Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Allowing your kids to be independent may help make them smarter, according to new research linking childhood autonomy and higher cognitive skills.

Célia Matte-Gagné from the Laval University School of Psychology in Quebec and colleagues from the Department of Psychology at the Concordia University Centre for Research in Human Development in Montreal report their findings in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

In their study, the researchers report that mothers who are consistently able to support the development of their baby’s sense of autonomy have children that tend to demonstrate higher cognitive skills. Specifically, they looked at executive functioning, which refers to a range of processes that are essential for cognitive, social and psychological functioning.

“We have shown that the child’s executive functioning is linked to the mother’s ability to support his or her autonomy,” Matte-Gagné explained in a statement. “Autonomy support includes things such as teaching children problem solving skills and involves taking the child’s perspective while ensuring he or she takes an active role in completing tasks.”

“Importantly, the study shows that it’s not just about getting off to a good start,” she added. “While many studies have confirmed that a mother’s support are critical, few have looked at how these skills might change over time and what effect that might have.”

The researchers recruited 78 mother-child teams for the study and visited them in their homes twice – once when the child was 15 months old, and again when they reached the age of three. Each of the visits lasted between 60 and 90 minutes, during which time the mothers were asked to help the children complete activities slightly too difficult to be completed alone.

The activities (building a tower and completing puzzles during the first visit, sorting blocks during the second) took approximately 10 minutes and were recorded by the researchers so that they could evaluate the autonomy-supportive behaviors of the mother.

Specifically, they were looking at the degree to which she encouraged the child in the pursuit of the task through positive feedback, as well as whether or not she took her child’s perspective and demonstrated flexibility in her attempts to keep the child on task. They also looked to see if the mother followed her child’s pace, allowed the child to actively participate and make choices, adapted the task for the child and minimized the use of controlling techniques.

The child’s executive functioning was evaluated at the age of three through a series of adapted games that can reveal a child’s ability to delay gratification, the strength of his or her working memory and his or her capacity to think about multiple concepts simultaneously. The children of mothers who were consistently best at inspiring autonomous behavior scored highest, and those who were the worst at promoting independence consistently scored lowest.

“Special significance must be given to the stability of the parent’s behaviour when attempting to predict a child’s future development,” said Matte-Gagné. “This study raises the possibility that child executive functioning may require not only high-quality parenting, but also consistency in this quality.”

“This is suggested by the association between the composite score of autonomy support and child executive function, as well as by the fact that the clearest group differences emerged between children experiencing consistently high versus consistently low degrees of autonomy support over time,” she added. “Our findings raise interesting avenues for investigation as to how the relationship between scaffolding autonomy and executive functioning evolves as children develop.”

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