"Do as I say!" : parenting and the biology of child self-regulation

The development of self-regulation is one of the major challenges of a child’s healthy and adaptive development (Colman, Hardy, Myesha, Raffaelli, & Crockett, 2006; McClelland & Cameron, 2011a). Unlike many other species, humans are not at the mercy of automatic, stimulus-response associations, but with the help of others develop the ability to inhibit dominant responses and actively select alternative behaviors (Conway & Stifter, 2012). Self-regulation develops over an extended period starting already in infancy (Bernier, Carlson, & Whipple, 2010), with a rapid developmental spurt in early childhood (Anderson, 2002), and further maturation in adolescence (Crone, 2009). Though children are innately inclined to strive for selfregulation (Bronson, 2000) and many intrinsic factors such as child temperament and neurological development are key to early self-regulation, extrinsic factors such as high quality interactions with caregivers are essential to nourish and channel selfregulatory development (Bronson, 2000; Fox & Calkins, 2003). In the current thesis, the contribution and interplay of parental and biological factors in the development of self-regulation in the preschool period are studied.