Getting Warmer

Effortful control (EC) is defined as the ability to inhibit or delay a prepotent response, typically in favor of a subdominant response. It has been suggested that, in young children (i.e., preschool-aged), EC is a multidimensional construct, composed of “hot” or affectively salient and “cool” or affectively neutral dimensions. However, findings regarding these dimensions are equivocal. Whereas studies that measure hot EC using delay of gratification-type tasks typically find both Hot and Cool EC factors, studies that measure EC using hot tasks that differ from cool tasks by their level of affective salience only typically do not find separate Hot and Cool EC factors. The purpose of this study was to determine whether hot and cool EC differ by more than just affective salience. To test this, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted using three sets of EC tasks: one set requiring children to inhibit a prepotent response in favor of a subdominant response (cool conflict), another similar set that also included rewards for correct responses (hot conflict), and a set requiring children to delay or inhibit a response to an affectively salient stimulus (i.e., gift, treat; hot delay). CFA was conducted in a sample of 214 3- to 4-year-old preschool children (M age = 4.06, SD = .54; 52.1% female). The best-fitting model was a two-factor model consisting of moderately correlated (r = .52, p < .001) Conflict and Delay factors. As further support of these two factors, the Conflict factor was significantly associated with a Literacy factor (β = .61, p < .001) and a Mathematics variable (β = .42, p < .001) and the Delay factor was significantly associated with an Externalizing factor (β = .30, p = .01). These results indicate that that there are distinct, related EC factors that differ not only on affective salience, but also on the behavioral regulation demands of the task.