The Development of Executive Function in the Family Context during Early and Middle Childhood
Year: 2018
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Children exhibit rapid growth in executive function (EF) skills during preschool years and consistently increase EF through adolescence.Acquisition of EF skills in childhood is one of the keys to positive long term adaptations, thus it is critical to examine the processes by which children develop EF skills during childhood.EF development is susceptible to environmental influences, especially familial contexts.The current dissertation presents findings of three studies that focused on familial factors that can contribute to children's EF development as well as children's role in constructing their environment.Chapter 1 presents conceptualizations of children's EF and a theoretical framework explaining how children develop EF within familial contexts.Chapters 2, 3, and 4 present results of the three studies.The first study investigated the interactions between profiles of familial risks and children's temperament to predict children's EF outcomes.A latent profile analysis was used to capture meaningful profiles of mothers based on five familial risks, including low maternal education, low family income-to-needs ratio and maternal depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress.In addition, the interactions between family risk profiles and children's emotionality were investigated to predict child EF outcomes (inhibitory control and attention flexibility).Children's emotionality included positive emotionality (PE) and negative emotionality (NE).Four profiles of mothers were identified: Higher SES-healthy, Lower SES-healthy, Lower SES-average mental health, and Lower SES-poor mental health.Children in the Higher SES healthy group showed better EF outcomes than those in the Lower SES-poor mental health.Children's high PE was iii associated with high EF exclusively in the Lower SES-poor mental health group.Low levels of children's NE predicted high EF only in the Lower SES-poor mental health group.Chapter 3 presents results of the second study.The goal of the second paper was to examine the mediating role of maternal sensitivity trajectories (36 months to 5 th grade) in the association between trajectories of maternal depressive symptoms (6 months to 5 th grade) and growth of children's EF (1 st to 5 th grade).The results revealed that maternal sensitivity at 36 months mediated the association between low maternal depressive symptoms at 6 months and children's planning skills, both high planning skills at 1 st grade and a faster increase in EF skills from 1 st grade through 5 th grade.In chapter 4 findings of the third paper were presented.The aim of the third study was to investigate the transactional associations between maternal parenting (sensitivity and scaffolding) and children's EF skills across three waves, age 3, 4, and 5.In the first autoregressive cross-lagged model, repeatedly measured constructs of maternal sensitivity, maternal scaffolding, and child inhibitory control were included.The second model included the two maternal parenting constructs and child attention flexibility.As a result, two transactional relations were found: a) between maternal sensitivity and child inhibitory control and b) between maternal scaffolding and child attention flexibility.Finally, in chapter 5 findings of the three studies are discussed with a focus on implications for enhancing children's EF skills by creating a supportive environment.
Author: Seulki Ku
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2898618475