"Children’s Effortful Control and Socio-Emotional adjustment "

The goal of this study is to examine the associations between children’s Effortful Control and their socio-emotional learning on a sample of italian elementary school children. The following socio-emotional skills were considered (CASEL, 2023): Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social-Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision Making. Previous studies have proved the relevance of Effortful Control for the development and mastering of effective emotion and behavior regulation strategies, which in turn are of paramount importance for appropriate social functioning (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 2001; 2010). Participants include 38 children (57% females; mean age = 9.18, S.D. = 0.80), their parents (N = 29; 82% mothers) and their teachers from an elementary school in Rome. After collecting consent forms from parents and teachers, the children were exposed to a intervention aimed at promoting Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) with on-line sessions, in small groups, facilitated by a virtual robot (Gordon et al., 2023; Riccioni et al., 2023). The sessions were created following the guidance of previous validated programs aimed at promoting children’s SEL-related competences (e.g., CASEL, 2017; Caprara et al. 2014, 2015; 2020; Kendall et al., 2002). A battery of questionnaires was administered to all the participants at pre- and post-test. The questionnaires assessed the five SEL competencies (Elliott et al., 2020) and children’s Effortful Control (Simonds & Rothbart, 2004). Preliminary repeated measure ANOVAs showed an overall improvement of children’s SEL skills. Weak or not significant associations emerged for the SEL-related skills across informants. Effortful Control was associated with Self-Management across informants. No significant correlation emerged between Effortful Control and Social Awareness across informants, except for a moderate positive correlation for parent-reports. Effortful Control was correlated only with child- and parent-reported Relationship Skills, and with Responsible Decision-Making across informants. The present study contributes to the identification of individual variability in children’s SEL, and the results presented may be useful in gaining understanding on the individual mechanisms of children involved in intervention programs aimed at promoting well-being, in order to better understand who can benefit more from them. Moreover, the present study contributes to provide information about the correlation between children’s Effortful Control and SEL skills within a specific Socio-Emotional competencies framework, i.e., CASEL’s. Given the plenty of Socio-Emotional dimensions identified (e.g., Cefai et al., 2018), embedding the analysis within a specific framework may provide more clarity and make replication easier.