SELF-REGULATION, EMOTION EXPRESSION & CLASSROOM ...

that a child’s on-task involvement indeed plays a strong predictive role on classroom
learning behaviors. Children who demonstrate the ability to stay on-task and be
involved in the classroom milieu are significantly more likely to be motivated, with a
positive attitude towards learning and ability to persist with difficult tasks.
Hypotheses 3 & 4. Many of the more compelling findings were revealed during
the moderational analyses of gender and school type. Based on the previous research,
girls exceed boys on hot and cool executive control, to add-on to this finding it was
hypothesized that the relation between girls’ self-regulation and learning behaviors will
be stronger than that for boys. Interestingly, the analysis revealed that female’s cool
executive control directly predicted each facet of classroom learning behaviors, whereas
that was not the case for their male counterparts. Instead, for males, it appears that the
relation between self-regulation and classroom learning behaviors is indirect, fully
mediated by on-task involvement.
Females’ hot executive control was also mediated by on-task involvement, just
not to the degree that males experienced. It was also determined that females’ hot
executive control directly predicted their attitude towards learning. Overall it appears
that the relation between self-regulation and classroom learning behaviors is much
more direct and significant for females. This finding confirms our hypothesis, and
suggests that both rote and emotionally complex forms of self-regulation appear to be
playing a more important role for a female’s classroom success.
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