Emotion-cognition integration and adaptive executive control : the role of child temperament and parenting in affective decision-making and early school adjustment.

This thesis explored the interplay between individual differences in young children’s temperament traits and observed parenting strategies as associated with children’s affective decision-making (Study One), and early school adjustment (Study Two). The bidirectional psychobiological model of self-regulation (e.g. Blair, 2016) and the Cognitive Complexity and Control Theory – revised (Zelazo, Müller, Frye, & Marcovitch, 2003) informed the hypotheses surrounding the influence of temperament and parental socialisation on children’s functioning. In Study One, parents reported on their child’s temperament characteristics and two to four weeks later, the parent-child dyad participated in a laboratory assessment (n = 77; child Mage at assessment = 52.06 months). After observation of two dyadic activities, children’s affective decision-making was assessed through the Children’s Gambling Task (CGT; Kerr & Zelazo, 2004) using both standard outcomes and novel CGT measures. Study Two assessed the same sample of children one to two months after transitioning from preschool/kindergarten to primary school (n = 64; child Mage at assessment = 62.56 months), and employed the temperament and observational data from Study One in order to predict teacher-reported early school adjustment. Results across both studies showed that surgency/extraversion was the most consistent temperament trait associated with affective decision-making and school adjustment, along with specific aspects of negative affectivity or effortful control for other specific outcomes. A variety of individual parenting behaviours predicted distinct child outcomes across both studies with only coercive parental control related to more than one outcome. Against predictions, there were very few significant interactions between the temperament and parenting variables. These findings are related to recent theory and empirical findings on the interplay between children’s temperament-related affective reactivity, contextual influences, and their capacity to utilise executive control