Raising self-controlled children

Raising self-controlled children

Dorothee Horstkötter

Department Health, Ethics, and Society Dorothee Horstkötter

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Introduction

Self-control is everywhere

Lack of self-control considered major social problem

1994 2011 2012 Nov 2013 1990

Is there a parental responsibility to install self-control in children?

If so, what does it entail?


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Introduction

Overview

1. Recent studies on the relevance of self-control

2. Recent neurobiological/genomics research

3. Apparent conclusion: Raising self-controlled children to achieve health, wealth and public safety

4. Raise what?

1. Self-control as goal-achievement: Willpower versus self-control skills

2. The self of self-control: Self-control as goal-construction and -evaluation

5. Neuroscience and new parental responsibilities?

6. Conclusion


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Child self-control at 3 years predicts:

- Physical health

- Substance dependence

- Personal finances

- Criminal offending outcomes

40 years later


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2. Neurobiological/genomics research

Neuroscience (selection)

Emerging understanding of neuropsychological bases of self-controlled behaviour (domain-general framework)

Lesions studies [in children]:

- Distinct developmental differences after prefrontal lesions - Altered integration and interplay of various deficits that contribute to frontal

lobe syndromes

Functional neuroimaging studies (fMRI) - Goal-directed decisions basis in a signal encoded in ventromedial PFC - Exercising self-control: modulation of the signal by dorsolateral PFC - Differences in vmPFC activities in dieters & non-dieters - Methamphetamine abusers specific self-control deficits in motor, cognitive

and affective control and structural differences in ventrolateral PFC - Inhibitory control recruits an interacting network of brain-regions


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2. Neurobiological/genetics research

Genetics (selection)

Heritability studies

Genetic influence on personality traits, psychological interest, social attitudes

Molecular genetics (candidate genes)

Monoamine oxidase-a genetic variations influence brain activity associated with inhibitory control

Polymorphism of the COMT gene (affects dopaminergic neurotransmitter system) associated with differences in the prefrontal executive control network


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3. Apparent conclusion: Raise self-controlled children

Policy implications (Moffitt et al.)

- Install early intervention programs for young children

- Interventions in adolescence to prevent/ameliorate mistakes

- Support self-controlled decisions by opt-out programs (default does not require ‘difficult’ self-control)

- Policy interventions to render self-control superfluous

- Policy interventions to make self-controlled decisions more easy (ban cigarettes, obligation to wear safety bells, etc)


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Intervention implications (Berkman, Graham & Fisher, 2012)

Focus on young children (more amendable to intervention)

Focus on one particular aspect of self-control (yield success in others too)

Improve self-control precondition for additional interventions

FMRI studies to test intervention readiness or gains related to self-control

Targeted intervention that specifically activate specific brain regions considered relevant for self-control tasks


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Parenting implications ?

- Relevance of early childhood

- Implications for the meaning of ‘good parenthood’

- Parental responsibility to install/foster self-control in children and safeguard their future health, wealth and law-abidingness

Raising self-controlled children !?


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4. Varieties of self-control

Self-control in social psychology

“Self-control involves the ability to prevent or override unwanted thoughts, behaviours and emotions”

(Muraven, Baumeister & Tice 1999)


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Focus 1: prevent or override


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Focus 1: prevent or override

Focus 2: unwanted

Different implications regarding parental responsibility


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Self-control in social psychology (prevent and override)

Self-control tests typically psychological tests

1) Test children’s capacity to delay gratification.

2) Test differences in self-control in subsequent self-control tasks

Commonalities

Pre-given goal, self-control supports goal-achievement/overcome temptation

Differences

Willpower, mental strength, mental muscle versus Strategy, skill, plan, etc.


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Self-control in social psychology (prevent and override)

Self-control as control of the self by the self

Willpower/Self-control skill: control of the self (self the object of self-controlled behavior)

Self-control as control by the self?

Not goal-achievement, but goal-setting/-construction/-evaluation

Self as the subject of self-controlled behavior


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Self-control in social psychology and neuroscience

Self-control studies in neuroscience sole focus on strength model

Self-control to achieve pre-set goals

Normative value of these goals!

Source of this normative value?

Tension goal-achievement versus goal-adjustment

Reasons needed for the one or the other

The self: control by the self


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Self-control in social psychology (unwanted)

i) Self-determination theory

Control versus self-determination

Assumption: controlled action less successful than self-determined action (goals the value of which one appreciates and which constitute a reason to achieve it)

ii) Self-control versus self-regulation

Self-regulation maintaining one’s action in line with one’s integrated self

Current neuroscience research pays no attention to these understandings of self-control


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Parental responsibilities and self-control

Educational goals I

- Obedience

- Ability to accept and follow externally-set rules

- Suppress impulses, ‘first order desires’

Educational goals II

- Become autonomous person

- Develop ‘second order desires’

- Develop a self/personality

- Become able to set goals (for reasons)

- Evaluate goals (achievable, desireable)


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Neuroscience on self-control and parental responsibilities

It depends:

Educational goals I: Maybe

Educational goals II: No


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It depends:



- Empirical question whether/how exactly parenting (and interventions in parenting) makes a difference in the neurobiological development of the brains of children.

- Brain training interventions, emerging evidence, currently tested

- Remaining challenge: Invoke self-control for which goals?

- Parental responsibility: raising children to achieve distant goals goes together with care to not install too much (rigidity) or errant self-control (for bad goals)


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It depends:



Not investigated by current neurosciences

Not investigatable by current/future neuroscience

[There probably is a parental responsibility to raise autonomous children, yet no implications regarding this responsibility because of recent findings in neuroscience]

Fundamental normative questions which goals to go for and why.


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6. Conclusion

Neuroscience and genomics research potentially relevant for insight into the generation of human behavior.

Also more detailed evidence in this regard, will not establish a direct link on how to raise our children

Remains a normative rather than a biological question.

... Only, after the normative question has been addressed, neuroscience might be invoked to achieve what is considered desirable.

“Which thoughts, behaviors and emotions are undesirable and ought to be prevented or overridden”


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Raising self-controlled children