Attentional control and executive functioning in school-aged children: Linking self-regulation and parenting strategies

- Parenting is linked to attention and executive functions in school-aged children.
- Supportive and non-intrusive parents have children with better inhibitory control.
- Parents asking more open-ended questions is linked to child executive functions.
- Some of these relations are curvilinear and age-dependent.

Good parenting strategies can shape children's neurocognitive development, yet little is known about the nature of this relation in school-aged children and whether this association shifts with age. We aimed to investigate the relation between parenting strategies observed during a home visit and children's performance-based attentional control and executive functioning (N = 98, aged 4-8 years). Linear and curvilinear regression analyses showed that children of parents who were more supportive, were less intrusive, and asked more open-ended questions displayed better inhibitory control. In addition, children of parents who asked relatively more open-ended than closed-ended questions showed better performance on inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility tasks. Curvilinear relations indicated the presence of an optimal amount of closed-ended and elaborative questions by parents-that is, not too few and not too many-which is linked to increased performance on attentional and inhibitory control in children. Higher parental intrusiveness and more frequent elaborative questioning were associated with decreased inhibitory control in younger children, whereas no such negative associations were present in older children. These results suggest that susceptibility to certain parenting strategies may shift with age. Our findings underscore the importance of adaptive parenting strategies to both the age and needs of school-aged children, which may positively affect their self-regulation skills.