Recent research published in developmental psychology This suggests that children’s ability to control their body movements tends to decline as they progress through school. This steady decline is associated with their long-term academic success. Researchers tracked elementary school students using wearable devices and found that children who were able to maintain behavioral control over longer periods of time tended to perform better in high school and complete more years of education as adults.
Self-regulation is the ability to manage thoughts, emotions, and behavior to fit the expectations of a particular environment. In a standard classroom environment, this might look like students raising their hands to speak rather than shouting out the answer. It also includes remaining seated rather than walking around the room during the lesson.
“Being in the classroom requires a certain level of self-control. Children are expected to walk instead of run, hold hands when necessary, and sit in their seats,” says lead author Andrew E. Cope, assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University.
Controlling these natural urges requires mental effort. A child’s ability to control behavior may not be a fixed trait because managing behavior requires continuous cognitive energy.
“Applying this self-control takes effort, and by the time the final school bell rings, children have been practicing self-control for many hours,” Cope says. As a result, this ability can change throughout the day as mental fatigue sets in.
Traditional tools for measuring behavior are typically based on adult observations or surveys conducted over several months. Researchers may also use one-time experimental tasks to test children’s restraint. These methods make it difficult to observe how students’ self-control fluctuates over time in a natural school environment.
Adult observation can also lead to interpersonal bias. For example, teachers’ subjective evaluations of students may be affected by halo effects, where generally positive impressions influence evaluations of specific student behaviors. Continuous, objective measurement tools can help avoid these human biases.
To overcome this measurement barrier, scientists can use wearable technology. Devices that track body movements continuously provide natural data about how active your child is during the day. This passive sensing occurs in the background without interrupting the student’s normal routine.
Because regulating body movements is the primary way young students are expected to exhibit self-control, tracking gross motor activity provides a means of examining the durability of students’ behaviors. The authors sought to understand whether this physical self-regulation is exacerbated during regular school hours. They also wanted to see if this individual difference in daily behavioral stamina might predict students’ educational success years later.
The authors analyzed data from a large national project that followed a group of children from birth to age 26. Their specific analytic sample included 747 participants. The demographic breakdown of this group was 49 percent female, 76 percent white, 13 percent black, 6 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent of other racial or ethnic backgrounds.
These participants wore a small device called an accelerometer on their hips for up to five days during their third year. Accelerometers are wearable sensors that measure the frequency and intensity of a person’s body movements. The research team collected this continuous behavioral data every hour from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to establish a behavioral timeline.
“We focused on third grade because it marks the transition to middle childhood and is a time when children exhibit more independent behavioral control,” the authors write in their study. This period is a critical stage during which students typically remain in one classroom rather than moving around for different subjects.
In addition to movement tracking, teachers and trained classroom observers independently assessed children’s hyperactivity and disruptive behavior. Children also completed third grade standardized achievement tests to measure learning in math and reading. In a follow-up study several years later, participants completed the achievement test again when they were 15 years old.
When participants reached age 26, they reported the total number of years of education they had completed. The researchers also examined observational data of the participants’ mothers interacting with them during early childhood. These early assessments were performed periodically from 6 months to 4 1/2 years of age.
The data showed that, on average, children’s physical activity levels tended to steadily increase as the school day progressed. The authors suggest that this increase in physical activity reflects a gradual decline in students’ ability to regulate their behavior. Over time, the mental effort required to sit still seems to wear away.
“Our findings suggest that, behaviorally speaking, most children tend to ‘forget’ a little by the end of school,” notes Cope. This physical restlessness appears to reflect mental fatigue.
There were significant individual differences among students. Some children increased their daily activity significantly more than others. Teachers and classroom observers rated students who experienced the steepest increase in activity as more impulsive and disruptive overall.
Scientists have found that the rate at which a child’s activity increases throughout the day predicts a child’s academic performance. Children whose physical activity increased significantly from morning to afternoon tended to have lower scores on third-grade academic tests. This suggests that the ability to maintain behavioral regulation is linked to students’ ability to engage in classroom learning.
“Interestingly, those who were able to ‘stick together’ longer tended to do better in school and were more likely to have long-term educational success,” Cope says. This data highlighted a striking link to higher education.
This pattern had long-term effects. Lower academic performance in third grade provided a developmental pathway for lower test scores in high school. We also predicted that participants would complete fewer total years of education before reaching early adulthood. In fact, children with more self-control were 20% more likely to complete a four-year degree.
The researchers also found a link to the participants’ childhood experiences. Mothers who provided more cognitive stimulation and showed greater sensitivity in early childhood had children with greater behavioral control in the preschool years.
Second, early self-control in preschool predicted smaller increases in physical activity across the school day in third grade. This sequence provides evidence of a developmental cascade in which early positive parenting helps build the foundational skills needed for behavioral performance in elementary school.
Although tracking devices provide an objective way to measure behavior, the authors note several limitations. Wearable sensors only capture body movements, so they cannot measure how well a child can regulate their emotions and internal attention.
Readers should not misinterpret this finding to mean that any physical activity in the classroom is harmful. Physical activity helps children learn by allowing them to explore their environment and use gestures to express complex ideas. The types of movements captured by waist-worn devices were mostly large body changes that could disrupt traditional classroom work.
Another limitation involves the demographics of the participants. The children in this study were born in 1991, and the group was predominantly white. The findings of this study may not fully reflect the experiences of a more contemporary and diverse student population.
Future research could investigate how these patterns change as children grow older and their brains develop. Older students are generally less active and usually develop stronger executive functions. Executive functions are the higher-level mental skills needed to plan ahead, focus your attention, and accomplish your goals.
“We know that self-control helps children ignore distractions and focus on learning. Our findings suggest that self-control is not just a personality trait, but one that can be depleted and perhaps recoverable,” says Cope.
Researchers suggest investigating specific parts of the school day that may help restore children’s behavioral stamina. For example, the data showed short-term changes in activity around lunch time. This suggests that breaks for meals and socializing may temporarily reset students’ self-control.
“As a society, we should value activities like recess that allow children to release stress and potentially restore some self-control. It may also help children learn,” Cope added.
Scientists could also investigate whether getting enough sleep or active physical education classes helps children stay focused later in the day. Identifying routines that support behavioral regulation may provide educators with an easy way to improve classroom learning without requiring an entirely new curriculum.
Future research may also incorporate multiple types of wearable technology. Combining motion sensors with devices that track heart rate and eye movements could provide a broader picture of how students manage their alertness and attention. Tools like this could help schools find ways to better accommodate movement while supporting student focus.
This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The study, “Keeping It Together: Temporal Dynamics of Children’s Behavioral Regulation in Schools in a Multidecade Cohort Study,” was authored by Andrew E. Koepp, Elizabeth T. Gershoff, Deborah Lowe Vandell, Angela L. Duckworth, and Allyson P. Mackey.
