Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 1 · Licensed source edition
Parent Provision of Choice Is a Key Component of Autonomy Support in Predicting Child Executive Function Skills
Originally published 2022-01-10 · Frontiers in Psychology
Frontiers Media SA · DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.773492 ↗
Editorial reading guide · Independence
How can I offer meaningful choices while a young child tackles a challenging task?
Observed parent–child puzzle interactions distinguish offering choice from encouragement and support for competence. This helps readers examine what giving a young child an active role actually means.
Who was studied?
366 preschool-age children and caregivers from four Midwestern United States samples.
Age / stage: 35–73 months
Read with three questions
- How were offering choice, positive verbalizations, and competence support coded?
- Which autonomy-support components were associated with executive-function performance?
- Why does a short observed puzzle task not establish a causal parenting recipe?
Keep the limits in view
The study is correlational, and choice was coded together with following the child’s pace. Brief observed tasks and a relatively advantaged sample limit generalization.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Romulus J Castelo; Alyssa S Meuwissen; Rebecca Distefano; Megan M McClelland; Ellen Galinsky; Philip David Zelazo; Stephanie M Carlson (2022). Parent Provision of Choice Is a Key Component of Autonomy Support in Predicting Child Executive Function Skills Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.773492
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-04. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.