Department of Law and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
German Council of Economic Experts, Wiesbaden, Germany.
Nat Hum Behav. 2022 Dec;6(12):1680-1690. doi: 10.1038/s41562-022-01449-w. Epub 2022 Oct 13.
Children's self-regulation abilities are key predictors of educational success and other life outcomes such as income and health. However, self-regulation is not a school subject, and knowledge about how to generate lasting improvements in self-regulation and academic achievements with easily scalable, low-cost interventions is still limited. Here we report the results of a randomized controlled field study that integrates a short self-regulation teaching unit based on the concept of mental contrasting with implementation intentions into the school curriculum of first graders. We demonstrate that the treatment increases children's skills in terms of impulse control and self-regulation while also generating lasting improvements in academic skills such as reading and monitoring careless mistakes. Moreover, it has a substantial effect on children's long-term school career by increasing the likelihood of enroling in an advanced secondary school track three years later. Thus, self-regulation teaching can be integrated into the regular school curriculum at low cost, is easily scalable, and can substantially improve important abilities and children's educational career path.
儿童的自我调节能力是教育成功和其他生活成果（如收入和健康）的关键预测因素。然而，自我调节并不是一门学校科目，关于如何通过易于扩展的低成本干预措施产生持久的自我调节和学业成绩提高的知识仍然有限。在这里，我们报告了一项随机对照实地研究的结果，该研究将基于心理对比与实施意图概念的短期自我调节教学单元纳入一年级的学校课程中。我们证明，该治疗方法不仅可以提高儿童的冲动控制和自我调节技能，还可以持续提高阅读和监测粗心错误等学业技能。此外，它通过增加三年后进入高级中学轨道的可能性，对儿童的长期学业生涯产生了实质性影响。因此，自我调节教学可以以低成本纳入常规学校课程，易于扩展，并且可以大大提高重要能力和儿童的教育生涯道路。
