Executive Function in Preschool-age Children PDF Download

Author: James Alan Griffin
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
ISBN: 9781433818264
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
In this book, top scientists from a variety of fields investigate the development of executive function (EF), a term that encompasses a range of mental processes that together regulate our social behavior and our cognitive and emotional well-being.

Author: Marcie Yeager
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393707644
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 267

View

Book Description
A brain-based approach to helping kids stay focused and achieve. Poor executive function (EF) in the brain can mean behavioral and attentional problems in school. This book explains to professionals and parents how EF develops in kids, what EF difficulties look like, and what creative and effective interventions can meet their needs. Executive functions involve mental processes such as: Working memory–holding several pieces of information in mind while we try to do something with them–for example, understand and solve a problem or carry out a task. Response inhibition–inhibiting actions that interfere with our intentions or goals. Shifting focus–interrupting an ongoing response in order to direct attention to other aspects of a situation that are important for goal attainment. Cognitive flexibility–generating alternative methods of solving a problem or reaching a goal. Self-monitoring–checking on one's own cognitions and actions to assure that they are in line with one's intentions. Goal Orientation–creating and carrying out a multi-step plan for achieving a goal in a timely fashion, keeping the "big picture" in mind.

Author: Philip David Zelazo
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 172

View

Book Description
This monograph concerns the psychological processes underlying the development of executive function, or the conscious control of thought and action. It has long been clear that these processes change considerably in early childhood, transforming a relatively stimulus-driven toddler into a child capable of flexible, goal-directed problem solving. However, the nature of these processes has remained elusive. In a programmatic series of 9 experiments, the authors examine circumstances that help or hinder executive function in 3- to 4-year-old children. The results provide the basis for a revision of their Cognitive Complexity and Control (CCC-r) theory, according to which there are age-related increases in the complexity of the rules that children can formulate and use when solving problems. The revised theory (a) specifies more clearly the circumstances in which children will have difficulty using rules at various levels of complexity, (b) provides a more detailed account of how to determine the complexity of rules required in a task, (c) takes account of both the activation and inhibition of rules as a function of experience, and (d) highlights the importance of considering intentionality in the study of executive function.

Author: Sandra A. Wiebe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351663232
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 460

View

Book Description
Executive Function: Development Across the Life Span presents perspectives from leading researchers and theorists on the development of executive function from infancy to late adulthood and the factors that shape its growth and decline. Executive function is the set of higher-order cognitive processes involved in regulating attention, thoughts, and actions. Relative to other cognitive domains, its development is slow and decline begins early in late adulthood. As such, it is particularly sensitive to variations in environments and experiences, and there is growing evidence that it is susceptible to intervention – important because of its link to a wide range of important life outcomes. The volume is made up of four sections. It begins with an overview of executive function’s typical development across the lifespan, providing a foundation for the remainder of the volume. The second section presents insights into mechanisms of executive function, as provided by a variety of methodological approaches. The third and fourth sections review the current research evidence on specific factors that shape executive function’s development, focusing on normative (e.g., bilingualism, physical activity, cognitive training) and clinically relevant (e.g., substance use, neurodegenerative disease) developmental pathways.

Author: Ellen Bialystok
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195169530
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 411

View

Book Description
Aims to create a bridge across cognitive development and cognitive aging. This volume studies the rise and fall of specific cognitive functions, such as attention, executive functioning, memory, working memory, representations, and individual differences to find ways in which the study of development and decline converge on common mechanisms.

Author: Yusuke Moriguchi
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889198006
Category : Child development
Languages : en
Pages : 459

View

Book Description
Executive function refers to the goal-oriented regulation of one’s own thoughts, actions, and emotions. Its importance is attested by its contribution to the development of other cognitive skills (e.g., theory of mind), social abilities (e.g., peer interactions), and academic achievement (e.g., mathematics), and by the consequences of deficits in executive function (which are observed in wide range of developmental disorders, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism). Over the last decade, there have been growing interest in the development of executive function, and an expanding body of research has shown that executive function develops rapidly during the preschool years, with adult-level performance being achieved during adolescence or later. This recent work, together with experimental research showing the effects of interventions targeting executive function, has yielded important insights into the neurocognitive processes underlying executive function. Given the complexity of the construct of executive function, however, and the multiplicity of underlying processes, there are often inconsistencies in the way that executive function is defined and studied. This inconsistency has hampered communication among researchers from various fields. This Research Topic is intended to bridge this gap and provide an opportunity for researchers from different perspectives to discuss recent advances in understanding childhood executive function. Researchers using various methods, including, behavioral experiments, neuroimaging, eye-tracking, computer simulation, observational methods, and questionnaires, are encouraged to contribute original empirical research. In addition to original empirical articles, theoretical reviews and opinions/perspective articles on promising future directions are welcome. We hope that researchers from different areas, such as developmental psychology, educational psychology, experimental psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, computational science, etc., will be represented in the Research Topic.

Author: Clancy Blair
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135067252
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 170

View

Book Description
During the past decade, a rising interest has emerged in aspects of the broad construct of executive function (EF) in childhood. This has transpired as research has discovered that the development of EF is particularly rapid during early childhood, and that the healthy development of EF appears to play a key role in children’s developing social competence and academic and social readiness to attend school. The articles presented in this special issue help advance our understanding of the development of EF, as well as the challenges researchers face when attempting to characterize an aspect of cognition in very young children. Ultimately, this special issue illuminates the many ways in which children come to exhibit age-appropriate levels of social and cognitive competence.

Author: Wolfgang Schneider
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135614407
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 327

View

Book Description
A critical part of early childhood development is the development of "theory of mind" (ToM), which is the ability to take the perspective of another person. The main purpose of this book is to discuss and integrate findings from prominent research areas in developmental psychology that are typically studied in isolation, but are clearly related. Two examples are whether executive functions represent a precursor of ToM or whether ToM understanding predicts the development of executive functions, and to what extent children's level of verbal ability and their working memory are important predictors of performance on both executive functioning and ToM tasks. The chapters in this book give a detailed account of the major outcomes of this research. First, the state of the art concerning current understanding of the relevant constructs (working memory, ToM, executive functioning) and their developmental changes is presented, followed by chapters that deal with interactions among the core concepts. Its main focus is on theoretically important relationships among determinants of young children's cognitive development--considered to be "hot" issues in contemporary developmental psychology. Based on presentations made at an international workshop, this book is divided into two parts. In the first part, five teams of researchers present theoretical analyses and overviews of empirical evidence regarding the core constructs of memory, executive functions, and ToM. The next part deals with the interplay among the core concepts outlined in Part I with developmental trends in the interaction.

Author: Charles A. Nelson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262141043
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 985

View

Book Description
The second edition of an essential resource to the evolving field of developmental cognitive neuroscience, completely revised, with expanded emphasis on social neuroscience, clinical disorders, and imaging genomics. The publication of the second edition of this handbook testifies to the rapid evolution of developmental cognitive neuroscience as a distinct field. Brain imaging and recording technologies, along with well-defined behavioral tasks—the essential methodological tools of cognitive neuroscience—are now being used to study development. Technological advances have yielded methods that can be safely used to study structure-function relations and their development in children's brains. These new techniques combined with more refined cognitive models account for the progress and heightened activity in developmental cognitive neuroscience research. The Handbook covers basic aspects of neural development, sensory and sensorimotor systems, language, cognition, emotion, and the implications of lifelong neural plasticity for brain and behavioral development. The second edition reflects the dramatic expansion of the field in the seven years since the publication of the first edition. This new Handbook has grown from forty-one chapters to fifty-four, all original to this edition. It places greater emphasis on affective and social neuroscience—an offshoot of cognitive neuroscience that is now influencing the developmental literature. The second edition also places a greater emphasis on clinical disorders, primarily because such research is inherently translational in nature. Finally, the book's new discussions of recent breakthroughs in imaging genomics include one entire chapter devoted to the subject. The intersection of brain, behavior, and genetics represents an exciting new area of inquiry, and the second edition of this essential reference work will be a valuable resource for researchers interested in the development of brain-behavior relations in the context of both typical and atypical development.

Author: Sam Goldstein
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461481066
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 565

View

Book Description
Planning. Attention. Memory. Self-regulation. These and other core cognitive and behavioral operations of daily life comprise what we know as executive functioning (EF). But despite all we know, the concept has engendered multiple, often conflicting definitions and its components are sometimes loosely defined and poorly understood. The Handbook of Executive Functioning cuts through the confusion, analyzing both the whole and its parts in comprehensive, practical detail for scholar and clinician alike. Background chapters examine influential models of EF, tour the brain geography of the executive system and pose salient developmental questions. A section on practical implications relates early deficits in executive functioning to ADD and other disorders in children and considers autism and later-life dementias from an EF standpoint. Further chapters weigh the merits of widely used instruments for assessing executive functioning and review interventions for its enhancement, with special emphasis on children and adolescents. Featured in the Handbook: The development of hot and cool executive function in childhood and adolescence. A review of the use of executive function tasks in externalizing and internalizing disorders. Executive functioning as a mediator of age-related cognitive decline in adults. Treatment integrity in interventions that target executive function. Supporting and strengthening working memory in the classroom to enhance executive functioning. The Handbook of Executive Functioning is an essential resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners and graduate students in clinical child, school and educational psychology; child and adolescent psychiatry; neurobiology; developmental psychology; rehabilitation medicine/therapy and social work.