Components Of Self-Regulation And Theory Of Mind In Early Childhood

The main goal of the present study was to examine the components of self-regulation and its role in the componential model of theory of mind in early childhood. One hundred and three 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were administered a battery of self-regulation tasks, which included day-night task, backward digit task, tapping task, slowing down task, whisper task, disappointing gift procedure, today-tomorrow task and toy delay task, and four theory of mind tasks. In addition, parents completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist. The first goal of this study was to examine the components of self-regulation and their development and differences between male and female subjects. The second goal was to see the development and gender differences of the two components of theory of mind and their relations with each other. The third was to find out the relations between self regulation components and two components of theory of mind. The last one was to recheck the relations by controlling the difficulty of tasks of theory of mind.The results showed that,(a) There are three components in self-regulation which is cognitive-behavioral self-regulation, emotion regulation and motivational self-regulation.(b) The indexes of cognitive-behavioral self-regulation were inhibition control, working memory and hand movement regulation. The negative emotional reactions presented the emotion regulation. The delay of gratification was equal to motivational self-regulation.(c) There were no differences between male and female in all components and indexes of self-regulation.(d) The self-regulation improved significantly from 3 to 5.(e) The cognitive-behavioral self-regulation was related to emotion regulation positively in age three.(f) The two components of theory of mind improved significantly with developement.(g) There were no differences between the accuracies of two components of theory of mind in three age groups.(h) There were no significant relations between the social cognitive component and social perceptual component. (i) The cognitive-behavioral self-regulation was related to social cognitive component of theory of mind positively while the emotion regulation was related to social perceptual component.(j) Controlling the inhibition control in social cognition, the levels of theory of mind improved significantly with development.(k) Controlling the working memory in social cognitive task, the theory of mind improved significantly with development.(l) Controlling the inhibition control in social cognition, there still are significant relations between inhibition control and social cognitive components in 3- and 5-year-old group.(m) Controlling the working memory in social cognitive task, there still are significant relations between working memory and social cognitive components in three groups.