. Group activity was captured through video (total footage = 8 hours) and subjected to two sequential phases of qualitative analysis, undertaken by three researchers: (1) comprehensive qualitative descriptions of group activity, and (2) multidimensional analysis of group interaction with a focus on interpersonal regulation of learning, social dynamics, and group dialogue. Consistent with prior research, the findings show that productive collaboration, though prevalent only in some groups, was characterized by (a) distributed forms of co-regulation where all members took turns in taking regulatory roles; (b) positive social dynamics marked by equitable patterns of participation, playful interludes, uptake of contributions, and use of persuasive language in the event of disagreements; and (c) use of exploratory forms of talk (e.g., asking questions and volunteering reasons) directed toward the achievement of task goals. Different positional preferences were identified among the most regulated students, who consistently assumed leading roles in their groups.

The Role of Teacher Regulatory Talk in Students' Self-Regulation Development Across Cultures.

This study is the first to explore the contribution of different types of teacher regulatory talk-directive, guiding, and autonomy supportive talk-in children's development of self-regulation across cultures. Teacher-to-student talk was analyzed under naturalistic conditions in eight Year 4 classrooms, all situated in different primary schools in England (student N = 25) and Chile (N = 24). Self-regulation was studied by observing students' effective metacognitive monitoring (awareness of errors) and effective metacognitive control (effective control of problems) in a series of 11-13 cube assembly tasks. Mann-Whitney U tests showed that English participants demonstrated higher levels of effective metacognitive monitoring and control, and participating teachers a similar level of teacher regulatory talk across cultures. The function that regulatory talk had in predicting students' self-regulation, however, tended to vary according to culture. OLS multiple regressions revealed that while guiding talk had the same positive effect across cultures, directive talk had a negative effect in England but null effect in Chile, and autonomy supportive talk had a positive effect in Chile but negative in England. These results indicate that it would be valuable to explore further the culturally adaptive functionality of teacher talk for students' self-regulation development.

Commentary: Relationships Between Classroom Dialogue and Support for Metacognitive, Self-Regulatory Development in Educational Contexts.

As indicated in the introductory article, this special issue has attempted to represent and illustrate developments in theoretical, methodological, and empirical work related to the role of primary classroom dialogue in supporting children's self-regulation. The articles included report studies carried out in the United Kingdom and Chile (two quite different cultural contexts) originally supported by a British Academy International Partnership and Mobility grant to the two editors. These articles extend the work originally reported in Whitebread, Mercer, Howe & Tolmie (2013), bringing together a number of research traditions to develop our understanding of the contribution of dialogic processes in primary classrooms to the development of children's self-regulation. This commentary is intended to locate the present studies within the pre-existing research literature, to indicate the significant contributions made, and to pose an agenda for future research in this area.

Accessing the Inaccessible: Redefining Play as a Spectrum.

Defining play has plagued researchers and philosophers for years. From describing play as an inaccessible concept due to its complexity, to providing checklists of features, the field has struggled with how to conceptualize and operationalize "play." This theoretical piece reviews the literature about both play and learning and suggests that by viewing play as a spectrum - that ranges from free play (no guidance or support) to guided play and games (including purposeful adult support while maintaining playful elements), we better capture the true essence of play and explain its relationship to learning. Insights from the Science of Learning allow us to better understand why play supports learning across social and academic domains. By changing the lens through which we conceptualize play, we account for previous findings in a cohesive way while also proposing new avenues of exploration for the field to study the role of learning through play across age and context.

Culture-specific links between maternal executive function, parenting, and preschool children's executive function in South Korea.

BACKGROUND: Research on the relationships between parental factors and children's executive function (EF) has been conducted mainly in Western cultures. AIM: This study provides the first empirical test, in a non-Western context, of how maternal EF and parenting behaviours relate to child EF. SAMPLE: South Korean mothers and their preschool children (N = 95 dyads) completed EF tasks. METHOD: Two aspects of parental scaffolding were observed during a puzzle task: contingency (i.e., adjusting among levels of scaffolding according to the child's ongoing evidence of understanding) and intrusiveness (i.e., directive, mother-centred interactions). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Maternal EF and maternal contingency each accounted for unique variance in child EF, above and beyond child age, child language and maternal education. Maternal intrusiveness, however, was not significantly related to child EF. Additionally, no mediating role of parenting was found in the maternal and child EF link. However, child language was found to partially mediate the link between maternal contingency and child EF. These results complement prior findings by revealing distinctive patterns in the link between maternal EF, parenting behaviours, and child EF in the Korean context.

The Maturation of Interference Suppression and Response Inhibition: ERP Analysis of a Cued Go/Nogo Task.

Inhibitory control is a core function that allows us to resist interference from our surroundings and to stop an ongoing action. To date, it is not clear whether inhibitory control is a single process or whether it is composed of different processes. Further, whether these processes are separate or clustered in childhood is under debate. In this study, we investigated the existence and development of two hypothesized component processes of inhibitory control-interference suppression and response inhibition-using a single task and event related potential components. Twenty 8-year-old children and seventeen adults performed a spatially cued Go/Nogo task while their brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography. Mean N2 amplitudes confirmed the expected pattern for response inhibition with both the children and the adults showing more negative N2 for Nogo vs. Go trials. The interference suppression N2 effect was only present in adults and appeared as a more negative N2 in response to Go trials with a congruent cue than Go trials with an incongruent cue. Contrary to previous findings, there was no evidence that the interference suppression N2 effect was later occurring than the response inhibition N2 effect. Overall, response inhibition was present in both the children and the adults whereas interference suppression was only present in the adults. These results provide evidence of distinct maturational processes for both component processes of inhibitory control, with interference suppression probably continuing to develop into late childhood.

Cross Cultural Indicators of Independent Learning in Young Children: A Jordanian Case.

This study attempts to explore the level of Independent Learning (IL) amongst a sample of Jordanian preschoolers. Behaviors of sixty preschool children aged 5-6 years old were observed and rated by their teachers against an Arabic version of the Children's Independent Learning Development (CHILD 3-5) observational instrument to explore the independent learning among young children according to their gender, engagement level, parental education and the size of their families. The results illustrated that preschoolers may show some aspects of behaviors particularly those related to pro-social and cognitive areas. It also indicated that children from high educated environments demonstrated IL behaviors more than those coming from low educated environments. Finally, children coming from larger family size showed less IL behaviors than those coming from smaller ones. Results and implications are discussed.

Self-Regulatory Skill Among Children with and without Developmental Coordination Disorder: An Exploratory Study.

AIM: Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) experience difficulty learning and performing everyday motor tasks due to poor motor coordination. Recent research applying a cognitive learning paradigm has argued that children with DCD have less effective cognitive and metacognitive skills with which to effectively acquire motor skills. However, there is currently limited research examining individual differences in children's use of self-regulatory and metacognitive skill during motor learning. This exploratory study aimed to compare the self-regulatory performance of children with and without DCD. METHODS: Using a mixed methods approach, this study observed and compared the self-regulatory behavior of 15 children with and without DCD, aged between 7 and 9 years, during socially mediated motor practice. Observation was conducted using a quantitative coding scheme and qualitative analysis of video-recorded sessions. This paper will focus on the results of quantitative analysis, while data arising from the qualitative analysis will be used to support quantitative findings. RESULTS: In general, findings indicate that children with DCD exhibit less independent and more ineffective self-regulatory skill during motor learning than their typically developing peers. In addition, children with DCD rely more heavily on external support for effective regulation and are more likely to exhibit negative patterns of motivational regulation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide further support for the notion that children with DCD experience difficulty effectively self-regulating motor learning. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

Cross cultural indicators of independent learning in young children: a jordanian case

This study attempts to explore the level of Independent Learning (IL) amongst a sample of Jordanian preschoolers. Behaviors of sixty preschool children aged 5-6 years old were observed and rated by their teachers against an Arabic version of the Children's Independent Learning Development (CHILD 3-5) observational instrument to explore the independent learning among young children according to their gender, engagement level, parental education and the size of their families. The results illustrated that preschoolers may show some aspects of behaviors particularly those related to pro-social and cognitive areas. It also indicated that children from high educated environments demonstrated IL behaviors more than those coming from low educated environments. Finally, children coming from larger family size showed less IL behaviors than those coming from smaller ones. Results and implications are discussed (AU)

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Self-regulation as a mediator in motor learning: the effect of the cognitive orientation to occupational performance approach on children with DCD.

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) experience difficulty performing everyday motor tasks. It is has been suggested that children with DCD have fewer self-regulatory (SR) skills with which to acquire motor skills. This article presents the results of an exploratory study examining the development of SR competence among ten 7-9-year-old children with DCD participating in the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) program (Polatajko & Mandich, 2004). Using a quantitative observational coding method, children's SR behavior was examined and compared across intervention sessions. Results indicate that children demonstrating improved motor performance similarly demonstrated more independent and effective SR behaviors. In contrast, children whose motor performance remained relatively stable failed to demonstrate such a change. These findings suggest that CO-OP enables SR performance among children with motor performance difficulties and, as a result, facilitates improved task performance.

The development of inhibitory control: an averaged and single-trial Lateralized Readiness Potential study.

Inhibitory control (IC) is an important contributor to educational performance, and undergoes rapid development in childhood. Age-related changes in IC were assessed using an in-depth analysis of reaction time, the Lateralized Readiness Potential (LRP), and other event-related potential (ERP) measures to control for speed of processing. Five-year-olds, 8-year-olds and adults completed an adapted Stroop task. Both reaction time and ERP results suggest that IC does develop in this age range, over and above changes in speed of processing. The LRP identified two processes that contribute to IC. These processes develop at different rates--an early process, involving how the conflict is initially responded to is mature by age 5, while a later process, involving how the conflict is overcome is still developing after 8 years of age. We propose that these early and late processes reflect interference suppression and response inhibition, respectively. Further, a single-trial analysis of the LRP in the incongruent condition provides evidence that the LRP is consistent across trials and functionally similar in each age group. These results corroborate previous findings regarding the development of IC, and present a new and useful tool for assessing IC across development.

Real-time tracking of motor response activation and response competition in a Stroop task in young children: a lateralized readiness potential study.

The ability to select an appropriate motor response by resolving competition among alternative responses plays a major role in cognitive performance. fMRI studies suggest that the development of this skill is related to the maturation of the frontal cortex that underlies the improvement of motor inhibition abilities. However, fMRI cannot characterize the temporal properties of motor response competition and motor activation in general. We studied the development of the time course of resolving motor response competition. To this end, we used the lateralized readiness potential (LRP), an ERP measure, for tracking correct and incorrect motor cortex activation in children in real time. Fourteen children and 14 adults took part in an animal-size Stroop task where they selected between two animals, presented simultaneously on the computer screen, which was larger in real life. In the incongruent condition, the LRP detected stronger and longer lasting incorrect response activation in children than in adults. LRP results could explain behavioral congruency effects, the generally longer RT in children than in adults and the larger congruency effect in children than in adults. In contrast, the peak latency of ERP waves, usually associated with stimulus processing speed, could explain neither of the above effects. We conclude that the development of resolving motor response competition, relying on motor inhibition skills, is a crucial factor in child development. Our study demonstrates that the LRP is an excellent tool for studying motor activation in children.