A longitudinal study of self-regulation development: Effects of early life stress and impact on school-readiness

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT A major task of childhood is learning to control impulses, emotions, and attention. This self-regulation in early childhood predicts academic readiness, social-emotional competence, and fewer behavior problems. Children experiencing early life stress (e.g. poverty, parental mental illness) tend to demonstrate poorer self-regulation, which might account for greater adjustment problems often observed in these children. Additionally, not all children facing adversity struggle later in life and self-regulation may be a key factor in their resilience. Thus, self-regulation has been cited as an ideal mechanism for interventions likely to cascade to other areas of functioning. However, we don’t fully understand the development of self- regulation itself, which is needed in order to identify targets for preventive interventions aimed at promoting positive adjustment in children in high-risk settings. The overarching goal of this research project is to understand the contextual, parenting, and physiological factors that contribute to the development of self- regulation over time in early childhood in families experiencing adversity. Aim 1: To test the direct associations between the contextual, parenting, and physiological factors and children’s self-regulation. Aim 2: To examine the path model predicting self-regulation and socioemotional outcomes, including mediational pathways through parenting, child sleep, and the stress response system. Aim 3: To examine the protective factors that promote resilience despite contextual risk. These hypotheses will be tested in a sample of 100 young children and their families. Parents and their 3-year-old children will complete a battery of tasks to measure various aspects of self-regulation and parenting behavior. Parents will also report on contextual factors such as socioeconomic status, their own mental health, and the home environment. Saliva will be collected from the child to measure cortisol reactivity to a stressor. Sleep will be measured using actigraphy and sleep diaries. Socioemotional and school-readiness outcomes will be measured by objective assessments, parent- and teacher-report. This longitudinal study will have four total time points, with two in-person assessment waves and two online follow-ups, allowing us to examine longitudinal mediational processes. Results from the proposed study will elucidate the behavioral and physiological mechanisms by which early adversity and contextual risk factors impact self-regulation, and how self-regulation impacts socioemotional and school-readiness outcomes. This will allow for the development of targeted interventions to help promote self-regulation and school-readiness in high-risk children.