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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Development
Volume 2 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2024.1371500
Do peers matter? The influence of peers' self-regulation on individual self-regulation: A longitudinal multilevel analysis
Provisionally accepted- University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
Self-regulation is important for social as well as academic success, and research shows that it is also shaped by social interactions. At the same time, peers shape children's development in many domains. Linking these two concepts, it can be predicted that children who are surrounded by peers with a high level of self-regulation later show higher self-regulation themselves compared to those who are surrounded by peers with a low level of self-regulation. To test this assumption, a longitudinal sample with N = 1,658 participants in 181 classrooms (µage = 8.37) was analyzed. The self-regulation facets of working-memory updating, inhibition, and flexibility were measured using an age-appropriate version of the Stroop test, the repeat-digits-backward test, and the Wisconsin card-sorting task. Based on this data, a score for both the individual and class level was calculated.The results show that the classmates` level of self-regulation predicted later individual self-regulation above the individual self-regulation score. While neither age nor gender moderated this relationship, there was a significant cross-level interaction: Especially individuals with a low level of cognitive flexibility gained from being surrounded by peers with a high level of cognitive flexibility. While the results show that peers constitute an important social context for the development of self-regulation, this fact is often only a minor point in modern self-regulation theories.
Keywords: multi-level, Self-regulation, inhibition, working-memory updating, Flexibility, School class, executive functions
Received: 16 Jan 2024; Accepted: 28 Aug 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Busching. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Robert Busching, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
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