Co-Changes and Mutual Influences of Fearful Temperament, Task Switching, and Maternal Intrusiveness in Early Childhood.

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Published in final edited form as: Dev Psychobiol. 2025 Mar;67(2):e70031. doi: 10.1002/dev.70031 Co-changes and Mutual Influences of Fearful Temperament, Task Switching, and Maternal Intrusiveness in Early Childhood Ran Liu 1 , Cynthia L Smith 2 , Martha Ann Bell 3 Author information Copyright and License information 1 Institute of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China 2 Department of Human Development and Family Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA 3 Department of Psychology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA ✉ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ran Liu, Institute of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Haidian District, Beijing 100875, China. ranl@bnu.edu.cn PMC Copyright notice PMCID: PMC13222076  NIHMSID: NIHMS2172350  PMID: 40059534 The publisher's version of this article is available at Dev Psychobiol Abstract This study employed latent change score models to examine the co-changes and mutual influences of fearful temperament, task switching, and maternal intrusiveness in early childhood. Participants included 335 children (171 boys, 164 girls; Mage = 3.09 years at baseline; 77.3% White, 14.0% Black, 8.4% multi-racial, .3% Asian; 7.8% Hispanic) and their mothers. Higher levels of maternal intrusiveness at 36 months predicted a smaller increase in children’s task switching between 36 and 48 months. Higher levels of task switching at 36 months predicted a larger decrease in fearful temperament. The changes between task switching and fearful temperament co-occurred; as the degree of task switching increased, fearful temperament decreased, or vice versa. Family-oriented interventions that reduce maternal intrusiveness may facilitate children’s improvements in task switching, which is closely associated with the development of fearful temperament. Keywords: maternal intrusiveness, task switching, fearful temperament, early childhood Affective and cognitive processes are essential and integrated systems that are situated within a rich and vivid environment ( Bell et al., 2019 ). Studying the co-development and mutual influences of children’s emotion, cognition, and environment allows for a comprehensive understanding of children’s developmental processes. In this study, we examined emotion from a temperamental perspective and specifically focused on children’s fearful temperament as it is a major risk factor for internalizing problems (e.g., anxiety, depression; Tang et al., 2020 ). We aimed to identify the dynamic and complex associations among children’s fearful temperament, cognition, and maternal intrusive behaviors, which have a direct and profound impact on children’s development ( Ryan & Ollendick, 2018 ). Temperament represents one robust foundation for children’s socioemotional development ( Shiner et al., 2012 ). Among different aspects of temperament, fearful temperament has received considerable empirical attention given its close associations with psychopathology (e.g., Tang et al., 2022 ). Children with high fearful temperament typically show negative reactivity, wariness, and avoidance to novel situations, objects, and social situations ( Fox et al., 2023 ). Numerous terms are used in the literature to describe fearful temperament, such as shyness ( Poole et al., 2021 ), behavioral inhibition ( Tang et al., 2020 ), dysregulated fear ( Buss et al., 2013 ), negative reactivity ( Kagan & Snidman, 1991 ), and social reticence ( Degnan et al., 2014 ). Although there are nuanced differences among these concepts, these conceptually similar constructs share common biological underpinnings, are closely related to each other, and are all associated with children’s internalizing problems (e.g., Fox et al., 2023 ). Therefore, we used the broader umbrella term fearful temperament to encompass all these forms of withdrawn/inhibited traits, as has also been done in prior research ( Fox et al., 2023 ; R. Liu & Bell, 2020 ; Morales et al., 2015 ). Previous evidence indicates that fearful temperament decreases across toddlerhood and childhood ( Anaya et al., 2023 ; R. Liu et al., 2021 ), which might be due to a later developed control system coming online and regulating the expression and stability of the more reactive dispositions ( Shiner et al., 2012 ). One type of control system is children’s task switching, which is closely linked to the development of fearful temperament ( Fox et al., 2021 , 2023 ). Task switching, also referred to as “shifting” or “cognitive flexibility”, involves being flexible enough to shift back and forth between multiple tasks, operations, or mental sets ( Diamond, 2013 ; Miyake et al., 2000 ). A classic way of measuring children’s task switching is the Dimensional Change Card Sorting task ( Zelazo, 2006 ). Children who are younger than 3 years old often have difficulties completing the post-switch trials of the task, suggesting that their task switching is underdeveloped; however, performance dramatically improves after age 3 and more than half of 4-year-olds can successfully switch ( van Bers et al., 2011 ). Also, 3- and 4-year-olds show significant individual differences in performance on the task ( van Bers et al., 2011 ). Thus, early childhood, especially 3–4 years, represents a critical time during which children start to show significant improvements in their task switching. Task switching and fearful temperament continually influence each other over development. On one hand, increased fearful temperament may interrupt the development of task switching. Children with high levels of fearful temperament tend to have a bottom-up information processing bias, making it more challenging to switch as the initial bias must be overcome first; therefore, their task switching remains immature or undeveloped ( Henderson et al., 2015 ; Henderson & Wilson, 2017 ). In support of this view, fearful temperament in toddlerhood predicts lower task switching during middle childhood ( Buzzell et al., 2021 ). On the other hand, lower task switching may perpetuate an elevated level of fearful temperament over time as children are less flexible in shifting attention away from threats ( Pérez-Edgar, 2018 ). As such, the association between fearful temperament and task switching is likely to be bidirectional ( Wolfe et al., 2014 ) and changes in the two constructs may co-occur, such that as the degree of task switching increases, fearful temperament decreases, and vice versa. The development of fearful temperament and task switching cannot be separated from the environmental contexts in which they are both situated. In a recent review, Fox and colleagues (2023) advocated for the integration of the largely independent basic research on cognitive control with the applied research on parenting to guide family-focused interventions targeting fearful temperament. Maternal intrusiveness, typically seen as a type of maternal negative behavior, is deeply involved in the development of both fearful temperament and task switching ( Broomell et al., 2020 ; Maag et al., 2021 ). Maternal intrusiveness is commonly used to describe the tendency of mothers to exhibit overly controlling behaviors during interactions with their children, with a focus on the mother’s own needs and goals rather than those of the child ( Hunter et al., 2021 ). Although limited research has examined the stability of maternal intrusiveness over time, some studies have reported that mothers showed different levels of intrusiveness across age. For example, maternal intrusiveness decreased when children were between 3 and 9 months ( Feldman et al., 1997 ). Moreover, maternal intrusiveness increased when children were between 2 and 3 ages, decreased between 3 and 4 ages, and remained relatively stable thereafter ( Hunter et al., 2021 ). Maternal intrusiveness often has negative effects on children’s cognitive and temperamental development. Maternal intrusiveness can impair the development of task switching ( Gueron-Sela et al., 2018 ). Mothers with high intrusiveness restrict children’s autonomous behaviors, eliminate their opportunities to practice and solve problems independently, and disrupt children’s regulatory skills ( Hastings et al., 2019 ; Zeytinoglu et al., 2017 ). Further empirical evidence indicates that maternal intrusiveness during structured play at 10 months predicts impaired executive function, including decreased task switching at age 4 ( Broomell et al., 2020 ). Moreover, low maternal emotional support (e.g., high intrusiveness) predicts decreased children’s task switching from preschool to kindergarten, and from kindergarten to first grade ( Zeytinoglu et al., 2019 ). For children with high fearful temperament, maternal intrusiveness may cause intensified negative arousal when children are already challenged by a novel environment. Such additional stress may exacerbate children’s feelings of losing control and may disrupt their coping abilities ( Hastings et al., 2019 ; P. Liu et al., 2020 ). Indeed, empirical research shows that mothers who are intrusive tend to report higher levels of fearful temperament in their 18- and 30-month-old children ( Eggum et al., 2009 ). Notably, children are active agents who continually interact with the environment, both affecting and being affected by the social contexts ( Pérez-Edgar et al., 2021 ); therefore, children’s task switching and fearful temperament may also alter the levels of intrusiveness mothers show over time ( Perry et al., 2018 ). For example, children’s inhibited temperament and maternal cortisol reactivity interacted to influence maternal intrusive behavior, with mothers showing higher cortisol reactivity displaying greater intrusiveness toward highly inhibited children ( Kiel & K.A. Buss, 2013 ). Moreover, infant negative reactivity predicted increased maternal intrusiveness if mothers also showed greater behavioral activation ( Bailes et al., 2024 ). These findings highlight the potential important effect of infant temperament on maternal intrusiveness. Although research regarding the effect of children’s cognition on maternal intrusiveness is limited, previous research indicated that the relations between intrusive parenting and executive function are bidirectional across time ( Eisenberg et al., 2015 ). Overall, the effects of task switching and fearful temperament on maternal intrusiveness remain understudied. The current study aimed to fill the gap by examining the reciprocal associations among children’s fearful temperament, task switching, and maternal intrusiveness. Although the complex associations among fearful temperament, task switching, and maternal intrusiveness have received considerable theoretical and empirical attention, the existing research has three major limitations. First, prior studies have only examined the associations between two of these three constructs at a time, preventing an understanding of how temperament, cognition, and environment are simultaneously associated with each other. Second, most research has only focused on one direction of the associations, usually from parent to child. Each of the three constructs, however, can be both a predictor and a consequence. It is critical to study the reciprocal associations among them. Third, it remains unclear how one construct affects changes in the other two and how the three co-change. Therefore, the current study integrated fearful temperament, task switching, and maternal intrusiveness into one latent change score model to examine how one construct at the initial level predicted changes in the other two during the following year as well as how the three constructs co-developed. Examining all three constructs in one model offers a more nuanced understanding of how affective and cognitive processes are simultaneously associated with one another and with the surrounding parenting environment in which they coexist. The latent change score model is advantageous in its flexibility of modeling changes with only two time points and also provides valuable information regarding changes in the mean levels, individual differences in changes, how one variable predicts the rate, or degree, of changes in the other variables, and the correlated change, reflecting the degree to which changes between variables co-occur ( Kievit et al., 2018 ). The latent change score model has been increasingly adopted in longitudinal research examining developmental patterns with limited measuring points ( Tang et al., 2022 ; Valadez et al., 2022 ). In sum, we employed a trivariate latent change score model to examine the co-development and mutual influences of fearful temperament, task switching, and maternal intrusiveness between 36 (T1) and 48 months (T2). We hypothesized that task switching would increase and fearful temperament would decrease from T1 to T2. We also expected that higher initial levels of intrusiveness would predict a smaller decrease in fearful temperament and a smaller increase in task switching from T1 to T2. Greater initial task switching would predict a larger decrease in fearful temperament. Greater initial fearful temperament would predict a smaller increase in task switching. Moreover, we examined the effects of initial task switching and fearful temperament on changes in maternal intrusiveness, as well as the co-changes among fearful temperament, task switching, and maternal intrusiveness. Due to the limited prior research, we did not make specific hypotheses regarding the child-to-mother effects or the co-changes. As children’s sex, age, and maternal education are often associated with parenting ( Cuartas, 2022 ), task switching ( Montroy et al., 2019 ; van Bers et al., 2011 ), and fearful temperament ( Grady et al., 2012 ), they were included as covariates in the analyses. We also controlled for children’s race as maternal intrusiveness is heavily influenced by cultural norms ( Ispa et al., 2015 ). Method Participants Participants included three cohorts of children ( n = 410) from a larger longitudinal study examining cognitive and emotional development from infancy through middle childhood. The cohorts were broadly recruited at two research locations, a small college town (Blacksburg) and a mid-sized city (Greensboro) in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Recruitment occurred when the children were infants (5 months) using mailing lists, media advertisements, flyers, and word of mouth. The Blacksburg research location and the Greensboro research location each recruited half of the participants in the longitudinal study. The demographics of the participants recruited from each location reflected the demographics of the area in which each research laboratory was located. Participants at each research location did not differ with respect to sex, χ 2 (1, N = 410) = 2.16, p = .14. However, the Blacksburg research location had mothers with higher levels of education on average, χ 2 (7, N = 408) = 104.69, p < .001, and the Greensboro research location had a greater number of ethnic minority participants, χ 2 (3, N = 410) = 52.82, p < .001. Of the original 410 children, 320 participated at 36 months, and 302 participated at 48 months. The families who were lost to attrition in the study were those who could not be located, moved out of the area, declined participation, or did not respond to requests via phone and letter to participate. We included children (n = 335) who had at least one measure at 36 or 48 months in this study. There were no significant differences between families who were included or not with respect to children’s sex (χ 2 (1, N = 410) = 2.99, p = .08) and race (χ 2 (3, N = 410) = 1.55, p = .67), as well as maternal education (χ 2 (4, N = 408) = 7.24, p = .12). Among the 335 children (171 boys, 164 girls), 77.3% were White, 14.0% were Black, 8.4% were multi-racial, and .3% were Asian. Regarding ethnicity, 7.8% of children were Hispanic. Regarding maternal education level, 1.6% of the mothers did not finish high school; 12.5% of the mothers graduated from high school; 24.6% had technical degrees; 36.3% had college degrees; and 25% had postgraduate degrees (see Table 1 ). Table 1. Sample characteristics Variable Child Sex Male, n 171 Female, n 164 Child age in months at 48 months, mean (SD) 49.73 (.99) Maternal education Some high school 1.6% High school graduate 12.5% Some college or 2-yr college 24.6% College graduate of 4-yr college 36.3% Master’s degree 20.3% Ph.D. or M.D. or other doctoral degree 4.7% Child Race White 77.3% Black 14% Multi-racial 8.4% Asian .3% Child Ethnicity Hispanic 7.8% Non-Hispanic 92.2% Open in a new tab Procedures Data were collected at both research locations between 2005 and 2011. Families from cohort 1 were seen about three years earlier than cohort 2 and cohort 3. Research assistants from each location were trained together by the project’s Principal Investigator (final author) on protocol administration, as well as on data collection and behavioral coding. To ensure that identical protocol administration was maintained between the labs, the Blacksburg laboratory periodically viewed video recordings collected by the Greensboro laboratory. The Blacksburg laboratory provided reliability for the behavioral coding of the tasks done by the Greensboro laboratory. All maternal behavior coding was done by the Blacksburg laboratory. Upon arriving at the lab, children and mothers were greeted. Consent and assent were obtained from the mothers and the children. At each lab visit, children performed several cognitive and emotional control tasks. Mothers sat near their children during each visit. Mothers received remuneration and children received a small gift at each visit. Measures Maternal intrusiveness Mother’s intrusive behaviors were observed at 36 and 48 months in an interactive puzzle task, during which children and their mothers were asked to work together on two puzzles just like what they would do at home. The puzzles were selected so that the first puzzle was relatively easy and the second puzzle more difficult for 3- and 4-year-old children to complete on their own. Children and mothers played together for a total of 6 minutes. The interaction was recorded for off-line coding. The indicators of intrusive behaviors coded in the study were as follows: failing to modulate behavior that the child turns away from, expressing negative affect towards the child, and overwhelming the child with a continuous stream of stimulation without observing their reaction. Additionally, indicators of intrusive behaviors included not allowing the child to influence the pace or focus of play or interaction by ignoring their interests and taking away objects while they were still engaged. Maternal behaviors were coded off-line by trained research assistants using a coding scheme adapted from Smith and colleagues (2004) . Intrusive behaviors were coded by trained research assistants on a 4-point Likert scale from 1 = none to 4 = high in 30-second epochs. A single code that combined all the example behaviors was provided for each 30-second epoch; the codes were then summed across epochs and divided by the number of epochs to get a mean value. Inter-rater reliabilities (intraclass correlation; 20% coding overlap) were .96 and .97 at 36 and 48 months, respectively. Children’s task switching Task switching was assessed with the Dimensional Change Card Sort task (DCCS; Doebel & Zelazo, 2015) at 36 and 48 months. During DCCS, children were asked to sort cards based on shape or color dimension. Children first sorted a few cards by one dimension (pre-switch; counterbalanced across participants) and then were asked to switch and sort the remaining cards by the other dimension (post-switch). On average, children completed 6 pre-switch trials and 6 post-switch trials at both 36 and 48 months. The task was coded by two experimenters. Experimenter 1 coded the task on-site based on the child’s performance immediately after task completion, while Experimenter 2 coded the task off-line by reviewing the video recordings. Performance was the proportion of correct post-switch responses. Inter-rater reliabilities (intraclass correlations; 25% coding overlap) were .98 and .98 at 36 and 48 months, respectively. Children’s fearful temperament Fearful temperament was measured with the Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart et al., 2001), which is a well-established parent report measure of children’s temperament from 3 to 7 years of age. We used the shyness subscale to measure children’s fearful temperament (6 items). An example of the questions includes “Is sometimes shy even around people s/he has known a long time.” Mothers reported on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“extremely untrue of your child”) to 7 (“extremely true of your child”). The Cronbach’s α of fearful temperament at 36 and 48 months were .84 and .86 respectively. Statistical Analyses Preliminary analyses were conducted to examine the descriptive statistics and associations among variables of interest. Latent change score models (LCSMs) were analyzed using R (version 4.1.0; R Core Team, 2021) lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012) with a maximum likelihood with robust standard errors (MLR) estimator to account for possible non-normal distribution of the study variables. Full information maximum likelihood (FIML) was used to handle missing values. First, three univariate LCSMs were used to examine the within-person changes of fearful temperament, task-switching, and maternal intrusiveness over time, respectively. Second, a trivariate LCSM incorporating all three variables was employed to examine: 1) if one variable at the initial level predicted the degree of changes of the other two variables and 2) the correlated change reflecting the degree to which changes between variables co-occurred. Children’s sex, age, race, and maternal education were included as covariates in the trivariate LCSM. Model fit was assessed using chi-square goodness-of-fit statistic, comparative fit index (CFI), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR). Model fit was considered acceptable if chi-square goodness-of-fit statistic was non-significant, CFI was greater than .95, RMSEA was less than .06, and SRMR was less than .08 (Hu & Bentler, 1999). Results Preliminary analyses Descriptive statistics and correlations between the main study variables are shown in Table 2 . Maternal intrusiveness, children’s task switching, and children’s fearful temperament showed low to moderate stability over the one-year period ( r = .22 - .67) Fearful temperament at 48 months was negatively associated with task switching at 36 months ( r = −.17, p = .01) and 48 months ( r = −.23, p < .001). Mothers of boys showed more intrusiveness than mothers of girls at 48 months ( t = 2.09, p = .04). Mothers with higher education levels showed less intrusiveness than mothers with lower education at 36 months ( r = −.22, p = .001). Children of mothers who had higher education levels had better task-switching ability at 36 months ( r = .20, p = .005) and 48 months ( r = .34, p < .001), compared to children of mothers who had lower education levels. Table 2. Descriptive statistics and correlations between main study variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. Maternal intrusiveness at 36m - 2. Maternal intrusiveness at 48m .28 * - 3. Task switching at 36m .04 .03 - 4. Task switching at 48m −.12 .03 .22 * - 5. Fearful temperament at 36m −.03 .04 −.12 −.10 - 6. Fearful temperament at 48m .04 −.03 −.17 * −.23 * .67 * - N 288 265 262 263 312 291 Mean 1.25 1.14 .45 .62 3.94 3.75 SD .30 .29 .45 .45 1.28 1.30 Minimum 1.00 1.00 .00 .00 1.00 1.00 Maximum 2.50 3.17 1.00 1.00 7.00 6.83 Open in a new tab Note. * p < .05. Univariate latent change score model All three univariate LCSMs were just identified (see supplemental materials for model details). Maternal intrusiveness decreased from 36 to 48 months ( b = −.11, SE = .02, β = −.31, p < .001); some mothers showed larger decreases in their level of intrusiveness compared with others ( b = .13, SE = .02, β = 1.00, p < .001; Figure S1 ). Children increased task switching performance from 36 to 48 months ( b = .18, SE = .04, β = .32, p < .001); some children showed larger growth in their task switching compared with others ( b = .31, SE = .03, β = 1.00, p < .001; Figure S2 ). Children’s level of fearful temperament decreased from 36 to 48 months ( b = −.17, SE = .06, β = −.16, p = .01); children differed in the degree of changes of fearful temperament ( b = 1.103, SE = .12, β = 1.00, p < .001; Figure S3 ). Trivariate latent change score model The trivariate LCSM had excellent fit to the data, χ 2 (6) = 6.37, p = .38, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = .01, SRMR = .02 ( Figure 1 ). Higher initial levels of maternal intrusiveness at 36 months predicted a larger decrease in maternal intrusiveness from 36 to 48 months ( b = −.76, SE = .07, β = −2.13, p < .001). Higher initial levels of children’s task switching predicted a greater increase in task switching ( b = −.77, SE = .06, β = −1.39, p < .001). Higher initial levels of children’s fearful temperament predicted a larger decrease in fearful temperament ( b = −.34, SE = .05, β = −.32, p < .001). Greater levels of maternal intrusiveness at 36 months predicted a smaller increase in children’s task switching from 36 to 48 months ( b = −.19, SE = .09, β = −.34, p = .03). Higher levels of children’s task switching at 36 months predicted a larger decrease in children’s fearful temperament from 36 to 48 months ( b = −.30, SE = .14, β = −.29, p = .04). Task switching and fearful temperament co-changed between 36 and 48 months ( b = −.06, SE = .03, β = −.14, p = .03); as the degree of task switching increased, fearful temperament decreased, and vice versa. The effects of covariates (i.e., children’s sex, age, and race; maternal education) on changes in children’s task switching and fearful temperament, as well as maternal intrusiveness, are shown in Table S1 . Figure 1. Open in a new tab A trivariate latent change score model of maternal intrusiveness, task switching, and fearful temperament at 36 and 48 months controlling for child sex, age, race, and maternal education. Numbers indicate standardized coefficients. Solid lines indicate significant variances or associations. MI = maternal intrusiveness, TS = task switching, FT = fearful temperament. *p < .05. Discussion Using latent change score models, we examined the mutual influences of children’s fearful temperament and task switching and maternal intrusiveness between 36 and 48 months. Consistent with the hypotheses, our data showed that task switching increased from 36 to 48 months and fearful temperament decreased from 36 to 48 months on average. Our data also show that mothers tended to show less intrusiveness from 36 to 48 months. There were significant individual differences in the within-person changes of task switching, fearful temperament, and maternal intrusiveness. In support of our hypotheses, higher levels of maternal intrusiveness at 36 months predicted a smaller increase in children’s task switching. Higher levels of task switching at 36 months predicted a larger decrease in children’s fearful temperament. Moreover, the changes between task switching and fearful temperament co-occurred, such that those with greater gains in task switching, on average, had a larger decrease in fearful temperament, and vice versa. Task switching, fearful temperament, and maternal intrusiveness exhibited changes in mean levels over time. The increase in task switching from 36 to 48 months was consistent with prior research indicating that children’s performance in DCCS improved significantly in early childhood ( van Bers et al., 2011 ; Zelazo, 2006 ). The marked improvement in behavioral performance likely relies on the rapid anatomical maturation of the prefrontal cortex during this age period, including increases in synaptic density and dendritic trees ( Kolb et al., 2012 ) and stronger inferior prefrontal activation when performing DCCS at 4 years than at 3 years ( Moriguchi & Hiraki, 2013 ). Moreover, fearful temperament decreased from 36 to 48 months. Prior research has been inconsistent regarding developmental changes in fearful temperament in early childhood, with studies reporting both an increase ( Eggum-Wilkens et al., 2015 ; Karevold et al., 2012 ) and a decrease in fearful temperament ( Grady et al., 2012 ; R. Liu et al., 2021 ). Our results indicated that fearful temperament decreased in early childhood, which might be due to children developing better coping skills and gradually adapting to new peers and novel environments with increased exposure ( Grady et al., 2012 ; R. Liu et al., 2021 ). Maternal intrusiveness decreased from 36 to 48 months. As children’s social competence and self-regulation typically improve with age, maternal control is anticipated to decrease adaptively ( Feldman & Eidelman, 2009 ). Therefore, by age 4, we might observe a developmentally appropriate decline in maternal intrusiveness, aligning with typical advancements in children’s self-regulation skills ( Zeytinoglu et al., 2017 ). Moreover, the changes in all three constructs were predicted by their own initial intercepts. For example, children who already performed well on the task switching task at 36 months had little room to grow in their abilities. This highlights the need to control for a variable’s own initial level when studying how other factors impact its developmental change. Children’s temperament and cognitive processes had a dynamic and continued interaction over development. We showed that the decrease in fearful temperament might be relevant to children’s continually developing task switching abilities. Specifically, the within-person changes between fearful temperament and task switching co-occurred in early childhood, after considering the effects of initial task switching on changes in fearful temperament. The pattern is consistent with previous research indicating negative associations between fearful temperament and task switching, as well as overall executive function in children ( Buzzell et al., 2021 ; Wolfe et al., 2014 ). On one hand, children with better task switching were more flexible in shifting attention away from negative stimuli and thoughts, which plays an important role in the adaptive regulation of fearful temperament ( Henderson & Wilson, 2017 ; Pérez-Edgar, 2018 ). On the other hand, children with lower fearful temperament may have less bottom-up information processing bias, which facilitates the development of task switching ( Henderson & Wilson, 2017 ). It has also been proposed that young children’s negative emotional responses (e.g., fear to novelty) hinder the utilization of more advanced cognitive functions involving memory, attention, planning, and problem solving. An important implication from a developmental perspective is that children characterized by high fearful temperament might encounter challenges in employing high-order cognitive skills, resulting in these skills being less utilized and subsequently remaining underdeveloped ( Blair, 2002 ). Importantly, we found that maternal intrusiveness was associated with children’s cognitive development. Particularly, greater maternal intrusiveness at 36 months predicted a smaller increase in children’s task switching the following year, after accounting for the co-development of task switching and fearful temperament. Intrusive mothers may fail to create an appropriate environment that allows children to explore and solve problems independently and to use, practice, and develop their cognitive skills ( Perry et al., 2018 ), Therefore, children of intrusive mothers tend to have a smaller increase in task switching compared with their peers. We did not find an effect of children’s task switching on maternal intrusiveness. To our best knowledge, limited research has examined the bidirectional associations between children’s cognition and parenting behaviors. Among the few, research has shown that better executive function in children predicted more positive changes in parental responsiveness ( Merz et al., 2017 ). Considering the fact that children continually shape their surrounding contexts ( Pérez-Edgar et al., 2021 ), future research should further examine how children’s cognition affects parenting and the bidirectional associations between the two. Interestingly, maternal intrusiveness at 36 months did not predict changes in fearful temperament from 36 to 48 months, which was inconsistent with previous research indicating that mothers who were more intrusive had children who were highly fearful temperament or socially withdrawn in childhood ( Booth-Laforce & Oxford, 2008 ; Eggum et al., 2009 ; but see R. Liu et al., 2021 ). However, our work provided a unique perspective that children’s task switching may link maternal intrusiveness and children’s fearful temperament. Although we did not directly test the indirect effect of maternal intrusiveness on fearful temperament via task switching, our results indicated that greater maternal intrusiveness at 36 months predicted a smaller increase in children’s task switching from 36 to 48 months, which was then associated with a smaller decrease in children’s shyness. As such, children’s task switching may serve as a potential mechanism linking maternal intrusiveness and children’s fearful temperament development. Future research should further examine the circumstances under which early maternal intrusiveness can predict children’s fearful temperament and the underlying cognitive mechanisms ( Fox et al., 2023 ). Moreover, it was surprising to find that early fearful temperament did not predict changes in maternal intrusiveness, considering that children as active agents continually affect their social contexts ( Pérez-Edgar et al., 2021 ). It is possible, though, that the effects of child behaviors and temperament on maternal intrusiveness were moderated by other factors. For example, maternal psychosocial stress, indicated by the level of cortisol, moderates the association between children’s fearful temperament and maternal intrusiveness, suggesting that only when mothers feel stressed watching their fearful children participate in novel situations do mothers tend to change their behaviors in an intrusive way (Kiel & K.A. Buss, 2013 ). As such, future research should consider maternal emotional and biological reactivity to children’s fearful behaviors to elucidate the relative importance of the multiple predictors of parenting behaviors ( Kiel & K.A. Buss, 2013 ). We also failed to find an effect of children’s initial task switching on changes in maternal intrusiveness. Most prior research has focused on the impact of maternal intrusiveness on children’s cognitive development, while studies on how children’s cognition influences parenting are limited. It is possible that children’s task switching indirectly affects maternal intrusiveness through other factors, such as externalizing problems, which have been found to increase maternal intrusiveness ( Yan et al., 2019 ) and are closely linked to task switching ( Yang et al., 2022 ). Our study has several theoretical and methodological strengths. First, we synthesized previous largely independent applied research on caregiving and basic research on children’s cognitive control to reveal a more nuanced and comprehensive picture of children’s developmental processes ( Fox et al., 2023 ). Second, the use of longitudinal design and LCSMs allowed us to examine the co-changes and mutual influences among children’s fearful temperament, children’s task switching, and maternal intrusiveness for the first time. Third, we applied a multi-method approach in this study, including behavioral measures, observations, and questionnaires to measure task switching, fearful temperament, and maternal intrusiveness. Our findings should be considered in light of some limitations. First, children and mothers in our study were predominantly White. Maternal intrusiveness is heavily influenced by cultural norms, such that levels of intrusiveness and the interpretation of intrusiveness vary significantly from culture to culture, and there are numerous studies reporting that intrusiveness is particularly culturally bound (e.g., Ispa et al., 2015 , 2013 , 2004 ). For example, greater intrusiveness has been associated with more behavior problems and less optimal emotion regulation for White and Hispanic/Latino families; they have been reported as unrelated in Black families ( Diemer et al., 2021 ). Therefore, it is necessary to include more diverse samples in future research to delineate the associations among maternal intrusiveness, children’s task switching, and children’s fearful temperament for families from different cultural backgrounds. Second, maternal intrusiveness may be a proxy for maternal psychopathology. Although we did not measure and include maternal psychopathology in this study, future research should include this maternal information. Third, the results should be interpreted with caution, as the overall levels of maternal intrusiveness were low in our study, which might partly explain the lack of associations between maternal intrusiveness and children’s fearful temperament. The results indicate, however, that even low- to-moderate levels of maternal intrusiveness is related to children’s task switching. Fourth, although we highlighted the importance of studying 3 to 4 years as it represents a critical period for the development of task switching ( van Bers et al., 2011 ), our study only included two time points, which limited our approach to model the co-developmental pattern. Future research may consider including measures that are more frequent to reveal clearer developmental trajectories of the study variables. In summary, our data demonstrated that higher levels of maternal intrusiveness at 36 months predicted a smaller increase in children’s task switching from 36 to 48 months. Higher levels of task switching at 36 months predicted a larger decrease in children’s fearful temperament. The changes between task switching and fearful temperament co-occurred over time, such that as the degree of task switching increased, fearful temperament decreased or the other way around. The findings have important implications in clinical and educational settings. Interventions targeting maternal intrusiveness in family settings could serve as a pivotal strategy in enhancing children’s task switching abilities. For example, the video-feedback Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting-Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD) has been shown as an effective way to reduce maternal intrusive behaviors ( Alsancak-Akbulut et al., 2021 ). Moreover, strategies aiming to enhance children’s task switching skills might contribute to the reduction of fearful temperament in children, and vice versa. For example, a recent meta-analysis showed that mindfulness practices had beneficial effects on typically developing children’s executive function skills ( Takacs & Kassai, 2019 ); as such, it may also reduce children’s fearful temperament. Additionally, the Turtle Program, which targets children’s fearful temperament ( Chronis-Tuscano et al., 2022 ), may also benefit their cognitive development. In educational settings, integrating programs that emphasize both parenting practices and the enhancement of children’s cognitive skills, like task switching, could be incorporated into school curricula or parental education initiatives. By emphasizing these connections between parenting quality, children’s cognition, and children’s temperament, educators and practitioners can work collaboratively to design and implement more effective and holistic interventions aimed at promoting children’s adaptive development. Supplementary Material supplementary material NIHMS2172350-supplement-supplementary_material.docx (282.1KB, docx) Acknowledgments This research was supported by grant R01 HD049878 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), grant 32400890 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant 23YJC190015 from Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China, and grant 2023NTSS21 from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities at Beijing Normal University. The content of this manuscript is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NICHD or the National Institutes of Health. We thank Susan D. Calkins and her team at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for their many years of collaboration on this project. 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