Assessing effects of social interaction on early development of executive function in infants

Abstract

For Section 1Executive Functions (EFs) are cognitive control mechanisms that optimise behavioural success, commonly conceptualised as a triad of mental skills comprising of inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility. EFs form the basis for higher-order thinking skills such as reasoning and problem solving, and also support socioemotional competencies. They are thought to be essential for mental and physical health, as well as academic and life success. Accordingly, there is great interest in the developmental antecedents of the various EF skills, as well as factors that support healthy EF maturation. However, only a few EF tasks are currently suitable for use with infants, limiting the study and understanding of early EF development. Further, during early life, cognitive development thrives in the context of positive social interactions and relationships. In particular, the quality of parent-child interactions ("caregiver scaffolding" and sensitivity/responsiveness) has a strong influence on EF development. However, the measurement of parentchild interaction quality typically relies on subjective coding schemes that are vulnerable to bias and may not generalise well across cultures. Since current EF tasks do not permit concurrent measurement of parent-child interaction quality (i.e. these tasks are administered either by an experimenter, or on a computer), only indirect (i.e. correlational) evidence may be gleaned regarding relationships between these measures.Accordingly, here we address the need to develop new methods for (1) early measurement of developing EF skills during the infancy period and (2) concurrent, direct, objective assessment of effects of parent-child interaction quality on child EF performance. Toward this aim, we outline here protocols for a novel set of interactive EF tasks to assess precursor skills such as overcoming perseveration, attention set-shifting and reversal learning. We further describe Sociometric measurements of parent-child interaction quality, which rely on objective assessment of basic social behaviours (e.g. gaze, touch) during dyadic interaction.