Abstract
The measurement of self-regulation in young children has been a topic of great interest as researchers and practitioners work to help ensure that children have the skills they need to succeed as they start school. The present study examined how a revised version of a commonly used measure of behavioral self-regulation, the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task (HTKS) called the HTKS-R, and measures of executive function (EF) was related to academic outcomes between preschool and kindergarten (ages 4–6years) in a diverse sample of children from families with low income participating in Head Start in the United States. Participants included 318 children (53% female; 76% White; and 20% Latino/Hispanic) from 64 classrooms in 18 Head Start preschools who were followed over four time points between the fall of preschool and the spring of kindergarten. Results indicated that children with higher HTKS-R scores had significantly higher math and literacy scores at all-time points between preschool and kindergarten. The HTKS-R was also a more consistent predictor of math and literacy than individual EF measures assessing inhibitory control, working memory, and task shifting. Parallel process growth models indicated that children who had high initial scores on the HTKS-R also had relatively higher initial scores on math and literacy. In addition, growth in children’s scores on the HTKS-R across the preschool and kindergarten years was related to growth in both children’s math and literacy scores over the same period independent of their starting points on either measure. For the HTKS-R and math, children’s initial scores were negatively associated with growth over the preschool and kindergarten years indicating that lower skilled children at the start of preschool started to catch up to their more skilled peers by the end of kindergarten.
Highlights
Skills developed in early childhood lay the foundation for later success in school and life (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2011; McClelland et al, 2013)
Skewness and kurtosis values for the behavioral self-regulation, executive function (EF), and academic achievement tasks were within acceptable ranges (Kline, 2005), with skewness ranging from −2.45 to 0.95 and kurtosis ranging from 1.25 to 12.14
The present study found that the Head-Toes-KneesShoulders task (HTKS)-R measure of children’s behavioral self-regulation was the strongest and most consistent independent predictor of both math and literacy skills when accounting for their performance on other individual measures of EF and socio-demographic covariates across the preschool and kindergarten years
Summary
Skills developed in early childhood lay the foundation for later success in school and life (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2011; McClelland et al, 2013). A considerable body of evidence documents that self-regulation contributes to school success both prior to kindergarten and throughout formal schooling (Moffitt et al, 2011; McClelland et al, 2013; Blair and Raver, 2015). It remains a challenge to capture adequate variability in self-regulation measures in ways that are both ecologically valid and predict school readiness and success in young children. We examine a revised version of the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task (HTKS-R), a direct assessment of children’s behavioral self-regulation that requires multiple executive function (EF) components and has demonstrated strong reliability, validity, and predictive associations with various academic and classroom outcomes (McClelland et al, 2007a, 2014; Cameron Ponitz et al, 2009; Wanless et al, 2011; Schmitt et al, 2017; Lenes et al, 2020a; Gonzales et al, 2021). This study examines how well the HTKS-R and other measures of EF predict (a) variation in children’s academic outcomes in preschool and kindergarten and (b) growth in academic skills during the school transition
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