How preschoolers develop self-control is the focus of a new five-year, $1.65 million study at SIUC.

"There are a number of disorders [relating to self-control] that emerge in the preschool period, attention deficit disorder and autism being two of the best known," says Kimberly Andrews Espy, associate professor of family and community medicine in the School of Medicine and head of the research team conducting the study.

"Part of the reason the National Institute of Mental Health funded this project is that we know so little about how [self-control] develops. If we can understand it in garden-variety children, it will help us understand how these other children get off the path."

Earlier work in Arizona with toddlers exposed prenatally to cocaine sparked Espy's interest in how children in general develop self-control. The development that takes place in children between the ages of 3 and 6 is "dramatic," she notes.

"They move from being impulsive, in-the-moment kids who can't wait for anything to children who can sit in a classroom, who can get their needs met through speaking, who can follow complex directions. The scientific label for this is 'executive control,' because they, like executives, can manage or guide their behavior purposefully to achieve a goal."

Espy's project ultimately will involve some 400 youngsters from all over southern Illinois. Half of them will undergo monitoring at nine-month intervals from their third birthdays until their sixth. A smaller group of 40 to 50 children will be added at each nine-month interval, with regular observation periods continuing until their sixth birthdays.

"We wanted to have groups coming in at staggered periods in order to separate how much of the result is due to development and how much is due to [their] having done the tasks over and over again," Espy explains.

Researchers will watch the children perform three sets of three tasks, each aimed at measuring such functions as memory and inhibition. In one such task, for example, children have nine chances to search for treats hidden under cups; the better they remember where they searched previously, the more treats they can find--and eat.

Sessions will be videotaped so that the researchers can later record how many times the children got out of their seats, didn't pay attention to the task at hand, and so forth.

While children are taking the hour-long battery in Espy's lab, their parents will meet with members of Espy's research team, answering questions about the kids' actions and behavior at home and at school. That will give the team a fuller picture of each child's development.

Neuropsychologist Paul Kaufmann, currently working on a law degree at SIUC, helped develop some of the task sets, a host of research assistants are conducting the sessions, and University of Houston psychologist David Francis will assist with data analysis at the end of the three-year testing period.

"Preschoolers are fun to work with," says Espy, who also heads a five-year federal study on the effects of prenatal nicotine exposure on child development.

"They're spontaneous, they try their best, and they say funny things. It's my favorite age."

--by K. C. Jaehnig, Media & Communication Resources

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