ABSTRACT

Cognitive control skills in early life are vital to success throughout the lifespan. Such skills have been positively linked to a host of important short- and long-term outcomes across many diverse domains. Similarly, self-perceptions such as self-efficacy, implicit beliefs about cognition, and self-concept have all been shown to predict meaningful variance in important outcomes like academic performance over and above measures of cognitive ability. To what extent do young children have a self-perception of their own level of cognitive control functioning? To date, no measures have been developed to assess young children’s perceptions of their own skills in this regard. In this study, we aimed to develop and validate a scale capturing children’s self-perceptions of their cognitive control skills via a puppet interview. Scale analyses of interviews from 125 children aged 4 through 7 years suggest the scale elicits responses that cluster around two correlated, but separable components: 1) Self- and Emotion-Regulation, and 2) Attention Modulation. Responses on these two subscales showed moderate to strong internal consistency, were strongly correlated with parent reports of similar skills, and self-reports of related constructs, but showed no systematic relation to behavioral tasks measuring executive functioning abilities. The findings suggest that young children are capable of reflecting and reporting on their own cognitive control skills and that these skills correspond to parent reports of similar abilities. Further scale refinement and targeted validation efforts are needed; however, these encouraging early results suggest the new scale holds potential to uncover how children’s self-perceptions influence their learning success.

摘要

早期的认知控制技能对于整个一生的成功至关重要。这些技能已经与许多不同领域的许多重要的短期和长期成果建立了积极的联系。同样，自我效能感，对认知的内隐信念和自我概念等自我感知都已被证明可以预测重要结果（例如学业成绩）中有意义的变化，而不是认知能力的衡量指标。幼儿对自己的认知控制功能水平的自我认知程度如何？迄今为止，还没有采取任何措施来评估幼儿在这方面对自己技能的看法。在这项研究中，我们旨在开发和验证一个通过木偶访谈记录儿童对他们的认知控制技能自我认知的量表。对来自125位4至7岁儿童的访谈进行的量表分析表明，该量表引起的响应集中在两个相关但可分离的部分周围：1）自我调节和情绪调节，以及2）注意调节。这两个分量表上的回答显示出中等至强的内部一致性，与父母的类似技能报告以及相关构想的自我报告密切相关，但与测量执行功能的行为任务没有系统关系。研究结果表明，幼儿能够反思和报告自己的认知控制技能，并且这些技能与具有类似能力的父母报告相对应。需要进一步的规模优化和针对性的验证工作；然而，