Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of cognitive-behavioral intervention for self-control on the improvements of self-control and task performance in children. Subjects in this study were 48 children selected randomly. That is, 16 were .kindergarten children in the age of 6 years 2 months, 16 were 2nd grade elementary school children in the age of 8 years 4 months and 16 were 4th grade elementary school children in the age of 10 years 3 months. These subjects were reffered for self-control intervention due to their poor self-control rated by their teacher's. At each age, subjects were randomly assigned to cognitive-behavioral self-control intervention group and control group. The intervention group received 12 sessions of cognitive behavioral self-control intervention. Controlled group participated in regular play activities. Experimental design of the study was factorial design of groups(experimental vs control), ages(kindergarten vs 2nd-grade vs 4th-grade) and testing interval(pretest vs posttest vs 2 months follow-up). The criteria variables were self-control, MFF latency and MFF error. The following conclusion were drawn from results obtained and the review of the related literature. 1. The cognitive-behavioral intervention for self-control in children improves significantly self-control of 2nd and 4th-grade children and the improvement maintained 2 months later. However, there is no significant improvement on self--control of kindergarten children. There is no statistical significant difference in improvement on self-control between 2nd and 4th-grade in intervention group. 2. The cognitive-behavioral intervention for self-control improves significantly from pretreatment to posttreatment MFF latency for 2nd and 4th-grade children and the improvement maintained to 2 months later only for 2nd-grade children. However, there is no improvement of MFF latency in kindergarten children. And there is no statistical significant difference in improvement on MFF latency between 2nd and 4th-grade in intervention group. 3. The cognitive- behavioral intervention for self-control improves significantly MFF errors only for 2nd-grade children and the improvement maintained to 2 months follow up. However, there is no significant improvement of MFF errors in kindergarten and 4th-grade children.