Filipiak Sara, Hawrot Anna
Department of Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology, Institute of Psychology, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Lublin, Poland.
Department of Competencies, Personality, Learning Environments, Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, Bamberg, Germany.
Scand J Psychol. 2025 Apr;66(2):277-287. doi: 10.1111/sjop.13085. Epub 2024 Nov 28.
Past research in developmental psychology has revealed close links between affect and planning ability over the life-span. However, such links have rarely been studied in children from non-clinical samples. To address this gap, the present study investigates whether negative affect, understood as a temperamental trait, affects planning ability in 5-year-old children. Moreover, it examines whether selected cognitive processes, that is inhibition, verbal working memory, and cognitive flexibility, mediate this relationship. A total of 103 children aged M = 5 years 4 months, SD = 2.7 months, and their parents participated in the study. The analyses, which employed a path mediation model, revealed that negative affect's influence on planning was entirely mediated by flexibility. Moreover, flexibility partially mediated the relationship between inhibition and planning, and verbal working memory had a direct effect on planning. The results provide a new insight into the relationship between negative affect and planning ability in non-clinical preschool children.
发展心理学过去的研究揭示了情感与整个生命周期内规划能力之间的紧密联系。然而，这种联系在非临床样本的儿童中很少被研究。为了填补这一空白，本研究调查了作为一种气质特征的消极情绪是否会影响5岁儿童的规划能力。此外，研究还考察了选定的认知过程，即抑制、言语工作记忆和认知灵活性，是否在这种关系中起中介作用。共有103名年龄为M = 5岁4个月、标准差为2.7个月的儿童及其父母参与了这项研究。采用路径中介模型进行的分析表明，消极情绪对规划的影响完全由灵活性介导。此外，灵活性部分介导了抑制与规划之间的关系，言语工作记忆对规划有直接影响。这些结果为非临床学龄前儿童消极情绪与规划能力之间的关系提供了新的见解。
