Self-regulation (SR), the ability to modulate own’s cognition, emotion, and/or behavior has a foundational role in promoting wellbeing across the lifespan. Parent-child coregulation is a strong candidate as a process that supports SR in early childhood because it reflects the moment-to-moment coordination of goal-oriented behaviors and expressed affect between parent and child (Calkins, 2011; Lunkenheimer et al., 2017). However, the field lacks systematic empirical study of how these parent–child coregulation processes contribute to typical self-regulatory development in early childhood. In this dissertation, I aim to provide a deeper understanding of the development of children SR in early childhood, by examining the role of dyadic co-regulation in the development of children SR in three independent studies from a dynamic and multilevel approach. Overall, the three studies offer evidence that individual parent effects, individual child effects, and dyadic patterns should all be
considered to represent a more complete picture of the effects of parent–child coregulation on children’s regulatory skills. Future studies should expand on this line, examining the stability and change of this coregulation patterns in parentchild interactions, for example, across different tasks and developmental time points.
BY: MARÍA FERNANDA PRIETO TAGLE
January 2024