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The development of volitional behavior in the toddler years
1Max Planck Institut für psychologische Forschung, München, West Germany.
Insights
Toddlers develop volitional skills by learning to meet task standards and control actions for desired outcomes. This study observed consistent developmental patterns in children aged 15-35 months.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Child Development
Background:
- Early volitional skills are crucial for goal-directed behavior.
- Understanding how toddlers develop self-regulation and task engagement is key.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe the emergence of early volitional skills in toddlers.
- To examine toddlers' abilities in matching actions to task standards and monitoring outcomes.
Main Methods:
- Observational study of children aged 15 to 35 months.
- Involved structured play and clean-up tasks.
- Analysis of task engagement, outcome monitoring, and affective reactions.
Main Results:
- Consistent developmental patterns observed in toddlers' focus on outcomes.
- Increased ability to monitor, correct, and control actions over time.
- Developmental progression in reacting to outcomes with positive affect.
Conclusions:
- Toddlers' volitional skills develop through changes in action representation and self-regulation.
- The self plays an active role in the development of these skills.
- Findings provide insight into early goal-directed behavior and self-control.
Abstract:
In order to generate a description of early volitional skills, toddlers' abilities to match their activities to externally defined task standards and to monitor and control activities with respect to outcomes were studied. Children between 15 and 35 months were observed as they engaged in a series of play and clean-up tasks. The results showed that there is a consistent developmental pattern in the extent to which children focus on producing outcomes (rather than on acting for its own sake), the extent to which they monitor, correct, and control activities, and the frequency with which they react to their outcomes with positive affect. These patterns are interpreted in terms of changes in the representation of actions, self-regulation abilities, and the active involvement of the self in actions.