Social skills and problem behaviors as mediators of the relationship between behavioral self-regulation and academic achievement

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Abstract

Early behavioral self-regulation is an important predictor of the skills children need to be successful in school. However, little is known about the mechanism(s) through which self-regulation affects academic achievement. The current study investigates the possibility that two aspects of children's social functioning, social skills and problem behaviors, mediate the relationship between preschool self-regulation and literacy and math achievement. Additionally, we investigated whether the meditational processes differed for boys and girls. We expected that better self-regulation would help children to interact well with others (social skills) and minimize impulsive or aggressive (problem) behaviors. Positive interactions with others and few problem behaviors were expected to relate to gains in achievement as learning takes place within a social context. Preschool-aged children (n = 118) were tested with direct measures of self-regulation, literacy, and math. Teachers reported on children's social skills and problem behaviors. Using a structural equation modeling approach (SEM) for mediation analysis, social skills and problem behaviors were found to mediate the relationship between self-regulation and growth in literacy across the preschool year, but not math. Findings suggest that the mediational process was similar for boys and girls. These findings indicate that a child's social skills and problem behaviors are part of the mechanism through which behavioral self-regulation affects growth in literacy. Self-regulation may be important not just because of the way that it relates directly to academic achievement but also because of the ways in which it promotes or inhibits children's interactions with others.

Introduction

More than 80% of American children participate in preschool in the year prior to kindergarten (Barnett et al., 2010) with these early schooling experiences usually designed with the goal of improving children's short- and long-term academic achievement (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2000). Nonetheless, some research suggests that over half of children enter kindergarten without the social and academic skills needed for success (Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, & Cox, 2000). Thus researchers and policy-makers are increasingly seeking to understand what preschool skills contribute to concurrent and later academic achievement. Current findings suggest that, in addition to contextual factors associated with home and school (Bingham, 2007, Evans and Shaw, 2008), child behavioral skills account for a substantial portion of children's early academic achievement (Hindman, Skibbe, Miller, & Zimmerman, 2010). In particular, early self-regulation has been identified as a key predictor of both current and later academic achievement (Blair, 2002, Blair, 2003, Blair and Razza, 2007, Duncan et al., 2007, Matthews et al., 2009, McClelland et al., 2006, McClelland and Morrison, 2003, McClelland et al., 2007). For example, children with higher levels of self-regulation in kindergarten also have higher levels of academic achievement from kindergarten through sixth grade with the gap in achievement widening between kindergarten and second grade (McClelland et al., 2006).

However, little is known about the mechanisms through which early self-regulation predicts young children's emergent academic achievement. One potential mechanism may be through the child's social functioning (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000). For instance, how well the child self-regulates may affect the ways in which children interact with peers and teachers in the classroom (Miller, Gouley, Seifer, Dickstein, & Shields, 2004), which in turn relates to academic gains (Hamre & Pianta, 2001). However, few studies to date have empirically evaluated social functioning as a possible mechanism underlying the relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement (Denham et al., 2012, Valiente et al., 2011, Valiente et al., 2008). Of those that have, most utilized teacher reports of self-regulation, social functioning, and/or academic achievement which may lead to less accurate results due to method bias (e.g., teachers rate high-achieving children as having high self-regulation, few problem behaviors, and/or high social skills, Carr & Kurtz, 1991). These studies also often consider several aspects of social functioning together, thus not allowing for the possibility that aspects of social functioning, such as social skills and problem behaviors, may meditate the relationship differently (Eisenberg, Valiente, & Eggum, 2010). Likewise, only one study to date has focused on preschool-aged children (Denham et al., 2012) and only in Head Start, despite the fact that preschool self-regulation has been implicated as an early marker for later academic achievement for children generally (Mischel et al., 2011). Understanding the process through which self-regulation is associated with academic achievement is critical if we are to support young children in their acquisition of these skills. The current study investigates, via a multi-method approach, the possibility that two aspects of children's social functioning, social skills and problem behaviors, mediate the relationship between self-regulation and children's academic achievement within the preschool setting.

Self-regulation is a broad concept referring to the process whereby an individual deliberately utilizes his or her skills and attributes to create an overt response to the ongoing demands of the environment in a manner that is contextually appropriate (Aksan and Kochanska, 2004, Blair and Razza, 2007, Cameron Ponitz et al., 2008, Cole et al., 1994, Kochanska et al., 2001). In other words, to self-regulate, a child must utilize her cognition, motivation and emotions to create a response in line with contextual expectations. The current study focuses specifically on one aspect of self-regulation, behavioral self-regulation, which is the ability to integrate cognitive skills such as attention, working memory, and inhibition to select an appropriate overt behavior (McClelland et al., 2007). Although behavioral self-regulation does not capture the emotional aspects of self-regulation deemed relevant for learning (Cameron Ponitz et al., 2008, Valiente et al., 2011), it captures the child's ability to produce an appropriate behavioral action in response to the contextual demands of the environment. Behavioral self-regulation helps children to pay attention, remember instructions, and stay on task, all within the midst of environmental distractions (Blair, 2002, Cameron Ponitz et al., 2008, McClelland et al., 2007). Research on behavioral self-regulation suggests that, although the cognitive skills typically known as executive functioning (i.e., working memory, attention, and inhibition) are key components of self-regulation, behavioral self-regulation also involves integration of the individual executive functioning skills into a contextually appropriate overt response, and is therefore a broader concept than executive functioning (McClelland and Cameron, 2012, McClelland et al., 2007). For example, the ability to follow directions in the classroom presumably requires the integration of working memory to maintain the directions in memory as well as inhibition to hold back from engaging in an appealing alternative to teacher directions.

Strong behavioral self-regulation has been linked to better academic achievement for children in grade school (Howse et al., 2003a, Howse et al., 2003b), even for those at-risk for underachievement (Sektnan, McClelland, Acock, & Morrison, 2010). In preschool, self-regulation is associated with higher literacy, vocabulary, and math outcomes as well as with greater gains in those academic outcomes during the school year (McClelland et al., 2007). Early self-regulation may also have lasting effects on children's academic development, as previous findings suggest that aspects of behavioral self-regulation measured at age four predict academic achievement throughout primary school, as well as college (McClelland et al., 2013, Mischel et al., 2011). Taken together these studies indicate that self-regulation plays an important role in current and later academic achievement; however, past research offers limited insight into the underlying mechanisms that support this relationship.

Social functioning may represent one of the key mechanisms that underlie the relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement. Broadly, social functioning refers to the child's ability to appropriately interact in social situations and often includes children's levels of emotionality, empathy, pro-social behavior, conscience, social skills, and problem behaviors (Eisenberg, Pidada, & Liew, 2001). We focus on two important aspects of social functioning that have consistently been related to both self-regulation and academic achievement: social skills and problem behaviors. Theoretically, high levels of self-regulation should be associated with social functioning (Eisenberg et al., 2005, Eisenberg et al., 2010). Children who, for example, can attend to important interactional cues, and remember rules related to how they should engage in classroom social environments (e.g., take turns), while inhibiting an initially socially undesirable negative reaction or impulsive aggression are relatively more likely to behave appropriately in the classroom social context (Eisenberg et al., 2000). Interactions with peers and teachers make up an important part of the process by which children learn and construct knowledge (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006, Hamre and Pianta, 2001, Vygotsky, 1977). Notably, better self-regulation appears to place children in a more advantageous position to engage in high-quality social interactions with teachers and peers which, in turn, results in learning and academic achievement.

Despite this, only recently has research begun to explicate on the possible mediation relationship between self-regulation, aspects of social functioning, and academic achievement (Eisenberg et al., 2005, Eisenberg et al., 2010). Across two studies, Valiente et al., 2008, Valiente et al., 2011 found that social functioning mediated the relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement in grade school, with evidence that these relationships hold over a span of several years. Additionally, a recent study by Denham et al. (2012) indicates that lower preschool executive function was bi-directionally related to aggression/negative emotionality, which, in turn, related to lower teacher-reported academic achievement in kindergarten.

Although past research involving child social functioning and its relation to other skills has often focused upon the collective role of both social skills and problem behaviors within social functioning (Valiente et al., 2011), recent work suggests that social skills and problem behaviors may have different roles in the relation between self-regulation and academic outcomes. Research utilizing principal components analyses indicates that social skills form a different component of social functioning than problem behaviors (Denham et al., 2012, Gresham and Elliott, 1990). Moreover, work by Denham et al. (2012) indicates that aggression/negative emotionality, mediated the pathway between preschool executive function and kindergarten achievement in a low-SES population, but not pro-social behaviors/social skills. This, along with theory (Eisenberg et al., 2010), suggests that the process linking self-regulation to academic achievement through social functioning may be different depending on the aspect of social functioning considered (i.e., social skills versus problem behaviors). Thus, within the current study, we investigate how social skills and problem behaviors each mediate the relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement.

One way that self-regulation may be linked to academic achievement is that self-regulation supports children's ability to initiate positive interactions with others and these positive interactions facilitate learning. Empirically, children with better self-regulation tend to have better social skills (Diener and Kim, 2004, Eisenberg et al., 1993, Ladd et al., 1999, Miller et al., 2004, Raver et al., 1999). For instance, self-regulation contributes to social skills, such as sharing, and remaining emotionally positive (Denham et al., 2012, Eisenberg et al., 2000, Hubbard and Coie, 1994, Raver et al., 1999). Likewise, children with higher levels of self-regulation tend to demonstrate higher levels of socially competent behaviors (e.g., helping others, being friendly) during peer interactions (Fabes et al., 1999). Conversely, children who struggle with self-regulation tend to demonstrate social reticence, often having difficulty utilizing appropriate strategies to initiate interactions with peers (Coplan et al., 2001, Fabes et al., 2003).

Although some findings suggest social skills may not be related to later achievement (Duncan et al., 2007), an increasingly robust body of literature suggests that the two are closely linked (Birch and Ladd, 1998, Coplan et al., 2001, Denham et al., 2012, Eisenberg et al., 2010, Fabes et al., 2003, Ladd et al., 1999, Valiente et al., 2008, Valiente et al., 2011, Wentzel et al., 2012). For instance, social skills (particularly pro-social behaviors), are related to Head Start attendees’ early literacy and mathematics skills, especially for girls (Bierman, Torres, Domitrovich, Welsh, & Gest, 2009). Better social skills help children to initiate positive peer interactions and these interactions can help children learn positive behaviors through peer modeling and provide the child with resources (e.g., support and acceptance) (Birch and Ladd, 1997, Birch and Ladd, 1998, Bronson, 2000, Hamre and Pianta, 2001, Ladd and Burgess, 2001). Both help facilitate the child's adoption of positive learning strategies and help them build a foundation for successful academic achievement, particularly in difficult situations (Alexander and Entwisle, 1988, Fredricks et al., 2004, Keogh, 2003, Ladd et al., 1999, Zimmerman and Schunk, 2001). Additionally, recent intervention work suggests that improving self-regulation and social skills concurrently promotes gains in early literacy skills and later social skills (Bierman et al., 2008). Together, these studies offer preliminary evidence that self-regulation relates to academic achievement in part via social skills as higher levels of self-regulation help children to appropriately initiate positive interactions with both teachers and other children and, in turn, these interactions facilitate learning.

Another possible mechanism that may underlie the relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement is the child's exhibition of problem behaviors. Lower levels of self-regulation have been related to a greater number of problem behaviors, particularly externalizing problems such as aggression, impulsivity, and defiance (Denham et al., 2012, Eisenberg et al., 2001, Hill et al., 2006, McCabe and Brooks-Gunn, 2007). Children with lower levels of self-regulation are more likely than those with higher levels of self-regulation to engage in off-task and disruptive behaviors during instructional activities and learning (Rimm-Kaufman, La Paro, Downer, & Pianta, 2005), especially when a difficult task is presented (Carr, Taylor, & Robinson, 1991). For instance, children with low self-regulation are less likely, as compared to peers with higher levels of self-regulation, to avoid negative interactions (e.g., aggressive or defiant interactions, venting and tantrums) that disturb the learning environment (Fabes et al., 1999, Hill et al., 2006). Higher levels of problem behaviors have been linked to peer conflict, and negative teacher-child relationships (Ladd et al., 1999, Miller et al., 2004). For example, children exhibiting greater problem behaviors are more likely than children who exhibit few problem behaviors to receive commands from their teachers, indicating a less positive relationship (Dobbs & Arnold, 2009). They are often excluded by teachers from the classroom (Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins, 1995) and rejected by peers within the classroom (Arnold et al., 1999a, Arnold et al., 1999b), thereby reducing their time for interactional learning (Arnold et al., 1999a, Arnold et al., 1999b). Perhaps related to this reduced learning time, externalizing problem behaviors have also been shown to have a strong, negative relationship with children's later academic achievement (Arnold, 1997, Bierman et al., 2009, Doctoroff et al., 2006). In particular, problem behaviors appear to interfere not only with classroom learning processes, but with the own child's ability to engage in learning. In short, these studies highlight that self-regulation may also affect children's academic achievement through children's exhibition of problem behaviors, as children who exhibit lower levels of self-regulation tend to act out more, which may result in negative classroom relationships and a disruption in their own ability to learn.

In addition to examining possible mediators that may help to explain the association between self-regulation and academic achievement, the current study allows for the possibility that these processes may be different for boys and girls. Gender differences in academic achievement have been well established in recent years, with girls achieving higher grades and higher levels of education than boys (Birch and Ladd, 1998, Duckworth and Seligman, 2006, Silverman, 2003). Recent research has also indicated early gender differences in self-regulatory skills (Kochanska et al., 2001, Matthews et al., 2009, McClelland et al., 2007), and to some degree, in the relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement (Denham et al., 2012, Ready et al., 2005). Although mean differences in self-regulation (which tend to be small in preschool, d = .08; Cameron Ponitz et al., 2008) and academic performance (d = .19; Ready et al., 2005) have been established for boys and girls, very little research has examined whether the process that underlies the relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement is different. This area of inquiry is important, as research suggests that there is variation in the ways that boys and girls socialize and/or express problem behaviors (particularly related to aggression) and how these behaviors relate to academic achievement (Crick and Grotpeter, 1995, Denham et al., 2012, Doctoroff et al., 2006, Keenan and Shaw, 1997). For instance boys, but not girls, who engage in fewer pro-social interactions and exhibit overt aggressive behaviors tend to have lower early literacy skills in preschool (Doctoroff et al., 2006). This suggests that the processes relating self-regulation, social functioning, and academic achievement may be different for boys and girls. Understanding early gender differences in these processes, even if effect sizes are small, represents an important step in understanding how best to support children's early academic skills.

Self-regulation in preschool has been identified as an important predictor of current and later academic achievement thus providing a solid foundation for future success (Blair, 2002, Blair, 2010, Mischel et al., 2011). However, it remains unclear what mechanisms drive this association, making it difficult to determine how best to support children's development within the classroom. The current study tested whether children's social functioning within the classroom is part of the process through which self-regulation relates to early academic growth. Specifically, we investigated whether children's reported social skills and/or problem behaviors mediated the relationship between behavioral self-regulation and growth in literacy and math across preschool. Finally, we examined whether the mediation process was moderated by gender.

Section snippets

Participants

Children (n = 118, 78 males) and their families were recruited from two NAEYC-accredited preschools located in the Midwest. The children were in 12 classes taught by seven teachers in either morning, afternoon, or full-day sessions (several teachers taught more than one class). The average age of the children in the study was 49.52 (SD = 6.41) months, with a range of 36 months to 65 months. The parent-reported racial makeup of the children in the study included White or Caucasian (70.6%), Black or

Results

Means and standard deviations are listed in Table 1. Correlations for the predictor, outcome, and background variables (mother education, age) are presented in Table 2. Due to the fact data were collected from children in 12 different classrooms, we considered utilizing a multi-level approach. However, the intra-class correlations (ICCs), which are an indication of variation across classrooms, were small for the predictor variable (self-regulation ICC = .09) and the outcome variables (letter

Discussion

This study investigated whether social skills and problem behaviors, two elements of social functioning, are part of the process that links behavioral self-regulation to academic achievement during preschool. Results indicated that both social skills and problem behaviors mediate the relationship between self-regulation and growth in early literacy skill, but not math, and this was similar for both boys and girls. These findings suggest that a child's social skills and problem behaviors are

Conclusion

The skills children develop in preschool, particularly self-regulation, are critical for their concurrent and later academic achievement (Mischel et al., 2011). Thus, understanding the process through which early self-regulation is associated with academic achievement is important in order to support the positive development of these skills within the classroom. In the current study, social skills and problem behaviors were found to separately and jointly mediate the relationship between

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    The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of grant R305A100566 from the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences in the development of this article.

    1

    Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Michigan State University, 7 Human Ecology Building, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.

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