Self-regulation: Assessment and Intervention in children at environmental risk for poverty

MUSSO, M. Y RICHAUD, M.C.

Atenas- Grecia

Congreso; 26th International Congress of Applied Psychology; 2006

International Association of Applied Psychology

Self-regulation has been conceptualized from different points of view, stressing several features such as: cognition, problem solving, decision making, meta-cognition, conceptual change, motivation, and volition. Self regulation system comprises a complex, super-ordinate set of functions (Carver & Scheier, 1990; in Boekaerts and Corno, 2005). Results, from an intervention program on self-regulatory skills in children, referring to impulse control, planning, problem solving and their relationship with coping, will be presented. These abilities are affected by poverty, since early childhood, generating a dysfunctional coping, with strategies such as inhibition, emotional discharge, limited seeking of social support and poor impulse control (Richaud, 2005; Musso, 2005). A set of tests and observations were administered to a sample of 80 children, at high risk for poverty, both sexes, from first grade of school, Paraná City, Argentina. The intervention program consisted in environmental changes, and instruction in planning, meta-cognitive and verbal abilities. ANOVA for repeated measures and multiple regression analyses were performed. Changes in self regulation and variable associations, following recent theoretical models, will be discussed