Unique contributions of attentional control and visuomotor integration on concurrent teacher-reported classroom functioning in early elementary students

In a diverse sample of 278 kindergarten and first grade students from two U.S. states, this study explored the concurrent associations between directly assessed cognitive processes linked to children's development and learning-attentional control and visuomotor integration-and two teacher-reported classroom functioning outcomes: self-regulation and problem behaviors. In addition, we examined the relative contribution of attentional control and visuomotor integration to teacher-reported classroom functioning outcomes. After controlling for the effects of child characteristics including age, gender, preschool attendance, ethnicity, free/reduced lunch status, and fine motor coordination abilities, results indicated that attentional control and visuomotor integration were each directly related to teachers' ratings of classroom self-regulation, but not to classroom problem behaviors. Even after accounting for children's attentional control abilities and teachers' ratings of problem behaviors, visuomotor integration was a strong and unique concurrent predictor of children's classroom self-regulation, as reported by their teachers. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.