Article summary with Towards an integrated account of the development of self-regulation from a neurocognitive perspective: A framework for current and future longitudinal multi-modal investigations by Vink a.o. - 2020

Poor self-regulation in childhood has been linked to various problems later in life. An integrated account in which longitudinal data on brain, behavior, and environment are all taken into consideration should help to understand causal relationships in terms of specific, well-defined mechanisms and develop interventions for when development goes wrong. An integrated account could help understand how effects of early problems can be prevented or minimized.

What is self-regulation?

Self-regulation refers to the ability to monitor and modulate our emotions, behavior, and cognition to allow us to achieve our goals and adapt to changing circumstances. Self-regulation develops in interaction with the environment in complex ways that result in positive or negative developmental cascades. Low levels of self-regulation early on in life can impede self-regulation development later in life. Unlike some other factors that may cause adverse outcomes, self-regulation may be quite malleable and be a good target for intervention.

What is the difference between effortful control and strategic control?

Effortful control refers to lower-level self-regulation. It involves the use of relatively simple executive functions, such as response inhibition or attention. It focuses on responding to the immediate situation. It can refer to both a trait and a type of process. Strategic control refers to the use of higher-order executive functions to achieve more sophisticated forms of self-regulation, such as planning. Different levels of self-regulation arise at different developmental periods.

How does self-regulation develop?

Self-regulation develops in interaction with a maturing brain. The emergence of brain networks and the quality of their connections, among other developments, dictate the possibilities and limits for self-regulation abilities. In turn, self-regulation abilities, learning, and adapting to new experiences affect subsequent brain development. Brain development is not a linear process. Maturation occurs in distinct developmental periods which can be distinguished by the onset or end of specific neural processes. Neuroimaging measures may improve our understanding of how self-regulation develops.

What is effortful control and how does it develop?

Effortful control refers to the top-down control over bottom-up processes for purposes of self-regulation. The low-level executive functions that are fundamental to early life self-regulation begin to emerge in the first year of life. In early stages of development, self-regulation involves only effortful control and associated low-level executive functions. In later stages of development, age-appropriate self-regulation can involve different and more complex cognitive processes. The development of more complex self-regulation is parallel by the development of the orienting-attention network that enables children to orient to stimuli and to shift attention from one stimulus to another, and subsequently the executive attention network.

How do higher-level executive functions develop in relation to brain maturation?

High-level executive functions build on the integration of the low-level executive functions that have developed in infancy. Brain development early in life can be characterized by volume expansion, neuron growth, and synapse formation. Then, during childhood, gray matter volume starts to shrink. Myelination of white matter nerve fibers and synaptic pruning combine to form brain networks that support the shift from low-level to high-level executive functions.

How does strategic control develop in relation to brain maturation?

Strategic control requires goal-directed coordination of previously acquired low- and high-level executive functions. It is a level of self-regulation that emerges during adolescence due to the effective integration and coordination of executive functions. It co-occurs with the improvement of the quality of connections between cortical and subcortical regions, facilitated by the increase in myelination of white-matter tracts connecting these regions, allowing for faster and more precise neural signaling.

Why whilst fine-tuning effortful control are there so many indicators of reduced self-regulation capacity in adolescence?

Adolescence is associated with behaviors such as increased risk taking, heightened sensitivity to social cues, and impulsivity. These indicators of reduced self-regulation capacity appear to be related to a developmental, transient imbalance between frontal lobe control and subcortical reward processing. There are regional differences in maturation speed across the brain, with the frontal cortex developing the slowest.

Why is there no integrated developmental account of self-regulation?

• Self-regulation is conceptualized, labeled, and measured in many different ways, hindering the integration of data from different groups and studies.
• There is a lack of integration of developmental measures of self-regulation with repeated neuroimaging studies.
• There is a lack of integration across different developmental periods.

What is the benefit of an integrated developmental account of self-regulation?

Poor self-regulation in childhood has been linked to various problems later in life. An integrated account in which longitudinal data on brain, behavior, and environment are all taken into consideration should help to understand causal relationships in terms of specific, well-defined mechanisms and develop interventions for when development goes wrong. An integrated account could help understand how effects of early problems can be prevented or minimized.

What is the role of the Consortium on Individual Development (CID) in developing an integrated developmental account of self-regulation?

The CID combines a series of integrated large-scale, multi-modal, longitudinal studies and uses the same instrument in all cohorts, addresses a range of essential factors in the development of self-regulation, and allows for the analysis of the same concept measured in a comparable way. It researches different cohorts and taps into different environmental factors and brain and behavioral measures throughout childhood and adolescence, with repeated neuroimaging measurements.