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Introduction:Self-regulation is important for social as well as academic success, and research shows that it is also shaped by social interactions. At the same time, peers shape children's development in many domains. Linking these two concepts, it can be predicted that children who are surrounded by peers with a high level of self-regulation later show higher self-regulation themselves compared to those who are surrounded by peers with a low level of self-regulation.MethodsTo test this assumption, a longitudinal sample with N = 1,658 participants in 181 classrooms (μage = 8.37) was analyzed. The self-regulation facets of working memory updating, inhibition, and flexibility were measured using an age-appropriate version of the Stroop test, the repeat-digits-backward test, and the Wisconsin card-sorting task. Based on this data, a score for both the individual and class level was calculated.ResultsThe results show that the classmates‘ level of self-regulation predicted later individual self-regulation above the individual self-regulation score. While neither age nor gender moderated this relationship, there was a significant cross-level interaction: Especially individuals with a low level of cognitive flexibility gained from being surrounded by peers with a high level of cognitive flexibility.DiscussionWhile the results show that peers constitute an important social context for the development of self-regulation, this fact is often only a minor point in modern self-regulation theories.

Abstract Background Internalizing symptoms are among the most common psychological symptoms in childhood and adolescence, are highly stable and can cause severe impairment. Current research discusses lower capacities of self-regulation (SR) as risk factors for the development of internalizing symptoms. The present study identifies trajectories of internalizing symptoms in the transition phase from middle childhood to adolescence and examines multiple SR facets as predictors of potentially unfavorable trajectories, also in the presence of other established risk factors. Methods The study utilized a community sample of N = 1453 (52.2% female) German children, who provided data at up to three measurement points (t1: 6–11 years, t2: 7–11 years, t3: 9–13 years). Trajectories of internalizing symptoms were based on parents’ ratings of the emotional problems scale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. SR facets were assessed using multiple methods and informants. Two multinomial regression analyses were conducted to predict class membership by (1) SR facets and gender and (2) SR facets, gender, and other established risk factors (education status, family adversity, peer problems). Results Using growth mixture modelling, we identified three trajectory classes with stable low (n = 1200), increasing (n = 124), and early high decreasing internalizing symptoms (n = 129). In the regression analysis controlling for risk factors, membership in the increasing trajectory was significantly predicted by higher emotional reactivity (OR = 2.65, p

When playing violent video games, aggressive actions are performed against the background of an originally neutral environment, and associations are formed between cues related to violence and contextual features. This experiment examined the hypothesis that neutral contextual features of a virtual environment become associated with aggressive meaning and acquire the function of primes for aggressive cognitions. Seventy-six participants were assigned to one of two violent video game conditions that varied in context (ship vs. city environment) or a control condition. Afterwards, they completed a Lexical Decision Task to measure the accessibility of aggressive cognitions in which they were primed either with ship-related or city-related words. As predicted, participants who had played the violent game in the ship environment had shorter reaction times for aggressive words following the ship primes than the city primes, whereas participants in the city condition responded faster to the aggressive words following the city primes compared to the ship primes. No parallel effect was observed for the non-aggressive targets. The findings indicate that the associations between violent and neutral cognitions learned during violent game play facilitate the accessibility of aggressive cognitions.