Executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) are key cognitive skills for socio-emotional adjustment. Executive function develops considerably between 3 and 7 years of age, and fosters the development of social cognition skills such as ToM. Studies with adults have shown a link between EF and prejudice, as well as between empathy and prejudice. Moreover, the relationship between EF, cognitive and affective ToM and prejudice has barely been studied in children. In this study, we aimed at examining the relationship between individual differences in EF, cognitive and affective ToM and prejudice toward the Romany ethnic minority. We expected a positive association between EF and ToM skills, and a negative association between EF and prejudice. We also predicted a negative association between ToM and prejudice. A total of 86 preschool (5–6 years old, N = 43) and third-grade (8–9 years old, N = 43) children participated in the study. Results showed a negative relationship between EF and prejudice, as well as between affective ToM and prejudice, after controlling for intelligence. Moreover, we found that EF significantly predicted prejudice. Exploratory correlational analyses suggested age-related differences in the EF skills underlying prejudice regulation. These findings suggest a distinctive contribution of cognitive and affective components of ToM to prejudice, and highlight the central role of EF in social behavior regulation.

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Inhibitory Control (IC) is the ability to prevent prepotent responses when inappropriate. Longitudinal research on IC development has mainly focused on early childhood and adolescence, while research on IC development in the first years of life is still scarce. In order to address this gap in literature, we explored the association between executive attention (EA) and elementary forms of IC in infancy and toddlerhood with individual differences IC later at 5 years of age. We conducted a five-wave longitudinal study in which children’s EA and IC (n=96) were tested at the age of 9 and 16-18 months, and at 2, 3 and 5 years. We expected that EA skills in infancy and toddlerhood would be related to better performance of children in IC tasks, together with a more mature inhibition-related brain functioning. Children performed a variety of age-appropriate EA and IC tasks in each wave measuring inhibition of attention, endogenous control of attention, inhibition of the response and conflict inhibition. At age 5 years, IC was measured with a Go/No-go task while recording event-related potentials. EA at 9 months was related to IC measures up to 3 years of age whereas EA at 16 months was associated with sustained attention during the Go/No-go task. Measures of IC at 2 years consistently predicted performance on the Go/No-go task at behavioral and neural levels. These results suggest that early emergence of IC relies on particular EA and basic IC skills providing further support to the hierarchical model of IC development.

Brain function rapidly changes in the first two years of life. In the las decades, resting-state EEG has been widely used to explore those changes. Previous studies have focused on the relative power of the signal in canonical frequency bands (i.e., theta, alpha, beta, gamma). However, EEG power is a mixture of a 1/f-like background power (aperiodic) in combination with narrow peaks that appear over that curve (periodic activity; e.g., alpha peak). Therefore, it is possible that the relative power captures both, aperiodic and periodic bran activity, misleading actual periodic changes in infancy. For this reason, we explored the early developmental trajectory of the relative power in the canonical frequency bands from infancy to toddlerhood, and compared it to changes in periodic activity in a longitudinal study with three waves of data collection at age 6, 9 and 16 to 18 months. Finally, we analysed whether periodic activity and/or aperiodic components of the EEG contributed to explain age-changes in relative power. We found that relative power and periodic activity trajectories differed in this period in all the frequency bands but alpha, and we replicated an increment of alpha peak frequency. We found that age-changes in aperiodic parameters (exponent and offset) depend on the frequency range. More importantly, only alpha relative power was directly related to periodic activity but other frequency bands was predicted also by aperiodic components. This suggest that relative power is capturing the developmental changes of the aperiodic brain activity and, therefore, more fine-grained measures are needed.

The control of visual attention is key to learning and has a foundational role in the development of self-regulated behavior. Basic attention control skills emerge early in life and show a protracted development along childhood. Prior research suggests that attentional development is influenced by environmental factors in early and late childhood. Although, much less information is available about the impact of the early environment on emerging endogenous attention skills during infancy. In the current study we aimed to test the impact of parental socioeconomic status (SES) and home environment (chaos) in the emerging development of attentional control in a sample of typically-developing infants. A group of 142 (73 female) 6-mo-old babies were longitudinally tested at 6, 9 (n = 122; 60 female) and 16-18 (n = 91; 50 female) months of age using the gap-overlap paradigm. Median saccade latency (mdSL) and disengagement failure (DF) were computed as dependent variables for both overlap and gap conditions. Also, composite scores for Disengagement Cost and Failure were computed considering mdSL and DF of each condition, respectively. Families reported SES and chaos in the first and last follow-up session. Using Linear Mixed Models with Maximum Likelihood estimation (ML) we found a longitudinal decrease in mdSL in the gap but not in the overlap condition, while a general decrease in DF was found with age. Concerning early environmental factors, an SES index, parental occupation and chaos at 6 months were found to show a negative correlation with DF at 16-18 months, although in the former case it was only marginally significant. Hierarchical regression models implementing ML showed that both SES and chaos at 6 months significantly predicted a lower DF at 16-18 months. Results show a longitudinal progression of endogenous attention control, displaying an increased control with age from infancy to toddlerhood, especially in contexts that ease visual disengagement. Also, an equal ability for endogenous control was found in conditions that hinder disengagement between these developmental periods. These attentional mechanisms of control seem to be modulated by early experiences of the individual with the environment.