The development of behavioral self-regulation across preschool and its association with academic achievement

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-REGULATION ACROSS PRESCHOOL AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT By Janelle J. Montroy A fundamental accomplishment of early childhood is the development of self-regulation. Specifically, the advances children make in self-regulation during preschool (ages 3-5 years) are of interest as it appears that this is when children typically progress to more advanced, cognitive behavioral forms of self-regulation (e.g., Diamond, 2002). Likewise, past research suggests wide variation in the level of self-regulation skills children manifest during preschool (e.g., McClelland et al., 2007). However, despite mounting evidence that preschool is an important time period for the development of self-regulation, little longitudinal work has been done investigating the developmental dynamics of self-regulation across more than two time points during preschool, particularly work that has evaluated possible heterogeneity in the trajectories of self-regulation across children. In this dissertation, I examined the development of behavioral self-regulation across preschool via latent growth curve modeling. I also evaluated possible heterogeneity in the developmental trajectories of children’s behavioral self-regulation via growth mixture modeling. I then investigated the relationship between children’s behavioral selfregulation trajectories and academic achievement at the end of preschool. Behavioral self-regulation and academic achievement were assessed for 652 preschool aged children across four years of study. Depending on the year, children were tested in the fall and spring (2 time-points) or across four time-points with the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders behavioral self-regulation task (Ponitz et al., 2008). Children were also tested on three literacy measures assessing phonological awareness, letter knowledge and early decoding skills, and an early math measure. Results suggested that the development of behavioral self-regulation across preschool is best represented by an exponential growth curve, and that there is variation in trajectories across children. Specifically, a three class model best represented the data with majority of children making exponential gains that either 1) began with lower initial levels of behavioral self-regulation and gains that accelerated across the preschool time period, or 2) began with higher levels of initial behavioral self-regulation with rapid gains early that decelerated across preschool. A third group of children demonstrated a no growth trajectory with low levels of initial behavioral self-regulation and little to no gains across the preschool time period. Results from the latent growth curve analysis suggested that the rate of gain across the preschool time period was associated with higher levels of early literacy and mathematics achievement at the end of preschool. Likewise, findings from the growth mixture analysis suggested that children who began preschool with higher levels of behavioral self-regulation and grew rapidly early following a decelerating exponential trajectory had higher levels of spring early literacy and mathematics achievement compared to children who began with lower levels of behavioral self-regulation and gained at an accelerating rate across preschool. However, any gains made by children in behavioral self-regulation, whether accelerating or decelerating were associated with higher levels of spring early literacy and mathematics achievement compared to children who made little to no behavioral self-regulation gains. Overall these findings indicate the importance of evaluating self-regulation skills early and providing support to children, particular children who may be at risk to make few gains across preschool in self-regulation as self-regulation is an important aspect of the skills children need in order to be prepared for kindergarten.