More alike than different: Novel methods for measuring and modeling executive function development

Abstract Executive functions (EFs) are linked to positive outcomes across the lifespan. Yet, methodological challenges have prevented rigorous understanding of the precise ways EFs are organized in childhood and how they develop over time. We introduce novel methods to address these challenges for both measuring and modeling EFs using a large, accelerated longitudinal dataset from a diverse sample of students in middle childhood (approximately ages 8 to 14; N = 1,286). Adaptive assessments allowed us to equate EF challenge across ages and a data-driven, network analytic approach revealed the evolving diversity of EFs while accounting for their unity. Our results suggest EF organization stabilizes around age 10, but continues refining through at least age 14. This approach brings new precision to EFs’ development by removing interpretative ambiguities associated with previous methodologies. By improving EF measurement, the field can move towards improving EF training, to provide a strong foundation for students’ success.

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Can reactivity to stress and family environment explain memory and executive function performance in early and middle childhood?

Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy ◽

10.1590/2237-6089-2015-0085 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 38 (2) ◽

pp. 80-89 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Luciane da Rosa Piccolo ◽

Jerusa Fumagalli de Salles ◽

Olga Garcia Falceto ◽

Carmen Luiza Fernandes ◽

Rodrigo Grassi-Oliveira

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Early Childhood ◽

Executive Function ◽

Executive Functions ◽

Family Environment ◽

Middle Childhood ◽

Salivary Cortisol ◽

School Age ◽

Maternal Psychopathology ◽

Cortisol Levels

Abstract Introduction: According to the literature, children's overall reactivity to stress is associated with their socioeconomic status and family environment. In turn, it has been shown that reactivity to stress is associated with cognitive performance. However, few studies have systematically tested these three constructs together. Objective: To investigate the relationship between family environment, salivary cortisol measurements and children's memory and executive function performance. Method: Salivary cortisol levels of 70 children aged 9 or 10 years were measured before and after performing tasks designed to assess memory and executive functions. Questionnaires on socioeconomic issues, family environment and maternal psychopathologies were administered to participants' families during the children's early childhood and again when they reached school age. Results: Data were analyzed by calculating correlations between variables and conducting hierarchical regression. High cortisol levels were associated with poorer working memory and worse performance in tasks involving executive functions, and were also associated with high scores for maternal psychopathology (during early childhood and school age) and family dysfunction. Family environment variables and changes in cortisol levels explain around 20% of the variance in performance of cognitive tasks. Conclusion: Family functioning and maternal psychopathology in early and middle childhood and children's stress levels were associated with children's working memory and executive functioning.

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Relationships of Attention and Executive Functions to Oral Language, Reading, and Writing Skills and Systems in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence

Journal of Learning Disabilities ◽

10.1177/0022219415617167 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 50 (4) ◽

pp. 434-449 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Virginia Berninger ◽

Robert Abbott ◽

Clayton R. Cook ◽

William Nagy

Keyword(s):

Executive Function ◽

Executive Functions ◽

Language Learning ◽

Language Processing ◽

Middle Childhood ◽

Oral Language ◽

Word Reading ◽

Written Language ◽

Childhood And Adolescence ◽

Reading And Writing

Relationships between attention/executive functions and language learning were investigated in students in Grades 4 to 9 ( N = 88) with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in multiword syntax in oral and written language (OWL LD), word reading and spelling (dyslexia), and subword letter writing (dysgraphia). Prior attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis was correlated only with impaired handwriting. Parental ratings of inattention, but not hyperactivity, correlated with measures of written language but not oral language. Sustaining switching attention correlated with writing the alphabet from memory in manuscript or by keyboard and fast copying of a sentence with all the letters of the alphabet. Multiple regressions based on a principal component for composites of multiple levels of language (subword, word, and syntax/text) showed that measures of attention and executive function involving language processing rather than ratings of attention and executive function not specifically related to language accounted for more variance and identified more unique predictors in the composite outcomes for oral language, reading, and writing systems. Inhibition related to focused attention uniquely predicted outcomes for the oral language system. Findings are discussed in reference to implications for assessing and teaching students who are still learning to pay attention to heard and written language and self-regulate their language learning during middle childhood and adolescence.

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Supplemental Material for Changes in Executive Function Over Time in Bilingual and Monolingual School-Aged Children

Developmental Psychology ◽

10.1037/dev0000562.supp ◽

2018 ◽

Keyword(s):

Executive Function ◽

School Aged Children ◽

Over Time

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Genetic and Environmental Influences on Executive Functions and Intelligence in the ABCD Study

10.31234/osf.io/xpba4 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Samantha M Freis ◽

Claire Morrison ◽

Jeffrey M. Lessem ◽

John K. Hewitt ◽

Naomi P. Friedman

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Development ◽

Executive Functions ◽

Genetic Correlation ◽

Middle Childhood ◽

Middle Age ◽

Environmental Influences ◽

Genetic Correlations ◽

Twin Studies

Executive functions (EFs) and intelligence (IQ) are phenotypically correlated and heritable; however, they show variable genetic correlations in twin studies spanning childhood to middle age. We analyzed data from over 11,000 children (9-10-year-olds, including 749 twin pairs) in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study to examine the phenotypic and genetic relations between EFs and IQ in childhood. We identified two EF factors – Common EF and Updating-Specific, which were both related to IQ (rs = .64-.81). Common EF and IQ were heritable (53-67%), and their genetic correlation (rG = .86) was not significantly different than 1. These results suggest that EFs and IQ are phenotypically but not genetically separable in middle childhood.

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Study of the Interaction between Executive Function and Adaptive Behavior at School in Girls with Fragile X Syndrome

Genes ◽

10.3390/genes12081108 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (8) ◽

pp. 1108

Author(s):

Lorena Joga-Elvira ◽

Jennifer Martinez-Olmo ◽

María-Luisa Joga ◽

Carlos Jacas ◽

Ana Roche-Martínez ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Executive Function ◽

Executive Functions ◽

Fragile X Syndrome ◽

Adaptive Behavior ◽

Neuropsychological Tests ◽

Rating Scale ◽

Fragile X ◽

School Setting ◽

Control Group ◽

The Relationship

The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between executive functions and adaptive behavior in girls with Fragile X syndrome (FXS) in the school setting. This study is part of a larger investigation conducted at the Hospital Parc Tauli in Sabadell. The sample consists of a total of 40 girls (26 with FXS and 14 control) aged 7–16 years, who were administered different neuropsychological tests (WISC-V, NEPSY-II, WCST, TOL) and questionnaires answered by teachers (ABAS-II, BRIEF 2, ADHD Rating Scale). The results show that there is a greater interaction between some areas of executive function (cognitive flexibility, auditory attention, and visual abstraction capacity) and certain areas of adaptive behavior (conceptual, practical, social, and total domains) in the FXS group than in the control group. These results suggest that an alteration in the executive functions was affecting the daily functioning of the girls with FXS to a greater extent.

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Genetic and environmental influences on executive functions and intelligence in middle childhood

Developmental Science ◽

10.1111/desc.13150 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Samantha M. Freis ◽

Claire L. Morrison ◽

Jeffrey M. Lessem ◽

John K. Hewitt ◽

Naomi P. Friedman

Keyword(s):

Executive Functions ◽

Middle Childhood ◽

Environmental Influences

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An Exploratory Study of COVID-19 Information on Twitter in the Greater Region

Big Data and Cognitive Computing ◽

10.3390/bdcc5010005 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 5

Author(s):

Ninghan Chen ◽

Zhiqiang Zhong ◽

Jun Pang

Keyword(s):

Machine Learning ◽

Social Networks ◽

Online Social Networks ◽

Exploratory Study ◽

Representation Learning ◽

Data Driven ◽

Learning Methods ◽

Twitter Users ◽

Over Time

The outbreak of the COVID-19 led to a burst of information in major online social networks (OSNs). Facing this constantly changing situation, OSNs have become an essential platform for people expressing opinions and seeking up-to-the-minute information. Thus, discussions on OSNs may become a reflection of reality. This paper aims to figure out how Twitter users in the Greater Region (GR) and related countries react differently over time through conducting a data-driven exploratory study of COVID-19 information using machine learning and representation learning methods. We find that tweet volume and COVID-19 cases in GR and related countries are correlated, but this correlation only exists in a particular period of the pandemic. Moreover, we plot the changing of topics in each country and region from 22 January 2020 to 5 June 2020, figuring out the main differences between GR and related countries.

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Adaptive Generation of Emotional Impact Using Enhanced Virtual Environments

Presence Teleoperators & Virtual Environments ◽

10.1162/pres_a_00092 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 96-116 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Haringer Matthias ◽

Steffi Beckhaus

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environments ◽

User Experience ◽

Emotional Impact ◽

Rating Method ◽

Novel Methods ◽

Over Time

In this paper we introduce novel methods of intensifying and varying the user experience in virtual environments (VE). VEs technically have numerous means for crafting the user experience. Little has yet been done to evaluate those means of expression (MoEs) for their emotional impact on people and to use their capability to create different experiences and subtly guide the user. One of the reasons is that this requires a system which is capable of easily and dynamically providing those MoEs in such a way that they can easily be composed, evaluated, and compared between applications and users. In the following, we first introduce our model of both informational and emotional impact of VEs on users, introduce our dynamic, expressive VR-system, and present our novel evaluation and rating method for MoEs. MoEs can be used to guide attention to specific objects or build up an emotion or mood over time. We then present a study in which users experience 30 selected MoEs and rate their qualitative emotional impact using this rating method. We found that different MoEs can be used to elicit many diverse emotions which were surprisingly consistent among the test persons. With these results, our work enables new ways to make VEs more interesting and emotionally engaging, especially over a longer period of time, opening new possibilities, for example, to increase the motivation for long, stressful, and tiresome training as in neurorehabilitation.

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Brain Gain or Brain Waste? Horizontal, Vertical, and Full Job-Education Mismatch and Wage Progression among Skilled Immigrant Men in Canada

International Migration Review ◽

10.1177/0197918318774501 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 53 (3) ◽

pp. 646-670 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Rupa Banerjee ◽

Anil Verma ◽

Tingting Zhang

Keyword(s):

Wage Gap ◽

Racial Minority ◽

Survey Period ◽

Brain Gain ◽

Wage Effects ◽

Different Types ◽

Skilled Immigrant ◽

Immigrant Men ◽

Over Time ◽

Longitudinal Dataset

This study examines the incidence and wage effects of vertical, horizontal, and full job-education mismatch for high skilled immigrant and native-born men over a six-year period, using a Canadian longitudinal dataset. Immigrants (particularly racial minorities immigrants) are more likely to be fully mismatched than white native-born Canadians. Full mismatch lowers initial wages, especially for racial minority immigrants. Full mismatch accelerates immigrants' wage growth slightly over time, but this is not enough to narrow the immigrant wage gap over the six-year survey period. The results highlight the importance of disaggregating the different types of job-education mismatch experienced by immigrants.

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