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Motivation, stress, self-control ability and self-control behavior among young children
Abstract
Self-control, as reflected in the behavior of delay of gratification, has been important to the social and academic success of children. Investigation of factors contributing to the initiating, maintaining, and developing of self-control behavior will aid in the understanding of children's prosocial behavior. Kendall's Self-Control Rating Scale (SCRS) was translated into Chinese and validated on a sample of 204 Chinese children. The results of the study indicated that the Chinese version of the SCRS (SCRS-C) was valid and reliable. Teachers from childcare centers in Beijing, China, completed the SCRS-C for 216 children, ages three to five. These children were videotaped during a 10 minute delay of gratification research task at a university laboratory observation room. Children were instructed to play with only the familiar building toy and to delay playing with the highly attractive novel toy. A 2 x 2 factorial experimental design included two levels of motivation (reward after completion of delay or no mention of reward) and stress (large or small number of toys available for playing) of self-control. Children were randomly selected from the 600 children at the center and randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. Videotapes were continuously coded for play behaviors with the allowed and restricted toys. Total duration of time in compliance and non-compliance was calculated. Non-compliant behavior had significant aggregated pooled within-group correlations with gender (0.90), and with score on SCRS-C ($-$0.65). The association was not found to be significant with children's age. Girls exhibited less non-compliant behavior. Children rated by teachers as higher in self-control engaged in less non-compliant behavior during the research task. Results from ANCOVA indicated that high motivation produced less non-compliant behavior (F(1, 196) = 16.2, $p<$.01). High stress produced more non-compliant behavior (F(1,196) = 4.1, $p<$.05). No significant relationship was found between the self-control behavior and the interactions of motivation and stress. Implications were discussed for factors contributing to the prosocial behavior of self-control.
Subject Area
Educational psychology|Preschool education|Developmental psychology
Recommended Citation
Wang, Aimin, "Motivation, stress, self-control ability and self-control behavior among young children" (1994). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9519554.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9519554