Direct assessment of self-regulation
To assess children’s SR, we employed the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task
(HTKS; McClelland et al., 2014), a direct assessment measure widely used
for this purpose. This task comprises three parts: in the initial phase,
children were instructed to touch their heads when directed to touch
their toes and vice versa. In the second phase, we introduced an
additional command: children were asked to touch their knees when
instructed to touch their shoulders and vice versa. All four commands
were presented in a shuffled sequence in the third phase. Each part
consisted of 10 items, scoring ranging from 0 for an incorrect response
to 2 for a correct response, with 1 point for self-corrected responses.
Consequently, the total score spanned from 0 to 60. In this study, it
presented good reliability with α of 0.76. The assessment process is
consistent with social emotions and mathematics above.