Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Viksäng Maternal and Paediatric Health Center, Västerås, Sweden.
Br J Psychol. 2018 May;109(2):277-298. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12266. Epub 2017 Sep 12.
This study investigated infant predictors of early cognitive and emotional self-regulation from an intrinsic and caregiving environmental perspective. Sustained attention, reactive aspects of infant temperament, and maternal sensitivity were assessed at 10 months (n = 124) and early self-regulation (including executive functions, EF, and emotion regulation) was assessed at 18 months. The results indicated that sustained attention predicted early EF, which provide empirical support for the hierarchical framework of EF development, advocating early attention as a foundation for the development of cognitive self-regulation. Maternal sensitivity and surgency predicted emotion regulation, in that infants of sensitive mothers showed more regulatory behaviours and a longer latency to distress, whereas high levels of surgency predicted low emotion regulation, suggesting both the caregiving environment and temperament as important in the development of self-regulation. Interaction effects suggested high sustained attention to be a protective factor for children of insensitive mothers, in relation to emotion regulation. In addition, high levels of maternal sensitivity seemed to foster development of emotion regulation among children with low to medium levels of sustained attention and/or surgency. In all, our findings point to the importance of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors in infant development of self-regulation.
本研究从内在和养育环境的角度探讨了婴儿早期认知和情绪自我调节的预测因素。在 10 个月大时（n=124）评估了婴儿的持续注意力、婴儿气质的反应性方面和母亲的敏感性，在 18 个月大时评估了早期自我调节（包括执行功能、EF 和情绪调节）。结果表明，持续注意力预测了早期 EF，这为 EF 发展的层级框架提供了实证支持，主张早期注意力是认知自我调节发展的基础。母亲的敏感性和易激惹性预测了情绪调节，即敏感母亲的婴儿表现出更多的调节行为和更长的痛苦潜伏期，而高易激惹性则预示着情绪调节能力较低，这表明养育环境和气质对自我调节的发展都很重要。交互作用表明，对于不敏感母亲的孩子来说，高持续注意力是情绪调节的保护因素。此外，高水平的母亲敏感性似乎促进了低至中等水平持续注意力和/或易激惹性儿童的情绪调节发展。总之，我们的研究结果表明内在和外在因素在婴儿自我调节发展中的重要性。
