The process of early self-control: an observational study in two- and three-year-olds

Early individual differences in self-control are predictive of numerous developmental outcomes, such as physical health and risk-taking behaviours. Therefore, it is important to improve our understanding of how young children manage to exert self-control. This study investigates two- and three-year-old children’s behaviours during two self-control tasks and the association between the occurrence of these behaviours and task success. Furthermore, the study examines relations between timing and occurrence of these behaviours and caregiver-rated self-control. Two- and three-year-olds (N = 62) were given a snack and gift delay of gratification task to measure self-control. The following behaviours were coded second-by-second during the delay: direction of visual attention and the body (directed towards or away from the reward), distracting with the hands (fidgeting), and actively ‘withholding’ the hands (e.g., holding one hand with the other). To assess caregiver-rated self-control, parents and teachers filled out a selected set of items from the Early Childhood Behaviour Questionnaire inhibitory control scale (Putnam et al. 2006). The percentage of time that children looked away and withheld their hands from the reward positively predicted task success, suggesting that these behaviours are strategic at this young age. Average latency of initiating these behaviours was <10 s for successful children. Teacher-rated (but not parent-rated) self-control related to both the timing and co-occurrence of these behaviours, supporting the ecological validity of the observations. These findings call for future studies to examine further how individual and contextual factors shape the fine-grained dynamics of strategy use in self-control early in life.