Abstract
Compliance is an important skill of social competence for young children as it reflects children’s ability to understand others’ expectations and to display cooperative behaviors. Existing research has shown that parental responsiveness and child executive functioning separately make contributions to child compliance, but less is known about the relationships among these three variables. Therefore, this study tested a theoretical model by investigating the direct and indirect relationships among parental responsiveness, compliance, and executive functioning in preschoolers. This study utilized the data of parental self-reports from Kids in Taiwan: National Longitudinal Study of Child Development & Care (KIT), a nationwide longitudinal study designed to collect data on the development and care of children in Taiwan. 1,747 four-year-old preschoolers (857 boys, 890 girls, mean age 48.77 months) and their parents (either father or mother) were included in this study for analysis. The results from the structural equation model revealed that parental responsiveness was directly and indirectly (via child executive functioning) related to child compliance. For preschoolers, responsive parenting was associated with better executive functioning skills, which, in turn, led to increased compliant behaviors. Our findings highlighted the need to enhance parental responsiveness and child executive functioning when addressing compliance in young children.