| Self-control is the capacity to inhibit and regulate one's impulse . During childhood ,a major task and goal of socialization for young child is to develop self-control. It is such a long , complex and important process that deserves psychologists' research efforts. Western psychologists have studied children's self-control for many years and have gained plenty of research findings in both theorizing and practice areas. However ,our internal research has just been started and on a low level. Then the purpose of this paper is to provide some inspirations and help to our internal research on children's self-control.The first parts of the paper mainly look back to some early psychologists' speculations and formulations concerning children self-control before 1960s'. There are rich ideas concerning children self-control in many self-theorists' theoretical formulations on the importance of self in the socialization process. For Freud ,self-control was linked to the development of ego strength .Within the learning theory tradition, Skinner first approached the issue of self-control in terms of principles of operant conditioning. These various perspectives on self-control suggested two normative developmental trends. First , there is a progression from external to internal factors as mediators of self-control. The second is that there are age-related increases in the capacity for self-control . Although for the most part, these psychologists did not have much in the way of data to support their theory, they paved the way for the modern theorizing and research on self-control.The main body of the paper has summarized and has analyzed modern researches and theories on children's self-control after 1960s'. (1) From the middle of 1960s'to the end of 1970s'. Out of Freud psychoanalytic tradition, two major theoretical contributions have emerged. In the work of the Blocks, two major personality constructs, ego control and ego resiliency, have been studied longitudinally. Loevinger, on the other hand , has cast impulse control into a more general stage model of ego development .For these psychoanalytic orientation theorists, self-control is an individual difference variable. Within a given individual it is assumed to be a relatively stable personality characteristic that operates across a variety of situations. In contrast to them , such social learning theorists as Bandura and Mischel who based their theoretical models on the principles of social learning and behavioral modification emphasize or allow for the situation specificity of self-controlling and self-controlled responses. That is, self-control is not a trait or disposition. These social learning theorists have primarily addressed the processes involved in self-control and the effects of factors (punishment,model, attention and cognition etc.) on self-control through abundant experiments. Within the domain of behavior modification, Meichenbaum has devised a self-instructional program grounded in the theoretical formulations of Luria to train impulsive children to talk to themselves as a method for developing self-control over overt behavior. Besides, Camp's Think Aloud program including greater variety of skills is very useful in training young aggressive boys. Generally, however, there are some dissatisfying limitations of this period of studies of self-control. For example, few studies dealing with children younger than age 4, too much dependence on laboratory experimental methodology and too little attention directed toward developmental factors involved in self-control. (2) From the early 1980s' to now . After entering 1980s', researchers increasingly realize that self-control does not represent a unitary process, but instead represents a multi-dimensional process involving cognitive, attitudinal, motivational, behavioral and situational components, each of them must ultimately be considered from a developmental perspective. Within this general context , field experimental studies have become increasingly popular...
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