SELF-REGULATION, EMOTION EXPRESSION & CLASSROOM ...

Hypothesis 4. Finally, another moderating model was hypothesized where there
would be significant differences across the entire model, comparing children enrolled in
private day care versus those enrolled in head start. The model was first run with the
data filtered to include children enrolled in private day care (see figure 4a).
Interestingly, many of the significant pathways found in the overall model fall out when
filtered by private day care children. The only significant pathways found were cool
executive control to competence motivation, and only moderately significant relations
with attitude towards learning, and attention/persistence. Also, hot executive control
was found to significantly predict on-task involvement; and on-task involvement
significantly predicted attention/persistence. These findings do not necessarily suggest
that self-regulation is unimportant for children in private day care, but only that the
relation between self-regulation, on-task involvement, and classroom learning behaviors
pale in significance when compared to their less economically fortunate peers.
The next cohort to examine is the group of students enrolled in Head Start. The
results appear to be vastly different from the private day care cohort, with many
significant relations not previously detected. Both cool and hot executive control were
found to significantly predict on-task involvement. Cool executive control was also
found to have a direct predictive relation with competence motivation. Similar to the
overall, un-moderated model, on-task involvement had a significant relation with all
competence motivation, attitude towards learning, and attention/ persistence. In
reference to the aforementioned literature on socioeconomic risk, it should be noted
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