Executive function
Do preschoolers' thinking skills start unified or separate?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
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.
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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Key findings
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.
Methodology
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.
Limitations
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.
How this study connects
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