Maternal structuring of toddler self-regulation and its relation to later child task persistence

Open Access
- Author:
- Wolf, Rachel Margaret
- Area of Honors:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Dr. Pamela Marie Cole, Thesis Supervisor
Cynthia L Huang Pollock, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Maternal structuring
toddlers
self-regulation
task persistence - Abstract:
- Background: Self-regulation is a complex construct that reflects a person’s ability to control one’s words and actions in a situationally-appropriate way (Kopp, 1982). Structuring is one form of parenting that is assumed to be helpful to children’s development of self-regulation. Similar to the construct of scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1978), structuring reflects parental attempts to recruit children’s emerging skills, such as their control of their attention, and apply these skills to engaging in self-regulation. The current study evaluated the degree to which sensitive maternal structuring during toddlerhood contributed to individual differences in children’s self-regulation skills by child age 36 months. Specifically, the thesis tested the prediction that sensitive maternal structuring during a task that challenged children’s self-regulation at age 24 months would contribute to children’s task persistence in a different challenging task at child age 36 months. Methods: The sample is composed of 112 toddlers and their mothers, participants in a larger longitudinal study, the Development of Toddlers Study (DOTS). At child age 24m, structuring quality and structuring success were measured in a Wait Task. At child age 36m, child task persistence was measured in a frustrating Locked Box Task. Results: Hierarchical linear regression analyses failed to yield support for the hypothesis. The only significant predictor of child task persistence at age 36m was child task persistence at age 24m. Conclusions: Although maternal structuring quality during toddlerhood was not significantly related to children’s later task persistence, support for stability of child persistence over time emerges from these results. In future studies, the particular details of structuring, i.e. skills harnessed, strategies used, may yield more significant results than overall quality.