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Executive function

What predicts preschoolers' executive functions a year later?

Zysset AE, Kakebeeke TH, Messerli-Bürgy N, et al. · Frontiers in psychology · 2018

Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC

Preschoolers' own characteristics (earlier executive function, being a girl, higher family status, better fine motor skills and visual perception) predicted their executive functions a year later, while parenting, siblings and physical activity did not.

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Study at a glance

Design
Cohort — Prospective multi-site cohort (SPLASHY): predictors measured at baseline in child care centres and parent questionnaires, executive function tested again one year later; analysed with multiple regression on 50 imputed datasets plus a lasso penalised regression
N
N=555 · 555 children entered the analysed sample; 476 were tested at baseline in 2014, 382 of them returned one year later, and 79 more were recruited in 2015 and had baseline data only. Missing values were multiply imputed.
Population
Typically developing Swiss children aged 2 to 6 recruited from 84 child care centres in five cantons, stratified by urban/rural and high/low SES
Outcome
Executive-function composite one year later: mean of age-adjusted scores on a selective-attention card sort, the NEPSY statue (motor inhibition) task and a visuo-spatial working-memory task

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Key findings

Together the predictors explained about 31% of the variance in later executive function. The strongest predictor was executive function at baseline (beta 0.30), followed by smaller effects of fine motor skills (0.17), visual perception (0.16), socioeconomic status (0.15) and female sex (0.14). Parenting style, parenting stress, siblings, days in child care, time outdoors, physical activity, preterm birth and child temperament did not predict executive function, and the lasso shrank the parenting coefficients to zero.

Methodology

The researchers followed Swiss preschoolers recruited through child care centres and measured a wide set of possible predictors at baseline: demographic and biological factors (sex, preterm birth, family socioeconomic status, body fat, motor skills, accelerometer-measured physical activity), psychological factors (parent-rated hyperactivity, peer problems, prosocial behaviour, emotionality, a visual-perception task, baseline executive function) and interpersonal factors (parenting stress, positive and inconsistent parenting, siblings, time outdoors, days in child care). One year later the children were retested on three executive-function tasks tapping inhibition and working memory. All predictors were entered together in a multiple regression and, to guard against overfitting, a lasso model that shrinks weak predictors to zero.

Limitations

This is observational, so even the significant predictors are not shown to cause better executive function, and the authors could not test mechanisms such as language skills that may link family status to executive function. There were only two time points one year apart, and baseline executive function was only moderately stable, so the young children's scores were noisy. The sample was healthy and physically active with ordinary parenting scores, which may explain why parenting and activity showed no effect; parenting was self-reported, and the peer-problems scale had poor reliability. The null results for parenting do not rule out effects in higher-risk families.

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