Developmental reconstruction of cognitive ability: Interactions between executive, cognizance, and reasoning processes in childhood

The interrelatedness of cognitive abilities in very preterm and full-term born children at 5.5 years of age: a psychometric network analysis approach

BACKGROUND

Very preterm (VP) birth is associated with a considerable risk for cognitive impairment, putting children at a disadvantage in academic and everyday life. Despite lower cognitive ability on the group level, there are large individual differences among VP born children. Contemporary theories define intelligence as a network of reciprocally connected cognitive abilities. Therefore, intelligence was studied as a network of interrelated abilities to provide insight into interindividual differences. We described and compared the network of cognitive abilities, including strength of interrelations between and the relative importance of abilities, of VP and full-term (FT) born children and VP children with below-average and average-high intelligence at 5.5 years.

METHODS

A total of 2,253 VP children from the EPIPAGE-2 cohort and 578 FT controls who participated in the 5.5-year-follow-up were eligible for inclusion. The WPPSI-IV was used to measure verbal comprehension, visuospatial abilities, fluid reasoning, working memory, and processing speed. Psychometric network analysis was applied to analyse the data.

RESULTS

Cognitive abilities were densely and positively interconnected in all networks, but the strength of connections differed between networks. The cognitive network of VP children was more strongly interconnected than that of FT children. Furthermore, VP children with below average IQ had a more strongly connected network than VP children with average-high IQ. Contrary to our expectations, working memory had the least central role in all networks.

CONCLUSIONS

In line with the ability differentiation hypothesis, children with higher levels of cognitive ability had a less interconnected and more specialised cognitive structure. Composite intelligence scores may therefore mask domain-specific deficits, particularly in children at risk for cognitive impairments (e.g., VP born children), even when general intelligence is unimpaired. In children with strongly and densely connected networks, domain-specific deficits may have a larger overall impact, resulting in lower intelligence levels.

Do Animations Impair Executive Function in Young Children? Effects of Animation Types on the Executive Function of Children Aged Four to Seven Years

This study used a three (animation types: educational, entertainment, and control groups) × four (age group: four-, five-, six-, and seven-year-olds) between-group experimental design to investigate the short-term effects of animation type and age on each component of children’s executive function (EF) (inhibitory control [IC], cognitive flexibility [CF], and working memory [WM]). One hundred twenty-six kindergarten and first-grade elementary school students in a city in Henan Province of China were selected for the experimental study. The results showed that briefly watching animation affected children’s EF. Specifically, watching entertainment cartoons weakened children’s IC and CF, while cartoons did not affect children’s WM. The moderating effect of age in the relationship between animation type and EFs was non-significant. This study suggests that researchers should focus on the uniqueness of each component of EF in children aged four to seven years, and parents should try to limit children’s viewing of animation, especially entertainment animation.