Summary: This study aimed to evaluate whether age, gender, type of school and parental education could predict executive performance in school‐age children. Unconstrained, phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks (n = 402), as well as the Hayling Sentence Completion Test (n = 275) and the Random Number Generation task (n = 274) were administered to typically developing 6‐to‐12‐year‐old children. A hierarchical regression analysis was performed (p ≤ 0.05). The most significant explanatory models involved child age and parental education, as well as these two variables in addition to the type of school attended by the child. The main individual predictors of executive performance were age and school type. These results may be related to structural and functional alterations in the brain, an increased repertoire of cognitive strategies, the effects of education and the intensity of environmental cognitive stimulation. These findings may contribute to the development of stimulation and intervention programs for EF in clinical and educational settings.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Biological and cultural factors have been found to have a significant influence on cognitive development and performance in neuropsychological instruments such as verbal fluency tasks (VFT). Variations of traditional VFT, involving unconstrained word production and increased retrieval times, may provide further data regarding the executive, attentional, mnemonic, and linguistic abilities involved in VFT. As such, the aim of this study was to investigate the impact of age and school type on the performance of 6- to 12-year-old children in unconstrained, phonemic, and semantic VFT. The VFT were administered to 460 participants. The effects of age and school type on verbal fluency (VF) performance were analyzed using a two-way analysis of variance, followed by Bonferroni post-hoc tests (p ≤ .05). A repeated-measures analysis was also used to evaluate VF performance over time (p ≤ .05). Main effects of age and school type were identified on all measures (effect sizes ranged from .05 to .32, p ≤ .05). VF scores increased with age and were higher among private school students. The influence of age on VFT may be associated with the development of executive functions. The impact of type of school on VF performance may be explained by the greater availability of cognitive stimulation (semantic knowledge) provided by private schools and families with better socioeconomic levels.

Executive functions (EF) is a general term that refers to cognitive processes designed to organize and adapt human behavior in situations that require planning and decision making, problem solving, initiation and inhibition of actions, and adapting to changes. Among the main components of executive processes, we can emphasize the ability to inhibit and to present cognitive flexibility due to changes. Understanding the relationships among the various components of EF in adults and children has been a focus in the literature. However, these processes are complex and multiple. The present study sought to determine whether correlations exist among performances measured by different tools used to evaluate EF in school-age children. The sample comprised 59 children aged 8 to 12 years attending public schools. Participants were assessed using verbal fluency tasks and narrative discourse with the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Communication-MAC Battery, random-number generation, the Hayling Test, the Bells Test, and the n-back test. Correlation analyses were performed using Pearson's correlation coefficient. The results suggested a closer relationship among some components of the evaluation of EF, especially among tasks that assess inhibition and cognitive flexibility.

Neurocognitive assessment involves several different types of processes, techniques and instruments. Traditionally, clinical and/or standardized methods have been the most extensively used in neuropsychological research and clinical practice. Ecological instruments are characterized by the standardized administration of tasks with similar cognitive demands to those observed in everyday situations. Although executive functions are often required in daily living tasks, the lack of a consensus as to their theoretical defi nition has posed several hurdles to their assessment and rehabilitation. The aim of this paper was to present the contributions of an ecological neuropsychological approach to assessment, rehabilitation, and neuroimaging, while discussing the theoretical implications of these processes on the neuropsychology of executive functions. This was achieved through a non-systematic review of classical and contemporary literature on ecological assessment tools. The use of an ecological approach has contributed to the understanding and assessment of functional impairment, as well as to the development of rehabilitation programs focusing on practical daily living activities, allowing for a clearer understanding of the neural correlates of complex environmental and individual factors, and for a more thorough reassessment of the validity of theoretical models of executive functions .