Culture-specific links between maternal executive function, parenting, and preschool children's executive function in South Korea

The intergenerational transmission of executive function: The mediating effect of parental harsh discipline

BACKGROUND

The important roles of parental EF in shaping children's EF is less clear, especially in Chinese families. Moreover, it is suggested that the negative parenting behavior may be important environmental mechanisms underlying the EF transmission.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to examine the transmission of EF across generations and the mediating roles of parental harsh discipline in this transmission in a Chinese sample.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

A total of 311 Chinese preschool-aged children and their fathers and mothers were recruited from three public kindergartens in Beijing.

METHODS

The Chinese version of Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Adult Version (BRIEF-A), Parent-child Conflict Tactics Scales (CTSPC) and Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschooler Version (BRIEF-P) were respectively used to assess parental EF, harsh discipline and children's EF.

RESULTS

Both paternal and maternal EF positively predicted children's EF (β_paternal = 0.16, p < .01; β_maternal = 0.42, p < .001), and maternal but not paternal psychological aggression (standardized indirect estimate = 0.03, p < .05) and corporal punishment (standardized indirect estimate = 0.02, p < .05) mediated the above transmission.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings broaden our understanding of the distal or proximal factors and processes that account for the development of child EF in Chinese culture. Interventions focusing on improving parental especially maternal parenting practices would be helpful to shape children's EF or to interrupt the transmission of poor EF.

Attachment security, verbal ability, and inhibitory control in middle childhood

BACKGROUND

The relationship between parent-child attachment and executive function (EF) in middle childhood remains relatively poorly studied. Very little is known about the role that the child's verbal ability might play in these relationships. Therefore, in the present study, we explored the concurrent links between perceived attachment security with parents and hot and cool inhibitory control (IC)-a core component of EF-as well as the potential mediating role of verbal ability in those links.

METHODS

The participants were 160 children aged 8 to 12 (51% girls). They completed the Attachment Security Scale, the computerised version of the go/no-go task, the delay discounting task, and the vocabulary subtest from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. Pearson's correlations were conducted to test relationships between the study variables. A hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis was performed to examine whether attachment security uniquely contributed to the outcomes after accounting for covariates. The indirect effects were tested using a non-parametric resampling bootstrap approach.

RESULTS

The results showed that, after accounting for the child's age and sex, there was a direct relationship between attachment security with the father and cool, but not hot, IC. However, there were no significant links between attachment security with the mother and both aspects of IC. We also found that children's verbal ability played a mediating role in the associations between both child-father and child-mother attachment security and hot, but not cool, IC above and beyond the child's age.

CONCLUSIONS

The current study extends previous work on executive functions in middle childhood. The results highlight the role of attachment in explaining individual differences in IC in middle childhood as well as the different mechanisms through which attachment with parents might explain cool vs. hot IC. The findings have potential implications for therapeutic interventions using the family context as a target to improve IC in middle childhood.

Parenting and Children's Executive Function Stability Across the Transition to School

When children transition to school between the ages of 4 and 6 years, they must learn to control their attention and behavior to be successful. Concurrently, executive function (EF) is an important skill undergoing significant development in childhood. To understand changes occurring during this period, we examined the role of parenting in the development of children's EF from 4 to 6 years old. Participants were mother and child dyads (N = 151). Children completed cognitive tasks to assess overall EF at age 4 and age 6. At both time points, mothers and children completed interaction tasks which were videotaped and coded to assess various parenting dimensions. Results indicated that children with high EF at age 4 were more likely to have high EF at age 6. In addition, results suggested that higher levels of positive parenting across the transition to school promote stability of individual differences in EF.

The Role of Teacher Regulatory Talk in Students' Self-Regulation Development Across Cultures

This study is the first to explore the contribution of different types of teacher regulatory talk-directive, guiding, and autonomy supportive talk-in children's development of self-regulation across cultures. Teacher-to-student talk was analyzed under naturalistic conditions in eight Year 4 classrooms, all situated in different primary schools in England (student N = 25) and Chile (N = 24). Self-regulation was studied by observing students' effective metacognitive monitoring (awareness of errors) and effective metacognitive control (effective control of problems) in a series of 11-13 cube assembly tasks. Mann-Whitney U tests showed that English participants demonstrated higher levels of effective metacognitive monitoring and control, and participating teachers a similar level of teacher regulatory talk across cultures. The function that regulatory talk had in predicting students' self-regulation, however, tended to vary according to culture. OLS multiple regressions revealed that while guiding talk had the same positive effect across cultures, directive talk had a negative effect in England but null effect in Chile, and autonomy supportive talk had a positive effect in Chile but negative in England. These results indicate that it would be valuable to explore further the culturally adaptive functionality of teacher talk for students' self-regulation development.

Commentary: Relationships Between Classroom Dialogue and Support for Metacognitive, Self-Regulatory Development in Educational Contexts

As indicated in the introductory article, this special issue has attempted to represent and illustrate developments in theoretical, methodological, and empirical work related to the role of primary classroom dialogue in supporting children's self-regulation. The articles included report studies carried out in the United Kingdom and Chile (two quite different cultural contexts) originally supported by a British Academy International Partnership and Mobility grant to the two editors. These articles extend the work originally reported in Whitebread, Mercer, Howe & Tolmie (2013), bringing together a number of research traditions to develop our understanding of the contribution of dialogic processes in primary classrooms to the development of children's self-regulation. This commentary is intended to locate the present studies within the pre-existing research literature, to indicate the significant contributions made, and to pose an agenda for future research in this area.