Visuele Aandacht en Zelfcontrole bij Peuters

Abstract

The ability to control one’s impulses and delay immediate gratification at a young age is an important predictor of later outcomes, such as physical health and risk behaviour. Children who show self-control at a young age are cognitively and socially more competent. From previous studies, it is known that children use different coping strategies to help them postpone immediate gratification. However, it is unclear how children learn these coping strategies. Therefor, this study focusses on the role of parents as a role model of coping strategies. The focus is on visual attention strategies. From video recordings of children in a delay of gratification experiment, it became clear that children use many different visual attention coping strategies. This helps them control their impulses. Correlation and linear regression analyses of a large data set showed that early behavioural characteristics of the children do not have an impact on their performance in the delay of gratification task. The gender and the age at which the children started going to day-care does have an influence on their performance.