Exploring a bidirectional model of executive functions and fluid intelligence across early development

Cognitive Flexibility Moderates the Predictive Effect of Phonological Awareness on Focus Structures in Chinese Preschool Children

Focus structures, a complex aspect of information structure in language, have garnered significant attention in psycholinguistics. The question of whether Chinese preschoolers aged 4-6 years possess the ability to process focus structures in oral communication, and how cognitive factors influence this ability, remains a research focal point. To address this, we recruited 100 Chinese preschoolers aged 4-6 years as participants in our study. This study manipulated the positions of focus particles in sentences to investigate the impact of phonological awareness on young children's comprehension of focus structures. Additionally, we examined the mediating roles of cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control. Our findings indicate the following: (1) phonological awareness positively predicted the accuracy of focus structural processing; (2) inhibitory control did not significantly predict the accuracy of focus structural processing; and (3) cognitive flexibility partially mediated the relationship between phonological awareness and focus structural comprehension. These results confirmed the predictive effect of cognitive flexibility on children's comprehension of focus structures. Moreover, they demonstrate that young children's phonological awareness can predict their focus structure comprehension ability through the mediating role of cognitive flexibility. This suggests that children's cognitive flexibility can aid in understanding sentences with focus structures.

Executive functioning skills and (low) math achievement in primary and secondary school

Schoolchildren with better executive functioning skills achieve better mathematics results. It is less clear how inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory combine to predict mathematics achievement and difficulty throughout primary and secondary school. This study aimed to find the best combination of executive function measures for predicting mathematical achievement in Grades 2, 6, and 10 and to test whether this combination predicts the probability of having mathematical difficulties across school grades even when fluid intelligence and processing speed were included in the models. A total of 426 students-141 2nd graders (72 girls), 143 6th graders (72 girls), and 142 10th graders (79 girls)-were cross-sectionally assessed with 12 executive tasks, one standardized mathematical task, and a standardized test of intelligence. Bayesian regression analyses found various combinations of executive predictors of mathematical achievement for each school grade spanning Grade 2 to measures of cognitive inhibition (negative priming) and cognitive flexibility (verbal fluency); Grade 6 to measures of inhibition: resistance to distractor interference (receptive attention), cognitive flexibility (local-global), and working memory (counting span); and Grade 10 to measures of inhibition: resistance to distractor interference (receptive attention) and prepotent response inhibition (stop signal) and working memory (reading span). Logistic regression showed that the executive models derived from the Bayesian analyses had a similar ability to classify students with mathematical difficulty and their peers with typical achievement to broader cognitive models that included fluid intelligence and processing speed. Measures of processing speed, cognitive flexibility (local-global), and prepotent response inhibition (stop signal) were the main risk factors in Grades 2, 6, and 10, respectively. Cognitive flexibility (verbal fluency) in Grade 2 and fluid intelligence, which was more stable in all three grades, acted as protective factors against mathematical difficulty. These findings inform practical considerations for establishing preventive and intervention proposals.

The Relationship between Executive Functions, Working Memory, and Intelligence in Kindergarten Children

Executive functions (EF), working memory (WM), and intelligence are closely associated, but distinct constructs. What underlies the associations between these constructs, especially in childhood, is not well understood. In this pre-registered study, along with the traditional aggregate accuracy and RT-based measures of EF, we investigated post-error slowing (PES) in EF as a manifestation of metacognitive processes (i.e., monitoring and cognitive control) in relation to WM and intelligence. Thereby, we aimed to elucidate whether these metacognitive processes may be one underlying component to explain the associations between these constructs. We tested kindergarten children (M_age = 6.4 years, SD_age = 0.3) in an EF, WM (verbal and visuospatial), and fluid (non-verbal) intelligence task. We found significant associations of mainly the inhibition component of EF with fluid intelligence and verbal WM, and between verbal WM and intelligence. No significant associations emerged between the PES in EF and intelligence or WM. These results suggest that in the kindergarten age, inhibition rather than monitoring and cognitive control might be the underlying component that explains the associations between EF, WM, and intelligence.

Using the Flanker Task to Examine Genetic and Environmental Contributions in Inhibitory Control Across the Preschool Period

The limited research exploring genetic and environmental influences on inhibitory control (IC) in preschoolers has relied on parent ratings or simple delay tasks and has produced mixed results. The present study uses a cognitively-challenging Flanker task to examine genetic and environmental contributions to the development of early IC in a longitudinal sample of 310 same-sex twin pairs (123 MZ; 187 DZ; 51% female) assessed at ages 3, 4 and 5 years. IC was significantly heritable at each age (a²: age 3 = .36; age 4 = .36; age 5 = .35). Stability was entirely accounted for by genetic influences, and change was explained by genetic and nonshared environmental factors. No significant shared environmental influences were observed.

The role of executive functions, social cognition and intelligence in predicting social adaptation of vulnerable populations

This study sought to evaluate the roles of and interactions between cognitive processes that have been shown to exhibit impact from socioeconomic status (SES) and living conditions in predicting social adaptation (SA) in a population of adults living in socially vulnerable conditions. Participants included 226 people between the ages of 18 and 60 who have been living in vulnerable contexts throughout life in Santiago, Chile. Data was collected through a battery of psychological assessments. A structural equation model (SEM) was implemented to examine the interrelationships among cognitive and social variables. Results indicate a significant relationship between executive function (EF) and SA through both social cognition (SC) and intelligence. Theory of Mind (ToM), a component of SC, was shown to exhibit a significant relationship with affective empathy; interestingly, this was negatively related to SA. Moreover, fluid intelligence (FI) was found to exhibit a positive, indirect relationship with SA through crystallized intelligence (CI). Evaluation of these results in the context of research on the impacts of SES and vulnerable living conditions on psychological function may allow for the development of more effective clinical, political, and social interventions to support psychosocial health among socially vulnerable populations.

Differences in cognitive processing? The role of verbal processes and mental effort in bilingual and monolingual children's planning performance

Past research documents a bilingual advantage in the domain of executive functions (EFs). However, controversial debates have questioned the robustness of those behavioral differences. The current study aimed to better understand the underlying cognitive prerequisites in bilingual students as compared with monolingual students and focused on two processes: the role of verbal processes, on the one hand, and mental effort during task execution, on the other. The use of self-regulatory speech has been found to be related to performance in tasks requiring EFs. For bilinguals who have grown up with two language systems from an early age, those relations are not fully understood. Furthermore, results from neuroimaging studies have shown that bilinguals might exhibit less mental effort in EF tasks. We investigated both processes in German-speaking monolingual elementary school students (n = 33; M_age = 8.78 years) and German-Russian bilingual elementary school students (n = 34; M_age = 8.88 years) solving a planning task. Results showed that monolinguals were impaired by a verbal secondary task in comparison with a motor control condition, whereas bilinguals performed in both tasks at an equal level, indicating a differential role of self-regulatory speech in both language groups. Analyses of changes in pupil diameter revealed less mental effort during task execution for bilingual children as compared with monolingual children. The current study adds to the existing literature by supplying further evidence for cognitive differences between monolingual and bilingual children.