Children's Emerging Regulation of Conduct: Restraint, Compliance, and Internalization from Infancy to the Second Year

Previous work extended previous work into three new directions: children's committed compliance and passive noncompliance in control contexts related predictably to their motivation in mother-child teaching contexts; restraint at 8-10 months predicted higher committed compliance at 13-15 months; and focused attention was associated with contemporaneous restraint and modestly with committed compliance to maternal "dos" at 12-13 months.

Abstract

We examined emergent regulation of conduct from infancy to the second year. Multiple observational measures at home and in the laboratory assessed, at 8-10 months, the child's restraint and attention (N = 112), and at 13-15 months, compliance to mother, internalization of her prohibition, and quality of motivation in the mother-child teaching context (N = 108). We replicated the findings previously reported for older children that supported our view of compliance and noncompliance as heterogeneous: Committed compliance was higher to maternal "don'ts" than "dos," with the reverse true for situational compliance; girls surpassed boys in committed compliance; and committed, but not situational, compliance related positively, and passive noncompliance negatively, to children's internalization of maternal prohibition. We extended previous work into three new directions: children's committed compliance and passive noncompliance in control contexts related predictably to their motivation in mother-child teaching contexts; restraint at 8-10 months predicted higher committed compliance at 13-15 months; and focused attention at 8-10 months was associated with contemporaneous restraint and modestly with committed compliance to maternal "dos" at 13-15 months.