Executive Functioning in Preschool Children: Performance on A-Not-B and Other Delayed Response Format Tasks

Espy, Kimberly Andrews; Kaufmann, Paul; McDiarmid, Melanie D.; Glisky, Martha L.

doi:10.1006/brcg.1999.1117

Cited by 189 publications

(176 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…This task required children to track the location of a hidden reward and inhibit responses to a previously rewarded location, thus involving working memory and inhibitory control (Diamond, 1990;Espy et al, 2001Espy et al, , 1999.…”

Section: Assessment At Age Two Years (Corrected)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Executive functioning in preschool children born very preterm: Relationship with early white matter pathology

Edgin

Inder

Anderson

et al. 2007

J Int Neuropsychol Soc

125

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Despite evidence for executive dysfunction in school-aged preterm children, less is known about the early development of these difficulties or their underlying neuropathology. This study used prospective longitudinal data from a regional cohort of 88 very preterm and 98 full-term comparison children to examine the executive functioning (EF) of preschool children born very preterm. The relationship between the severity of neonatal cerebral white matter (WM) abnormalities on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at term equivalent and children's EF at ages two and four years (corrected age) was examined. At age four, very preterm children with WM abnormalities performed less well than full-term children on the Detour Reaching Box, a measure of behavioral inhibition and cognitive flexibility, even after controlling for child IQ, SES, and medical background. Examination of patterns of EF performance between the ages of 2 and 4 years showed that the performance of all groups improved with age. However, very preterm children with mild and moderate-severe WM abnormalities were characterized by higher rates of consistent performance impairments. These findings support the presence of early and persistent executive difficulties in preschool children born very preterm, and highlight the importance of white matter pathology in the development of executive impairments. (JINS, 2008, 14, 90-101.)

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Section: Assessment At Age Two Years (Corrected)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Executive functioning in preschool children born very preterm: Relationship with early white matter pathology

Edgin

Inder

Anderson

et al. 2007

J Int Neuropsychol Soc

125

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To our knowledge, only one study has explored the structure of executive control in preschool children (Espy et al, 1999), although Murray and Kochanska (2000) included PCA in their study of early selfregulation, a closely related construct that encompasses socio-emotional dimensions in addition to executive control. Similar to reported findings in adults and older children, the best-fitting model of executive control in the preschool period included multiple factors (Espy et al, 1999).Confirmatory factor analysis has been applied even less frequently in child samples. Two notable exceptions used CFA to compare models originally derived from EFA, with other models including fewer factors (Brookshire et al, 2004;Lehto et al, 2003).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Using confirmatory factor analysis to understand executive control in preschool children: I. Latent structure.

Wiebe¹,

Espy²,

Charak³

2008

Developmental Psychology

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681

585

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Although many tasks have been developed recently to study executive control in the preschool years, the constructs that underlie performance on these tasks are poorly understood. In particular, it is unclear whether executive control is comprised of multiple, separable cognitive abilities (e.g., inhibition and working memory) or whether it is unitary in nature. A sample of 243 normally developing children between 2.25 and 6 years of age completed a battery of ageappropriate executive control tasks. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to compare multiple models of executive control empirically. A single-factor, general model was sufficient to account for the data. Furthermore, the fit of the unitary model was invariant across subgroups of children divided by socioeconomic status or sex. Girls displayed a higher level of latent executive control than boys, and children of higher and lower SES did not differ in level. In typically-developing preschool children, tasks conceptualized as indices of working memory and inhibitory control in fact measured a single cognitive ability, despite surface differences between task characteristics.Keywords: executive control, inhibition, working memory, preschool, confirmatory factor analysis Preschool Executive Control 3Using confirmatory factor analysis to understand executive control in preschool children:I. Latent structure Executive control is a term used to refer broadly to those cognitive abilities that are associated with, or subserved by, prefrontal cortex and interconnected subcortical system (Diamond, 2001;Stuss, 1992). Although research on executive control has been underway for several decades, remarkably there remains no well-agreed-upon definition as yet. One school of thought has conceptualized executive control as a group of relatively independent, or fractionated, cognitive abilities, typically including working memory, the ability to keep information in mind to guide ongoing or later behavior (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974); inhibitory control, the ability to keep irrelevant or misleading information from interfering with performance (Diamond, 1990;Harnishfeger & Bjorklund, 1993); and set-shifting, or adapting strategies to changing situational demands (Zelazo, Frye, & Rapus, 1996). In contrast, others have argued that executive control is a unitary, domain general construct that manifests in different ways depending on contextual demands (e.g., Duncan & Miller, 2002;Duncan & Owen, 2000).Prefrontal systems undergo a protracted course of development (Benes, 2001). In comparison with posterior cortical areas, the phases of prefrontal cortical development, including neuronal generation, differentiation, and synaptic pruning, occur later and over a longer period of time (Giedd et al., 1999;Huttenlocher, 1990). Myelination of fibers within prefrontal cortex is not complete until early adulthood (Paus et al., 2001). Executive control undergoes a similarly delayed developmental trajectory where, for example, performance on "classic" executive tasks like the T...

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“…Sixteen trials were administered. Maximal performance on this task requires rule-based learning, presumably similar to theWisconsin Card Sorting Test (Heaton, Chelune, Talley, Kay, & Curtis, 1993), and shifting of responding as rule-based contingency changes in children ages two to six (Espy, Kaufmann, McDiarmid, & Glisky, 1999).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Low-Level Lead Exposure and Contingency-Based Responding in Preschoolers: An Exploratory Study

Nelson

Espy

2009

Developmental Neuropsychology

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Two reversal paradigm tasks (spatial reversal and spatial reversal with irrelevant color cues) originally designed to assess contingency-based responding in primates were adapted for use with 139 preschool children with a mean peak blood lead level (BLL) of 4.2 µg/dl (SD = 2.2). Sixty-nine children with BLL ≥ 5 µg/dl and 70 children with BLL of < 5 µg/dl were included. Results indicated that preschool children with low-level lead exposure take longer to learn associations than preschool children with very low levels of lead exposure, and this difference cannot be attributed to increased distractibility or perseverative responding. These results support the use of these measures to assess specific cognitive functions in preschool children.

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Executive Functioning in Preschool Children: Performance on A-Not-B and Other Delayed Response Format Tasks

Cited by 189 publications

References 40 publications

Executive functioning in preschool children born very preterm: Relationship with early white matter pathology

Executive functioning in preschool children born very preterm: Relationship with early white matter pathology

Using confirmatory factor analysis to understand executive control in preschool children: I. Latent structure.

Low-Level Lead Exposure and Contingency-Based Responding in Preschoolers: An Exploratory Study

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