Executive Functions and Writing Skills in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

In this chapter we provide an overview of what is known and unknown about the relationships between executive functions (EF) and written expression in children and adolescents, with an emphasis on evidence-based developmental associations and dissociations between various EF and writing skills in children and adolescents. We provide an overview of several key models of EF that are applicable to written expression, highlighting critical aspects of these models with respect to their importance for writing skills. What is known and unknown about the relationships between selected EF and writing skills for children and adolescents also is described. Based on these evidence-based findings, important associations and disassociations are underscored—when either suspected or supported by the available empirical literature. Finally, the chapter concludes with targeted directions for future research into advancing our understanding of these relationships across the paediatric developmental spectrum.

Errores en la escritura de adolescentes con alto y bajo rendimiento académico. Un análisis neuropsicológico.

“…Asimismo, implica un programa altamente voluntario y complejo, la deficiente regulación y el control del alumno daría lugar a la diversidad de errores en su planificación, en la selección del léxico, flexibilidad cognitiva para identificar las letras que componen las palabras, en la construcción, secuenciación y control constante al escribir. Los componentes básicos de la expresión escrita están relacionados con el funcionamiento ejecutivo (Hooper et al, 2021).…”

The Role of Executive Function in an Integrated Writing Task

“…Indeed, as Das et al’s (1994) PASS (planning, attention, simultaneous processing, and successive processing) theory of intelligence established, planning (i.e., the strategic plan of the sequences of actions) was regarded as a core unit of humans’ executive function, providing individuals with the facility to control and organize behavior, select and construct strategies, and monitor performance through the application of attention and coding of information (i.e., simultaneous and successive processing). Given the complexity of writing, planning was also generally acknowledged as a key and indispensable EF component in writing research (e.g., Drijbooms et al, 2015; Graham, 2021; Hooper et al, 2021).…”

Relating transcription, executive functions and text quality in Grades 2–3: A cross‐lagged panel analysis

“…Considering the literature that suggests that transcription skills improve with age and schooling (Graham & Harris, 2000), that executive functions can be improved over a lifetime (Diamond, 2013), and that as these cognitive processes evolve, written texts become more sophisticated (Hooper et al, 2021), we hypothesized stability of the same variables across time. Given that the models described above postulate the interaction between transcription skills and executive functions in text generation (Berninger & Winn, 2006), we also hypothesized that these processes would be positively associated with each other.…”

“…The key role of these processes in children's writing was first recognized in the Not‐So‐Simple View of Writing (Berninger & Winn, 2006), which postulated that the interaction between transcription skills and executive functions in an environment of working memory (WM) is involved in text generation (Berninger & Winn, 2006). Although this model provided an overall developmental approach to writing—emphasizing that throughout schooling the role of transcription in text generation decreases, whereas that of executive functions increases (Hooper et al, 2021)—another model, proposed by Kellogg (2008), deepened our understanding of writing development, providing a cognitive, stage‐based perspective on how the writing skill and underlying processes evolve over time.…”

“…Using a sample of Portuguese children, the present study aimed to explore the relationships among transcription skills (handwriting fluency and spelling accuracy), core executive functions (verbal and non‐verbal WM, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility) and text quality from Grade 2 to Grade 3. While in Grade 2, writing instruction is focused on basic skills, such as handwriting fluency and spelling accuracy; in Grade 3, it begins to be directed to the composition of more complex texts (Direção Geral da Educação, 2018a, 2018b), likely calling from a greater involvement of executive functions (Hooper et al, 2021). Thus, the progressive mastery of transcription along with the increasing need for executive functions to accomplish writing tasks turns the transition from Grade 2 to Grade 3 into a crucial moment to investigate the role of these processes in writing quality.…”