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Relations between Preschool Children's Planning Ability, Self-Regulation and Early Literacy Skills
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Less, Adam David |
| Copyright Year | 2008 |
| Abstract | Thirty preschool children (18 boys, mean age = 54 months, SD = 6.82, range = 39 to 67 months) were recruited from a local University preschool center. Experimenters visited the preschool on one occasion and administered planning and inhibitory control tasks. Teachers’ reported on children’s temperament and data regarding early literacy skills. Consistent with expectations, teacher-rated attention focusing and inhibitory control were associated with better observed inhibitory control. Results unexpectedly showed that higher observed inhibitory control and lower teacher-rated anger/frustration, sadness, high intensity pleasure, and impulsivity, and higher teacher-rated inhibitory control and soothability were associated with a greater number of trials needed for successful completion of the two planning tasks. Perhaps children with better inhibitory control and lower overall difficulties in temperament were more likely to persist to completion in the face of task complexity. Introduction This study examined planning ability in early childhood relation to children’s observed and teacher reported self-regulatory abilities and early literacy skills. Planning is a metacognitive or higher order complex cognitive skill that involves the anticipation, delineation, and organization of future-oriented actions toward achieving a goal (DeLoache, Miller, & Pierrotsakos, 1998; Friedman, Scholnick, & Cocking, 1987; Gauvain, 2001; Siegler, 1998). Planning relies on the ability to suspend action and delay gratification, which leads to increased opportunity to reflect on the activity and formulate strategies for future actions (Ellis & Siegler, 1997). The skills associated with planning ability emerge early and have a protracted developmental course associated with development of the prefrontal cortex, which continues to develop through adolescence and early adulthood (Hughes & Graham, 2002; Johnson, 2005; Wilding, Munir, & Cornish, 2001). Children advance from rudimentary planning in the first years of life, to devising simple plans in advance of action and an increased understanding of what planning is and when it is required in the preschool years, to increased competence in planning several steps in advance, the ability to suspend action, and engage in reflection during middle childhood (see Friedman & Scholnick, 1997). Furthermore, with increasing age, children have greater experience and opportunities to engage in planning during everyday activities (Gauvain, 2001). The development of planning skills is critical for mature social and cognitive functioning and becomes increasingly important throughout childhood for managing school related demands and the ability to balance various activities, such as completing homework assignments, family and chore responsibilities, and recreational activities that require children to behave in planful ways (Blair, 2002). In short, these are cognitive skills that, at least in part, form the basis for selfregulated learning, a characteristic particularly important in the classroom setting (Blair, 2002; Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). Thus, children’s planning ability, even in the preschool years, may have important implications for children’s transition to formal schooling. Preschool children are still undergoing rapid developmental change in the areas of the brain, such as the frontal lobes, that may facilitate the ability to engage in self-regulated learning, such as memory, attention, self-regulation, and higher order cognitive skills like planning (Blair, 2002). When preschool children transition to formal schooling, they will also be faced with increasing cognitive and behavioral demands and academic success relies in part on children’s ability to regulate their behavior to be consistent with the behavioral expectations of the classroom (Perry & Weinstein, 1998). The ease with which children are able to negotiate and adapt to these expectations during this transitional period has long-term implications for academic success (Ladd, 1996). In assessing school readiness, teachers tend to value behaviors that reflect higher order or metacognitive skills that enable self regulated learning such as attentiveness, motivation, and the ability to follow directions and not be disruptive. In fact, teachers value these capabilities more than specific academic skills, such as knowing the alphabet or being able to use a pencil (Blair, 2002). Thus, teachers appear to have expectations that competent students will be able to regulate their attention and behavior in the classroom. In the preschool context children’s learning experiences are setting the stage for their eventual transition to formal schooling. Children who have difficulty with metacognitive skills, like planning, may thus be at a disadvantage in this process of preparation. The current study will examine individual differences or characteristics of children, such as self-regulatory ability, that may influence both children’s ability to plan and the acquisition of skills that prepare them for formal schooling. Planning ability is considered to be an important aspect of what has been referred to as executive function (Brophy, Taylor, & Hughes, 2002; Hughes & Graham, 2002; Zelazo, Carter, Reznick, Frye, 1997). Executive function or control processes include effortful, higher order psychological processes involved in the conscious control of thought and action, goal-directed responses, and self-regulatory ability, such as attention flexibility and inhibitory control (e.g., ability to redirect a strong habitual response). Research on deficits in executive control processes has largely been conducted in the area of developmental psychopathology. Not well understood are the connections between executive control processes and normative child development. The proposed study is specifically interested in examining children’s planning ability and the selfregulatory aspects of executive function. This study will focus on relations between observed and teacher reported inhibitory control, observed planning ability, and teacher reports of children’s literacy skill development. Inhibitory control is considered to be a dimension of temperament and individual differences in this control process can be identified as early as the first year (Rothbart & Posner, 2001). Inhibitory control involves the ability to withhold a response, interrupt a process that has already begun, avoid interference with ongoing activity, or delay a response (Tamm, Menon, & Reiss, 2002). Inhibitory control is evident within the second half of the first year of life and, in part, forms the basis for the ability of young children to comply with adult directives, delay gratification, and manage their own impulses (Fox & Calkins, 2003). Thus, deficits in inhibitory control may be associated with poorer performance on planning tasks in early childhood (Brophy et al., 2002), which in turn may be associated with a lower degree of school readiness as assessed by teachers. We were also interested in examining child emotionality as an aspect of temperament that may be associated with children’s ability to successfully engage in complex cognitive activity. Emotionality has the potential to interfere with children’s ability to engage effectively in complex cognitive tasks by interfering with the focusing of attention and maintenance of motivation (Frijda & Mesquita, 1998), which are critical to such cognitive activities. This may be particularly true for young children who are still undergoing brain development in areas that are associated with self-regulatory capacity (Johnson, 2005). We were specifically interested in negative and positive emotionality. Research has demonstrated that individuals with a tendency toward experiencing and expressing negative emotions such as anger and frustration tend to be less effective at emotion regulation (Fox & Calkins, 2003) and in processing information (Cummings & Davies, 1995). Evidence from neuroscience suggests that negative emotion results in a deactivation of the frontal areas of the brain associated with higher order cognitive functioning, such as planning, as well as the ability to regulate attention and behavior (Davis, Bruce, & Gunnar, 2002). Consistent with these findings, children prone to negative emotionality may display greater difficulty with planning and inhibitory control. Children prone to negative emotionality may also display greater difficulty in their interactions with others and in the classroom setting. On the other hand, positive emotionality may foster interactions with others. Less is known about the role of positive emotionality in relation to cognitive activity, thus relations in this regard will be explored in the current study. Hypotheses This study of planning ability, temperament and literacy development in preschool children examined relations between areas of executive functioning and school readiness. It was expected that children who showed higher levels of planning skill development would also show a higher level of inhibitory control. Furthermore, children who were perceived by teachers to be higher in self-regulation were also expected to have a higher level of performance on the planning and inhibitory control tasks. Children rated by teachers as having more difficulty with negative emotions were expected to perform poorly on observed planning and inhibitory control tasks. Observed planning and inhibitory control and high levels of teacher rated self-regulation and low levels of teacher-rated negative emotionality were predicted to coincide with higher letter recognition scores. Levels of positive temperament in participating children and how it related to task completions and teacher ratings were also explored. Method Participants Thirty preschool aged children (18 boys) were recruited from the University of North Florida Child Development and Research Center (CDRC). Teachers at the CDRC reported on childre |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=ojii_volumes&httpsredir=1&referer= |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
