Family Stress Processes and Children's Self-Regulation.

Economic hardship can affect children's development through child-caregiver interactions, which may mediate cascading effects of other family stress processes. This study examined, simultaneously, the relations of financial strain, caregiver general stress, and child-caregiver conflict-each measured at two time points-with child self-regulatory outcomes in a high-poverty sample (age 5-7 years; n = 343). Increase in child-caregiver conflict mediated negative relations between other processes and development of executive function. In contrast, only increase in financial strain had direct, negative association with development of delay of gratification and did not significantly mediate relations between any other process and children's outcomes. Results have implications for understanding effects of family stress on self-regulatory outcomes and for interventions with low-income families.

Choosing immediate over delayed gratification correlates with better school-related outcomes in a sample of children of color from low-income families.

Delayed, as opposed to immediate, gratification is generally understood to indicate adaptive development. The present study investigates performance on a choice-based delay of gratification measure and its relations with other outcomes in a sample of children of color from low-income families, who are underrepresented in delayed gratification research. The 6-item choice delay of gratification task, administered at the start of kindergarten (Mage = 5.5 years), exhibited good reliability. Items were largely equal in difficulty, but not equally discriminant. Children who chose immediate gratification had better executive function and were rated higher than their peers by their kindergarten teachers on behavioral measures; patterns in relations with first grade classroom behavior were similar, but weaker and not robust to controls. Choosing immediate gratification was also positively related to concurrent and later achievement, but not after controlling for executive function. These observations reinforce a need to clarify constructs underlying delay of gratification choices within groups of children underrepresented in this line of research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Visuomotor integration and inhibitory control compensate for each other in school readiness.

Visuomotor integration (VMI), or the ability to copy designs, and 2 measures of executive function were examined in a predominantly low-income, typically developing sample of children (n = 467, mean age 4.2 years) from 5 U.S. states. In regression models controlling for age and demographic variables, we tested the interaction between visuomotor integration (design copying) and inhibitory control (pencil-tap) or verbal working memory (digit span) on 4 directly assessed academic skills and teacher-reported approaches to learning. Compared with children with both poor visuomotor integration and low inhibitory control, those on the higher end of the continuum in at least 1 of these 2 skills performed better across several dependent variables. This compensatory pattern was evident for longitudinal improvement in print knowledge on the Test of Preschool Early Literacy (TOPEL), with similar though marginally significant findings for improvement in phonological awareness (TOPEL) and teacher-rated approaches to learning on the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale (PLBS). Of note, the same compensatory pattern emerged for concurrently measured receptive vocabulary on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), expressive vocabulary on the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ), TOPEL phonological awareness, and teacher-rated approaches to learning. The consistent pattern of results suggests that strong visuomotor integration skills are an important part of school readiness, and merit further study.