Investigating the links between the subcomponents of executive function and academic achievement: A cross-cultural analysis of Chinese and American preschoolers

Effortful control and early academic achievement of Chinese American children in immigrant families

“…The marginally signficant positive association between parents' enculturation and children's EC is somewhat consistent with the existing work on cultural differences in EC or executive functioning development (Lan et al, 2011;Oh & Lewis, 2008;Sabbagh et al, 2006). It suggests that parents' engagement in Chinese culture may confer some benefits for children's development of self-regulation, likely due to the greater cultural valuing of and expectation for wellregulated and controlled behaviors in children (Zhou et al, 2009).…”

“…In support of these theories, a number of cross-cultural investigations have indicated that, compared to parents of Western/European American backgrounds, Chinese and Chinese American immigrant parents place greater emphasis on children's behavioral control, discipline, and academic achievement (Chao, 1994(Chao, , 2000Huntsinger, Jose, Larson, BalsinkKrieg, & Shaligram, 2000;Jose, Huntsinger, Huntsinger, & Liaw, 2000;Pearson & Rao, 2003). Further, several cross-cultural studies have reported that young children from East Asian countries (e.g., China and Korea) outperformed North American children on executive functioning tasks assessing inhibitory and attentional control (Lan, Legare, Ponitz, Li, & Morrison, 2011;Oh & Lewis, 2008;Sabbagh, Xu, Carlson, Moses, & Lee, 2006). These cultural differences have been attributed to East Asian cultures' greater emphasis on children's inhibitory and attentional control at home and in school settings.…”

The Lexical Stroop Sort (LSS) picture-word task: A computerized task for assessing the relationship between language and executive functioning in school-aged children

“…Although EF has been extensively studied in adult populations, there has been less research on the development of EF in children (Lan, Legare, Ponitz, Li, & Morrison, 2011). Researchers often ascribe certain types of cognitive processes as fundamental components of EF, such as selective attention, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, working memory, and particular information-processing skills (e.g., fluency and processing speed) that are utilized for problem solving and goal-directed activities (Blair & Razza, 2007;Müller, Zelazo, Lurye, & Liebermann, 2008;Willoughby, Blair, Wirth, & Greenberg, 2010).…”

“…Much of the research investigating the developmental trajectory of the abilities underlying EF has been focused on pinpointing the development of memory (Baddeley, 1986), attention (Lan et al, 2011), inhibition (Carlson, Moses, & Breton, 2002;Carlson, Moses, & Hix, 1998;Frye, Zelazo, & Burack, 1998), or language (Kirkham, Cruess, & Diamond, 2003;Luo, Luk, & Bialystok, 2010). The findings have been mixed, however, resulting in little agreement as to which processes are most influential in the development of EF (Baddeley, 1986;Carlson et al, 2002;Carlson et al, 1998;Frye et al, 1998;Kirkham et al, 2003;Marcovitch & Zelazo, 2009).…”

“…As a result, when creating our task, we were less interested in accessing the visuospatial sketchpad and more focused on accessing the phonological loop. Considering that both EF and phonological awareness have been implicated in the development of children's early literacy (Lan et al, 2011) and that the phonological loop has been specifically designated as the "language learning device" (Baddeley et al, 1998;Gupta & MacWhinney, 1997), we believed that focusing on the phonological loop was more relevant to our endeavor to examine the relationship between language development and EF.…”