Self-Regulation in Preschoolers: Embodied Approaches to Early Development
Chair(s): Silvia Ampollini (University of Parma, Italy)
Self-Regulation is a dynamic, multifaceted process that involves identifying a desired goal - whether behavioral, cognitive, or emotional - executing the necessary actions, and continuously monitoring progress to make appropriate adjustments. It is shaped by the efficiency of Executive Functions - a set of control processes engaged when relying on instinct or intuition is inadequate - and is widely recognized as a cornerstone of early childhood development, with significant short- and long-term implications for academic achievement, social relationships, mental well-being, and physical health. While traditionally conceptualized as a top-down process, emerging evidence emphasizes its embodied foundations, which are particularly influential during early childhood, a critical developmental window when cognitive awareness is still immature.
Despite the demonstrated efficacy of various interventions in fostering Self-Regulation in preschoolers, the mechanisms underlying their success remain poorly understood, with limited research investigating their impact on the implicit, automatic processes foundational to Self-Regulation.
Grounded in Embodied Cognition, this symposium explores four bottom-up programs employing multisensory and musical whole-body immersive experiences to explicitly target embodied mechanisms hypothesized to underlie Self-Regulation and Executive Functions in typically developing preschoolers. By bringing these approaches into dialogue, the symposium aims to broaden perspectives, generate new ideas and hypotheses, and deepen understanding of the embodied processes shaping Self-Regulation. This focus is especially timely given the increasing prevalence of Self-Regulation difficulties among children and adolescents. Whether stemming from heightened diagnostic awareness, evolving criteria, or broader lifestyle changes, these challenges highlight the need to leverage early developmental plasticity to foster lasting improvements.
Targeting the embodied roots of Self-Regulation during preschool’s critical window of malleability through playful and ecologically valid interventions, like those presented in this symposium, offers a promising pathway to inform educational and healthcare systems. This approach could support broad efforts in potentiation, prevention, and rehabilitation, potentially fostering enduring and widespread developmental success.
Presentations of the Symposium
From the Bottom to the Top: Enhancing Preschoolers’ Executive Functions and Self-Regulation through Daily Intersensory Synchrony Experiential Practice
Silvia Ampollini, Ada Cigala
University of Parma
Time proximity serves as a fundamental, low-level, amodal cue that segments the array of overlapping stimuli into distinct, multimodal Gestalts, enabling accurate perception of both the inner and outer world. This mechanism is reflected in Sensitivity to Intersensory Synchrony (SIS), the ability to detect temporal alignment across sensory inputs. SIS forms the foundation of a developmental hierarchy: by enhancing multisensory redundancy, which improves perception, memory, learning, and motor functions, it appears to support the development of higher-order processes, including Inhibitory Control and Self-Regulation. Indeed, by decoding the environment more efficiently, children have greater cognitive resources to allocate to relevant stimuli (Attention Inhibition) and to modulate responses appropriately (Response Inhibition).
Acknowledging the role of experience in shaping multisensory processes, this study tests the effectiveness of a perceptual training program in enhancing Inhibitory Control and Self-Regulation from the bottom-up by targeting SIS.
A total of 110 typically developing preschoolers participated in a 12-week Daily Intersensory Synchrony Experiential Practice (ISEP-D), consisting of 15-minute-sessions conducted five days a week in kindergarten classrooms by teachers. The training promoted the active experience of synchrony across multiple sensory modalities through playful activities.
Pre- and post-test assessments, comprising a preferential looking task and a battery of standardized tests, demonstrated greater improvements in SIS, Inhibitory Control, and Self-Regulation in the experimental group compared to 122 age-matched controls.
These findings highlight the potential of simple, engaging embodied interventions to enhance Self-Regulation by targeting its sensory foundations. The data also elucidates connections between multisensory integration and higher-order processes, providing insights for preventive and enhancement strategies in education and healthcare systems. Integrating ISEP-D into school curricula ensures ecological validity, accessibility, and inclusivity, particularly for children in disadvantaged settings. If shown effective also for children with atypical development, ISEP-D could become a scalable early intervention for fostering essential developmental skills across diverse populations.
The Impact of a Musical Intervention on Preschool Children’s Executive Functions
Alice Bowmer1, Kathryn Mason1, Julian Knight2, Graham Welch1
1University College London, 2Creative Futures
The cognitive benefits of music interventions for young children have been increasingly studied in recent years. This study investigated the effect of weekly musicianship training on the executive function abilities of 41 preschool children aged 3-4 years.
The study had a two-phase experimental design. In Phase 1, one group of children (Group A) took part in eight weekly musicianship classes, provided by a specialist music teacher, whilst another group (Groups B and C combined) engaged in nursery free play. During Phase 2, Group A continued with music classes, while Group B began music classes for the first time and Group C took part in an art intervention. EF ability was measured at baseline and post-phase 1 and post-phase 2 using a set of six age-appropriate EF tasks and the BRIEF-P teacher rating scale.
All groups improved on the 6 EF tasks over the course of the study.
The music group showed greater improvement on two EF tasks during phase 1 (Tower of London and Peg Tapping) when compared to the group who remained in normal nursery time. Findings were not replicated after the addition of an active control condition in phase 2. A repeated measures ANOVA found no significant difference in performance improvement between the three participant groups during phase 2; however, the performance difference between groups was nearing significance for the peg tapping task (p = 0.06). Peg tapping (a measure of inhibition) stood out as a task that appeared to be most impacted by musical training.
The findings contribute to ongoing debates about the potential cognitive benefit of musical interventions, including important issues regarding intervention duration, experimental design, target age groups, executive function testing, and task novelty. Music interventions such as this engage sensory, motor, and emotional systems, fostering integrated learning and enhancing cognitive processes through bodily experiences.
Rhythm and movement for self-regulation, executive function, social, and behavioural skills in the preschool years: The RAMSR program
Kate Williams
University of the Sunshine Coast
Early self-regulation and social skills are an important predictor of lifelong learning and wellbeing indicators. Unfortunately, many children experience challenges with self-regulation development, at times related to stressful home environments, low resource settings, disability, and the impact of world events including the pandemic and natural disasters. Addressing the brain architecture underlying self-regulation development for all young children, and supporting positive social skills, requires activities that explicitly target brain processes, with rhythmic movement being an ideal medium. This paper profiles an Australian-designed program, Rhythm and Movement for Self-Regulation (RAMSR). RAMSR was specifically designed based on evidence and practice approaches from neurologic music therapy, music education, and developmental psychology, and can be delivered by any adult trained in RAMSR, whether or not they have a music background. This paper will present the theory and rationale behind the approach, along with findings from two randomised controlled trials, one in Australia (N = 213), and one in Hong Kong (N = 286), both with preschool children living in low socio-economic communities. In the Australian trial, preschool teachers were trained face to face and provided with coaching support to deliver the program. In Hong Kong, preschool teachers were trained only online and received no ongoing implementation support. The intervention group in both countries received 16 to 20 sessions of RAMSR over eight weeks, while the control group undertook the usual preschool program. Fidelity of implementation was high in both countries, despite the differences in teacher training approaches. RAMSR effectively boosted young children’s self-regulation, behavioural, and social skills in both settings with effects sustained to follow-up. Thes findings demonstrate that it is feasible to train adults with no music background to deliver the RAMSR program, yielding positive and important effects for children from low socio-economic backgrounds.
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