Temperament and attention in the self-regulation of 7-year-old children

The present work assessed the implications of the posterior orienting and t he anterior executive attentional networks on self-regulation abilities in children through studying the relations of 7-year-old children's temperamen t characteristics to different forms of attentional control. Children were classified in terms of their temperament traits measured through the Childr en's Behavior Questionnaire. Children carried out two Stroop tasks, with an d without distracting stimuli, and flanker and Stroop interference effects were calculated as measures of the orienting and the executive attentional networks, respectively. Results indicated that children scoring high in Ang er, Discomfort, Sadness (only girls) and Approach-Anticipation (only girls) showed a stronger flanker interference effect, exhibiting greater difficul ty to filter out the non relevant information than children scoring low did . On the other hand, children scoring high in Activity Level and Impulsivit y (only girls), and low in Inhibitory Control, showed a stronger Stroop int erference effect, indicating less ability to suppress prepotent behaviors u nder instructions. Also, patterns of interactions between some pairs of sca les revealed that negative emotionality and self-regulatory aspects of temp erament predicted both Stroop and flanker interference performance. (C) 200 1 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.