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SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLES FOR THE SPECIALIZATIONCOURSE AT LEIDEN UNIVERSITY
A Developmental Perspective on Executive Function – Best & Miller – Lecture
1
Training the developing brain: A neurocognitive perspective – Jolles & Crone –
lecture 2
Creativity Development in Adolescence: Insight from Behavior, Brain, and
Training Studies - Kleinbeukker et al. – Lecture 3
Computers in mathematics education – Training the mental number line –
Weel 4 – Mueller
Intelligence and school grades: A meta-analysis – Roth et al. – Lecture 5
Dynamic Assessment – Elliott et al. – Lecture 5
Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests really measure – Flynn –
Lecture 5
Intrinsic and extrinsic school motivation as a function of age: the mediating
role of autonomy support – Gillet et. Al – week 8
Need supportive teaching in practice: a narrative analysis in schools with
contrasting educational approaches – Stroet et. Al – week 8
A 2 x 2 Achievement Goal Framework - Elliot et. Al – week 8
1
,A Developmental Perspective on Executive Function – Best & Miller – Lecture
1
This review paper examines theoretical and methodological issues in the construction of a
developmental perspective on executive function (EF) in childhood and adolescence. Unlike most
reviews of EF, which focus on preschoolers, this review focuses on studies that include large age
ranges. It outlines the development of the foundational components of EF—inhibition, working
memory, and shifting. Cognitive and neurophysiological assessments show that although EF emerges
during the first few years of life, it continues to strengthen significantly throughout childhood and
adolescence. The components vary somewhat in their developmental trajectories. The paper relates
the findings to longstanding issues of development (e.g., developmental sequences, trajectories, and
processes) and suggests research needed for constructing a developmental framework encompassing
early childhood through adolescence.
Executive functions: cognitive processes that underlie goal-directed behavior and are orchestrated
by activity within the prefrontal cortex (PFC)
Research of EF has three limitations that pose difficulties for constructing a truly
developmental account of EF
1) Most research on the development of EF has examined narrow age ranges, for example,
ages 2 to 5
2) Most has focused on preschoolers, perhaps because rapid improvements occur during
the preschool and early school years on EF tasks
3) We have little info about the processes by which children move from one level to
another, especially processes operating after age 5
Consequently, despite the large literature on EF in children, there is no truly developmental account
of EF across childhood and adolescence.
Purpose of this paper: To begin to construct such an account, which distinguishes it from
previously published reviews of EF
Theoretical and methodological challenges
A main challenge is the lack of agreement concerning whether EF is a unitary construct or a set of
independent components. One prominent theoretical framework integrates these opposing
perspectives by suggesting that the EF construct consists of interrelated, but distinct, components—
described as the “unity and diversity of EF”.
Some research with children has investigated the EF construct and has found at least partial
support for an integrative framework. Hughes sought to expand a previous finding that EF
consists of dissociable components in older children. She extracted three distinct factors—
attentional flexibility, inhibitory control, and working memory—from preschoolers’
performance on several EF tasks, suggesting that EF components are differentiated even at a
young age
When sample does include older school-age children and adolescents, methodological
challenges can arise:
1) To avoid ceiling effects researchers often use complex EF tasks that likely tap into
multiple executive functions, a problem of task impurity
2) Related to first, tasks used across an age range often are not uniform. Tasks too difficult
for the younger participants sometimes are only administered to the older ones, which
makes comparisons across age groups difficult. Or very different tasks are used to assess
a particular dimension for preschoolers and older children
2
, Keeping this issue in mind, we utilize Miyake’s “unity and diversity” theoretical framework to
focus on the “foundational” EFs—inhibition, information updating and monitoring (WM), and
shifting—in part because several frequently used cognitive tasks ostensibly tap into each
dimension. In using this framework to address EF development from early childhood through
adolescence, we keep in mind current developmental theories of EF. In general, most of
these theories depict EF development as involving an increasing ability to resolve conflict.
Focus on those studies that most clearly address developmental issues (those that examine
both preschoolers and school-age children, or school-age children and adolescents, address
the order of acquisition of different aspects of EF, or examine possible developmental
processes. This approach permits us to detect developmental trajectories, sequences, and
processes.
Has been known for year that patients with PFC damage can have EF deficits, yet normal IQ
More recent: That the PFC coordinated posterior cortical and subcortical brain activity
via excitatory and inhibitory pathways. Moreover, PFC activity holds relevant information
in WM and prevents distracting information from entering WM
Also know from structural imaging studies, that PFC development, like brain development more
generally, consists of both progressive (e.g., myelination, neuron proliferation, synaptogenesis,) and
regressive changes (e.g., cell death, synaptic pruning). The PFC matures later in adolescence as
evidenced by further loss of gray matter, unlike many other brain regions that mature earlier (e.g.,
regions involved in attention, motor and sensory processing, and speech and language development).
During this time, progressive and regressive changes (largely myelination and synaptic pruning,
respectively) occur concomitantly and are driven in part by the child’s experiences—the result being
“efficient networks of neuronal connections”.
Foundational Executive Functions
Inhibition
Inhibition is considered foundational for EF, however most inhibition tasks are not pure
measures of inhibition
Garon et al. (2008) distinguished simple from complex response inhibition tasks based on
whether WM also is needed
Simple response inhibition required a minimal amount of WM (making it one of the
purest forms of inhibition) shows its rudiments during infancy
Complex response inhibition also requires substantial WM by requiring that an arbitrary
rule be held in mind and/or by requiring that the child inhibit one response (prepotent or
not) and produce an alternative response (day/night task)
Also, differentiation between delay tasks which require withholding a proponent response,
from conflict tasks, which require the child to make a response that conflicts with a
prepotent response
Age differences
Rapid movements in early childhood on a variety of complex response inhibition tasks.
Despite their apparent similarities, different conflict tasks show different ages of mastery,
perhaps indicating different cognitive demands.
3
, Lurias hand game: requires children to make a fist when shown a finger and vice versa, the most
improvement typically occurs between age 3 and 4
Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS): complex response inhibition task used frequently with
preschool children. DCCS creates a prepotent response during the pre-switch phase that must later
be inhibited. The child is shown a deck of cards that vary on two dimensions— shape (e.g., rabbit
versus battleship) and color (e.g., red versus blue). During the pre-switch phase, the child must sort
the cards according to one dimension (e.g., color; “If it’s red, it goes here; if it’s blue, it goes here”). In
the post-switch phase, the child is asked to sort the cards by the other dimension (e.g., shape).
Similar to other conflict tasks, reductions in perseveration occur from age 3 through age 4
Advanced DCCS: Third sorting dimension is added, if there is a star on the card, the child should sort
by color, but if there is not a star, the child should sort by shape
Findings of further improvement in inhibition after age 5 are mixed
Other studies find further development after age 8. Interestingly, many of these studies have
utilized computerized tasks such as the Go/no-go task or the continuous performance task
(CPT), both of which require a response to certain stimuli and inhibition of response to other
stimuli
Go/No-Go task: child must respond (by pressing a designated keyboard button) only to “go” stimuli
(e.g., all letters except X) and inhibit response to the “no-go” stimulus (e.g., the letter X)
Studies suggest that the stage of execution is a factor in inhibition difficulty: Terminating an
already executed response appears to be more difficult than inhibiting a response that has
yet to be executed or is in an earlier stage of execution
The fact that several studies have found improved performance beyond early childhood on
ostensibly simple response inhibition tasks (e.g., anti-saccade task)—or at least on tasks (e.g.,
Go/No-go task) simpler than conflict tasks—challenges the notion that performance on these
tasks matures early on
In summary, the first leap in attaining inhibition appears in the preschool years. By age 4
children show signs of successful performance on both simple (i.e., pure response inhibition)
and complex inhibition tasks (i.e., response inhibition plus alternative response). By the same
age children can operate on a bi-dimensional card by one dimension and then inhibit that to
use the second dimension (i.e., successfully perform DCCS). Inhibition continues to improve,
particularly from age 5 to 8 and particularly for tasks that combine inhibition and WM, but
also at later ages, especially on computerized tasks
Unlike the early improvements these are no fundamental changes in cognition
refinements that seem to involve quantitative improvements in accuracy, perhaps due to
an increasing efficiency to override prepotent responses
Evidence from neuroscience
One method to examine the neural response underlying response inhibition is to measure
the brain’s electrical activity via EEG
EEG studies with older children indicate continued localization of brain activity from middle
childhood to adulthood
4
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