Developmental Pathways to Self-regulation: Individual, Social and Cultural Perspectives

Self-regulation (SR) is a broad multifaceted construct, defined as “the primarily volitional cognitive and behavioral process through which an individual maintains levels of emotional, motivational, and cognitive arousal that are conducive to positive adjustment and adaptation” (Blair & Diamond, 2008). The studies presented in this thesis, as well as the future lines of development, are built around a conceptualization of self-regulation that encompass control over emotional as well as cognitive contents. Also, given the multitude of operationalizations of the construct, in the present thesis the interest is in assessing self-regulation as: executive attention or attentional control; behaviorally expressed inhibitory control; emotion regulation. While assuming a common core, there are also specific differences between the different constructs and their measurements that should be addressed.