The effect of mothers’ effortful control, depression, emotional expression on preschoolers’ effortful control

This study explores how mothers’ effortful control influences to preschoolers’ temperamental and behavioral effortful control indirectly through mothers’ depression and emotional expression. This study focused on “ mothers’ socio-emotional characteristics” which are known to be closely associated with children’s effortful control. The major results of the study are as follow. Firstly, mothers’ effortful control significantly and negatively influenced preschoolers’ delayed function (hot task) and attention function (cool task) through mothers’ depression. Second, mothers’ effortful control significantly and positively influenced preschoolers’ temperamental effortful control. The findings of the study provided that highlight the importance of mothers’ emotional and cognitive adjustment to enhance children’s effortful control and emphasizes the need to understand the domain-specific mechanisms how mothers' behaviors and characteristics differentially influence children’s temperamental and two sub domains of behavioral effortful control.