Parents' regulation and self-regulation and performance in children with intellectual disability in problem-solving using physical materials or computers.
More parent help during problem-solving predicts worse child performance—prompt parents to step back and let kids self-regulate.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched parents and kids solve puzzles together. Some kids had intellectual disability. Some were typically developing. Tasks used real blocks or a computer.
Researchers counted every time a parent gave hints, took over, or praised. They also scored how well the child planned and checked their own work.
What they found
More parent help linked to worse child scores in both groups. Joint attention—looking at the task together—helped a little.
Kids with ID got the same amount of help as typical kids, yet still scored lower. Parent help did not close the gap.
How this fits with other research
Nader-Grosbois (2014) followed up with teens. Older youth with ID again used fewer self-planning tricks, showing the gap lasts.
Enav et al. (2020) looked at stress. Moms under pressure gave more negative directions. The new data now say extra directions hurt performance—an apparent clash. The fix: stress leads to unhelpful help, not just more help.
Vassos et al. (2016) also saw more negative parenting toward preschoolers with ID. Together the papers warn: quality, not quantity, matters.
Why it matters
You can teach parents to step back. Model wait time, ask “What’s your plan?” and praise effort, not answers. Fewer prompts give the child room to think and build self-regulation skills that last.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study compared mothers and fathers' regulation with respect to 29 children with intellectual disability (ID) and 30 typically developing (TD) children, matched on their mental age (MA), as they solved eight tasks using physical materials and computers. Seven parents' regulatory strategies were coded as they supported their child's identification of the objective, planning, attention, motivation, joint attention, behaviour regulation and evaluation. Children's performance was scored. Regulation by the parents of the two groups did not differ significantly, regardless of the medium, except that the degree of parental regulation of the child's behaviour was greater in the ID group than in the TD group. In tasks involving the computer, we observed a higher degree of regulation of children's planning and a lower degree of regulation of their evaluation for the two groups. The parents displayed significantly less regulation with respect to the children with the highest MA than towards the children with the lowest MA, in each group. There was a significant interaction effect of medium and children's MA on overall parents' regulation and on their support of identification of objective and of planning. Most parental strategies were negatively linked with ID and TD children's performance in tasks. In both groups, with control for MA, parental support with the identification of the objective, with planning and with attention was negatively linked to the corresponding self-regulatory strategies of the children with each medium; however, parents' joint attention was positively linked with children's joint attention.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2012 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.10.005