Cool And Hot Self-Regulation Of Children Aged 3-5 Years:The Development Trends,Effects,Impact Factors And Promotion

Self-regulation refers to processes that enable individuals to maintain optimal levels of emotional,motivational,behavioral and cognitive arousal to achieve adaptation.It is an important hallmark of children’s development and socialization.Self-regulation in early childhood predicts series of short-term and long-term developmental outcomes,including academic preparation,achievement in elementary school,education in adulthood,self-worth,stress management,substance abuse,delinquency and so on.Recently,more and more studies have found that self-regulation includes two factors rather than one,which are cool and hot self-regulation according to the degree of emotional and motivational involvement.It is beneficial to systematically explore the difference between cool and hot self-regulation to understand the development of children’s self-regulation and the influence of family environment and individual factors in order to provide accurate and effective intervention.This paper is composed of five studies.In study 1,in distinguishing cool and hot self-regulation,children of 3 years old were measured for three times in one year to investigate the development trends and gender differences of children’s self-regulation.Study 2 A investigated the influence of the development of children’s cool and hot self-regulation at the age of 3～4 years on their future vocabulary and mathematical cognition.Study 2B investigated the influence of cool and hot self-regulation at the age of 3～4 years on children’s social development.In study 3,three-times cross-lagged design was adopted to investigate the causal relationship between children’s cool and hot self-regulation and parents’ positive parenting.In study 4,five important temperament characteristics affecting the development of self-regulation were measured to investigate the influence of children’s temperament on cool and hot self-regulation and their interactions with positive parenting.Study 5 developed an intervention program on positive parenting,and preliminarily tested its intervention effect.The results are as follows:1.At the age of 3～4 years old,children’s self-regulation of contains two components,cool and hot self-regulation.Cool self-regulation is more stable than hot self-regulation.Boys’ cool and hot self-regulation continues to improve.The development of cool and hot self-regulation for girls is not synchronized.Girls’ cool self-regulation continues to improve,while hot self-regulation only improves in the early age.Girls’ self-regulation is higher than boys’ for all.But girls’ "gender advantage" only exists in hot self-regulation.2.Children’s cool self-regulation affects the cognitive development level at 3～4 years old,while hot self-regulation affects the improvement of mathematical cognition.Children’s cool self-regulation predicts social development in one year,while hot self-regulation only in half year.The temperament of effortful control predicts social development in one and a half years.3.Children’s cool self-regulation and positive parenting have bidirectional effect in the early age.Children’s cool self-regulation at 3 predicts parental autonomy support in the next six months,and parental autonomy support also predicts children’s cool self-regulation in the next six months.Children’s cool self-regulation affects parental structural behavior in half a year,with no converse effect.Children’s hot self-regulation only correlates with positive parenting simultaneously.All of the relationships above fades with time.The effect of positive parenting is more outstanding for children with low levels of inhibition control early.4.Impulse and angry characteristics in temperament hinder children’s cool and hot self-regulation.The more impulsive or angry,the worse children’s self-regulation is.Sluggishness and fearfulness in temperament affect children’s cool and hot self-regulation in different ways.Children who are sluggish or fearful only have worse cool self-regulation,and equal or even better hot self-regulation.Parental warmth and structural positive parenting have a protective effect on children’s self-regulation.Parental structural control moderates the adverse effect of children’s high impulsivity on delayed waiting.Parental warmth moderates the negative effect of high anger proneness on inhibition control.Children’s anger temperament moderates the effect of parents’ positive parenting on children’s self-regulation.Specifically,parents’ warm behavior promotes the inhibition control of children with high anger proneness.5.The training of positive parenting based on the framework of positive parenting theory effectively improve parental warm behavior,parent-child relationship,and children’s self-regulation for parent report.Through a series of studies,this paper proves that,the development trends,gender differences,effects and impact factors of children’s cool and hot self-regulation during the period of 3 to 5 years old have similarities and differences,so it is necessary for future researches to make a clear distinction.In addition,positive parenting training can effectively improve parenting quality and promote children’s self-regulation.