Verbal Self‐regulation over Time in Preschool Children at Risk for Attention and Behavior Problems

Abstract

This study is a prospective, longitudinal attempt to explore behavioral self-regulation, private speech, and speech-action coordination in a sample of behaviorally at-risk preschool children. Preschoolers (N = 72) were classified at age 3 years into a behaviorally at-risk group or a comparison group on the basis of preschool teacher behavioral ratings. Children were videotaped on four different occasions across the span of almost 2 years as they completed problem-solving tasks, and private speech, task performance, executive functioning, and speech-action coordination were analyzed. Children identified 2 years earlier as being hard to manage were at risk for continued behavior problems at elementary school entry. Behaviorally at-risk children consistently used more spontaneous private speech than comparison children across all observations. Both groups of children demonstrated a pattern of increasing silence with task success over time. No group differences were observed in children's speech-action coordination at age 5 years. Intraindividual developmental changes in private speech for both groups were associated with task performance, speech-action coordination, and executive functioning at age 5, but not with teacher- and parent-reported problem behavior.

“Should I let them talk?”: Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behavior problems

“…As seen in Table 1, there were no significant group differences on any demographic variables at the time of initial subject recruitment, but at the time when the data were collected and reported in this report, children in the behavior problems group were more likely to be in a single parent household (21% as opposed to 5% for the comparison group). As reported elsewhere (Winsler, Diaz et al, 2000;Winsler, Carlton et al, 2000) there was stability in children's behavior problems over time as the children originally placed in the at-risk group two years earlier still had significantly greater parent-and teacher-reported CBCL attention problems and aggression at the time of this data collection. …”

“…A variety of different aspects of children's private speech have now been explored, including ontogentic and microgenetic developmental trajectories (Berk, 1986;Berk & Spuhl, 1995;Duncan & Pratt, 1997;Winsler, Diaz, Atencio, McCarthy, & Adams Chabay, 2000), links with adult-child interactions (Berk & Spuhl, 1995;Winsler, Diaz, McCarthy, Atencio, & Adams Chabay, 1999), task and situational influences (Frauenglass & Diaz, 1985;Krafft & Berk, 1998;Winsler, Carlton, & Barry, 2000;Winsler & Diaz, 1995), children's awareness of such speech (Manfra & Winsler, in press;Winsler & Naglieri, 2003), and private speech use within special populations of children (Berk & Landau, 1993;Berk & Potts, 1991;Winsler, 1998). However, an early and central theme of inquiry in this area has been determining the extent to which private speech is helpful to children in terms of either guiding motor behavior or enhancing task performance (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005).…”

“…Subsequent research on the private speech of children with self-regulatory difficulties (children either clinically diagnosed with ADHD or hard-to-manage preschoolers at risk for such a diagnosis) has shown that such children (a) do spontaneously use overt private speech for self-regulation (often even more than typical children of the same age working on the same task), (b) produce qualitatively similar types of private speech, that is, they use all forms of self-speech utterances, including those that appear to be quite mature and self-regulatory in nature, but (c) appear to be delayed in the internalization of private speech-children lacking in self-control continue to talk to themselves out loud while same-age comparison children engaging in the same task are quieter and use more partially internalized forms of speech, such as whispers and inaudible muttering (Berk & Potts, 1991;Copeland, 1979;Diaz, Winsler, Atencio, & Harbers, 1992;Winsler, 1998;Winsler et al, 1999;Winsler, Diaz et al, 2000;Winsler, Carlton et al, 2000). Winsler, Diaz et al (2000) and Winsler, Carlton et al (2000), for example, found that the normal developmental trajectory for private speech between the ages of 3.5 and 5.5 appears to be one of decreasing private speech overall accompanied by increasing task success with silence, a pattern from which children at-risk for ADHD deviate.…”

“…Winsler, Diaz et al (2000) and Winsler, Carlton et al (2000), for example, found that the normal developmental trajectory for private speech between the ages of 3.5 and 5.5 appears to be one of decreasing private speech overall accompanied by increasing task success with silence, a pattern from which children at-risk for ADHD deviate. These investigators also found that high and increasing amounts over time of task-irrelevant private speech are linked with poor child behavior both at home and at school (Winsler, Diaz et al, 2000;Winsler, Carlton et al, 2000;Winsler, de León, Wallace, Carlton, & Willson-Quayle, 2003).…”

“…Participants were recruited 1-2 years earlier in the context of a larger-scale longitudinal study (Winsler, Diaz et al, 2000;Winsler, Carlton et al, 2000) involving two groups of children: (1) those identified by their preschool teachers as being hard-to-manage, behavior-problem preschoolers at-risk for ADHD and (2) comparison children without attention or externalizing behavior problems. The behavior problems group included those children who, during a screening of 566 children attending 11 preschools, scored among the top 10% after averaging across two independent preschool teacher ratings of impulsivity/behavior problems.…”