Does Children’s Self-Directed Speech Support Effective Frustration Management?
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Study design: Clinical Trial
Abstract: Children often rely on others (typically, parents) for support regulating emotions and managing challenges. Mismanaged emotions can lead to lasting issues like poor academic performance, troubled peer relationships, and increased behavioral problems. Therefore, identifying emotion regulation tools children can use independently is crucial. One promising tool is self-talk—statements people say to themselves aloud or silently. Self-talk emerges early and spontaneously in development, supporting children’s performance on puzzles, math, and motor tasks. This dissertation explored whether self-talk helps children manage frustration. Eighty children aged 5 to 9 were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (prompted to use self-talk before a frustrating task) or a control group (no prompt). I measured emotional responding through children’s self-reported emotionality and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an indicator of parasympathetic nervous system activity. Executive function and language skills were also assessed to understand individual differences.Children in the self-talk group used more out-loud self-talk in the second task— after being instructed to use it—than in the first task, confirming the manipulation’s success. Contrary to hypotheses, I did not find condition effects on emotional responding. However, greater self-talk use correlated with increased parasympathetic calming—indicating active regulation—and was particularly beneficial for children with lower executive function. Some types of self-talk were more effective for older children, suggesting developmental differences in patterns of ST use. As a supplement to my primary analyses, I explored children’s and parents’ open-ended responses to questions about self-talk use. Children described using self-talk but were unsure why they did it. In contrast, parents intentionally used and reported valuing self-talk but sometimes worried about the social stigma surrounding its use.In sum, my dissertation is among the first studies to experimentally test children’s self-talk and its effects on emotional responding. Results point to self-talk as a viable tool for self-regulation, in childhood and beyond—but perhaps even more so when explicitly taught or scaffolded. By illuminating when, why, and for whom ST works best, this project not only advances our theoretical understanding of self-regulation but also offers practical insights for educators, parents, and clinicians interested in strengthening children’s emotion regulation skills.
Author: Brady, Shannon Mindelaye
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7065221945