Do preschoolers' thinking skills start unified or separate?
Working memory, attention-shifting and inhibition were largely unrelated in 3-year-olds but became linked by age 4, suggesting these skills come together during the preschool years rather than start as one ability.
Source
Evaluation of a differentiation model of preschoolers' executive functions
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — One-session battery of three executive-function tasks (Backward Word Span, DCCS, Go/No-Go) compared across 3- and 4-year-olds and across four 6-month age bands
- N
- N=280 · 281 children recruited, 1 excluded for early withdrawal; 55 younger 3s, 70 older 3s, 78 younger 4s, 77 older 4s
- Population
- English-speaking children aged 3-4 years from 11 Australian preschool centres
- Outcome
- Backward Word Span (working memory), Dimensional Change Card Sort (shifting) and Go/No-Go no-go accuracy (inhibition); relations among them by age group
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What they did
Researchers tested 3- and 4-year-olds individually in a single 30-minute session at their preschool on three classic executive-function tasks: repeating words backwards (working memory), sorting cards by one rule and then another (shifting), and pressing a key for fish but not sharks (inhibition). They used regression to see whether each task predicted the others within 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds, and compared performance across four 6-month age bands.
What they found
Contrary to their prediction, the three tasks did not significantly predict one another among 3-year-olds, but all three were significantly related among 4-year-olds, with small standardised coefficients. The age groups differed significantly for the paths involving working memory, but not for the shifting-inhibition link. Performance on every task improved with age, and the finer 6-month bands showed that the older 4-year-olds drove much of this improvement, detail that a simple 3-versus-4 comparison hid.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The data are cross-sectional, so the study compares different children at different ages rather than tracking how the same child's skills become linked over time. Each executive function was measured with only one task, so task-specific quirks are mixed in with the underlying ability and latent-variable modelling was not possible. The increasing correlations could also reflect children adopting shared strategies or better general task understanding rather than true integration of executive processes, a possibility the authors could not rule out.
Key terms
- Executive functions
- Higher-level control processes, typically working memory, inhibition and shifting, that direct attention and behaviour toward goals.
- Differentiation model
- The idea that executive function starts as a single unified ability in early childhood and splits into separate but related components with age.
- Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS)
- A task where children sort cards by one dimension (e.g., colour) and then must switch to another (e.g., shape), measuring cognitive shifting.
- Go/No-Go task
- A task requiring a quick response to frequent 'go' stimuli and withholding it for rare 'no-go' stimuli, measuring inhibition.
- Task impurity
- The problem that any single task reflects both the ability of interest and other task-specific skills, which is why multiple tasks per construct are preferred.
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Quiz yourself
What did the study find about executive function tasks in 3-year-olds?
Common questions
Why does using 6-month age bands matter?
Executive functions change fast in preschool, so lumping 3- to 5-year-olds together can mix children whose skills are organised differently, hiding real developmental changes; here, finer bands showed that gains were concentrated in the older 4-year-olds.
Doesn't this contradict studies finding a single executive-function factor in preschoolers?
The authors suggest both can be true at different ages: skills may start separate at 3, become integrated around 4 to 6 (when single-factor results are common), and then fractionate again in later childhood.
Could the links at age 4 just reflect general maturity?
The regressions controlled for age, and the relations largely held, which argues against pure general maturation, but shared strategies or other non-executive skills could still play a role.
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