"Relations among 2nd and 3rd Grade Students' Social Skills, Inhibitory Control and Genre Writing"

Event: Scientific Studies of Reading 26th Annual Meeting
Dates: July 17-20, 2019
Location: Toronto, Canada

Presentation Title: Relations among 2nd and 3rd Grade Students' Social Skills, Inhibitory Control and Genre Writing
First Author: Taffeta Wood
Additional Authors: Young-Suk Kim, Elham Zargar, Sarah Siegal, Carol Connor

Abstract

This study seeks to examine the relations of 2nd and 3rd grade students’ inhibitory control and social skills to their writing skills. Specific research question was as follows: In what ways, positive or negative, are various aspects of 2nd and 3rd grade writing skills across the genres of informational essay and opinion essay associated with inhibitory control and social behavior?

Data from students in Grades 2 and 3 (N = 418; 53% male) were used. Students were assessed on written composition (one prompt in informational genre and the other in opinion genre), writing fluency (Woodcock Johnson writing fluency subtask), inhibitory control (The Head Toes Knees Shoulders task, Ponitz et al., 2008; McClelland et al.,2007), and social behavior (The Social Skills Improvement System). Students’ written compositions were evaluated in multiple aspects, including spelling, quality of handwriting, productivity, and overall quality. These multiple aspects of written composition were predicted by inhibitory control and social skills, after controlling for students’ demographic variables (gender and SES). 

Preliminary results suggest students with an overall lower inhibitory control perform lower in writing across both prompts when graded on a rubric. Further analysis is ongoing and is expected to be complete by spring. These results suggest that analyzing the students’ genre writing samples may elucidate the possibly unique associations between inhibitory control and social skills to students’ writing skills.


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