Child Development Research Lab
Early Language, Self-regulation, and Motivation

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© Louis Manfra, 2003

Welcome To Dr. Adam Winsler's

Child Development Research Lab

One of the key developmental outcomes of the early childhood period is self-regulation -- children's ability to plan, guide, monitor, and organize their attention and behavior during challenging goal-directed activities. Resisting or inhibiting impulses, delaying gratification, and sustaining attention, are all examples of children's self-control or self-regulatory skill. Planning, organizing, and monitoring a complex sequence of problem-solving behaviors, and flexibly changing one's strategies in accordance with changing environmental circumstances are also (often called "executive") components of children's behavioral self-regulation. Effective behavioral self-regulation is essential for children's successful performance in school and is related with all kinds of positive developmental outcomes throughout the lifespan. Further, self-regulatory difficulties and/or executive dyfunction are central features of the symptomotology of children with behavior problems, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and/or autistic spectrum disorders.

Self-regulation is a multifaceted developmental outcome of early childhood which has both social and biological origins. Clearly, differences in children's temperament and genetic inheritance explain some of the individual differences in children's self-regulatory competence. Also clear, however, is that children's "self"-regulation is partly an outgrowth of their history of "other"-regulation - how effectively parents and others have regulated and controlled children's behavior and the extent to which self-regulatory skills has been supported or scaffolded by adults in the home.

Another important piece of the self-regulatory puzzle is children's language development. One of the important cultural tools adults use to regulate the behavior and attention of children is language. Similarly, one of the important tools children use to regulate their own behavior and attention is also language in the form of private speech, or self-talk.

Motivation refers to the complex pattern of children's goals, personal agency beliefs (self-efficacy and perceptions of the environment), and emotions which function to instigate and sustain children's goal-directed activities in the first place. Children's motivational orientations are also influenced by their history of social interactions and experiences with others and by the language used and internalized during such interactions.

The Early Childhood Language, Self-Regulation, and Motivation Lab is composed of 1-5 Undergraduate, 3-6 Masters, and 3-6 Doctoral students, each semester, working together on a variety of externally-, internally-, and non-funded research projects under the mentorship of Dr. Adam Winsler. Although individually quite diverse, each of the projects conducted within the lab is typically linked by a common desire to understand links between children's social interactions with parents and teachers, and children's language development, motivation, and/or self-regulation.

Current Projects