Self-Regulation on Children’s Motor Development and Executive Function

This research investigated the effect of self–regulation on children's gross skills, motor development, and executive functions. Motor development, in the form of fine and gross motor skills, along with cognitive development, significantly affects executive function. It could be considered as the inhibition of response and attention in the future of children and how they perform motor and exercise skills. Developmental interventions can be critical in the development of motor and cognitive skills. There are various practice–related interventions. One of such approaches is self–regulation. Furthermore, executive functions, in the form of cognitive development, are meta–cognitive functions that provide a set of abilities, inhibition, self–initiation, strategic planning, cognitive flexibility, and impulse control. These functions are skills that help individuals to focus on the important aspects of the task and plan it till completion. Executive functions change during the development process and with the age of a child, and gradually help the child to perform more complex tasks. This study aimed to investigate Self–Regulation on Children’s Motor Development and Executive Function.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The study subjects consisted of 60 girls aged 7, 9, and 11 years from Isfahan City, Iran, who were selected purposively. Each age group participants were randomly divided into two groups of self–regulating and control groups (n=10). In the pretest phase, children participated in the Bruininks–Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (Vaez Mousavi and Shojaee, 2005) and the Hearts and Flowers Task (a functional executive test) (Davidson et al., 2006). Then, the experimental group received an 8–week interventional program (two times per week, each lasting 60 minutes) in a self–regulation setting. Besides, for each child in a self–regulating situation, a child was placed in a control situation, i.e., participated in developmental interventions in consonance with the child's self–regulation situation and similar to his choices. At the end of the interventions, posttest and follow–up evaluations were performed on the motor and cognitive development variables. Statistical analysis was performed using the repeated–measures Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) at a significance level of 0.05 in SPSS.

The obtained results concerning gross motor skills revealed the main effect of group in all age groups; 7–year–olds (F=7.00, p= 0.017); 9–year–olds (F=14.88, p>0.001) and 11–year–olds (F=16.31, p> 0.001) was significant. Comparing the study subjects’ means scores suggested that the growth of gross motor skills of the intervention group was significantly higher than that of the controls in all three age groups. Regarding cognitive development at the age of 7 years, the main effect of group was significant (F=5.07, p =0.038). However, in the age groups of 9 and 11 years, the main effect of the group was not significant.

The ANCOVA results suggested that providing self–regulation strategies in the training conditions improved the learning performance and the cognitive development of girls aged 7, 9, and 11 years. Therefore, it is suggested that this strategy be used to improve the performance of children's learning and development.