As humans, we self-regulate whenever we adapt our emotions and actions to situational requirements and to internalized social standards and norms. Self-regulation encompasses skills such as paying attention, inhibiting reflexive actions, and delaying gratification.

This book presents self-regulation as a crucial link between genetic predisposition, early experience, and later adult functioning in society. Individual chapters examine what self-regulation is, how it functions, how genetic and environmental factors influence its development, how it affects social and academic competence in childhood and adulthood, what pathologies can emerge if it is under-developed, and how it might be fostered in children.