Measuring executive function skills in young children in Kenya: Associations with school readiness

Abstract

Most of what is known about the association between children’s executive function (EF) and school readiness skills is derived from research conducted in Western countries. We tested whether these associations were evident in a middle‐income country context. Participants were 1,480 children, aged 4–7 years old, who participated in an endline assessment of the Tayari program, an early childhood education (ECE) model that is being delivered by the Kenyan education system. High rates of task completion, low rates of floor effects, and high rates of assessor quality ratings supported the feasibility of large‐scale direct assessments of EF with young children. Assessor ratings of children’s attention‐related behaviors during testing were positively associated with their performance on EF tasks (rs = 0.12–0.27). An EF composite score was not related to demographic factors or to children’s exposure to the Tayari program. However, the EF composite score was uniquely associated with performance‐based measures of early literacy (β = 0.18, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.05, 0.31), early numeracy (β = 0.16, 95% CI = 0.07, 26), and social‐emotional competencies (β = 0.12, 95% CI = 0.03, 0.20), even after adjustment for multiple covariates. These results are discussed with respect to the ways in which EF skills inform ongoing efforts to invest in ECE in low‐ and middle‐income countries.

Studying Executive Function Skills in Young Children in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries: Progress and Directions

“…Most research on EF in low‐ and middle‐income countries has focused on the family context, with only a few recent studies associating school readiness and success. For example, among 4‐ to 7‐year‐olds attending an early childhood education program in Kenya, directly assessed EFs were linked to concurrent measures of preliteracy, prenumeracy, and socioemotional skills (Willoughby, Piper, Oyanga, et al, ). In a longitudinal study of kindergarteners in Ghana, EFs predicted short‐term change in early numeracy and literacy, whereas emergent academic skills predicted short‐term change in EFs (Wolf & McCoy, ).…”

“…Although most research on EFs has been conducted in high‐income countries, growing evidence points to analogous findings in low‐ and middle‐income countries, including links between young children’s EFs and cognitive, language, academic, and socioemotional skills (Lohndorf, Vermeer, Cárcamo, De la Harpe, & Mesman, ; Obradović, Yousafzai, Finch, & Rasheed, ; Willoughby, Piper, Oyanga, & Merseth King, ; Wolf & McCoy, ), and neural maturity (Boivin & Giordani, ; Tarullo et al, ), as well as parental behaviors and family experiences (Berkes, Raikes, Bouguen, & Filmer, ; Fernald, Weber, Galasso, & Ratsifandrihamanana, ; McCoy, Zuilkowski, & Fink, ; Obradović et al, ). That we now see commonalities in criterion validity, biological basis, and family predictors around the world indicates that EFs may be culturally universal skills.…”

Introduction to special issue on global child development studies

“…Numerous studies included in this issue present adaptation and/ or testing of behavioral and neuroimaging measures to ensure that these are locally appropriate, feasible, and acceptable for measurement of children's behavioral (Milosavljevic et al, ; Obradović et al, ; Willoughby, Piper, Oyanga, & Merseth, ), language (Dulay, Cheung, & McBride, ; Jasińska, Wolf, Jukes, & Dubeck, ; Knauer, Kariger, Jakiela, Ozier, & Fernald, ; Lervåg, Dolean, Tincas, & Melby‐Lervåg, ), and neural development (Lloyd‐Fox et al, ; Perdue et al, ; Pyykkö et al, ; Turesky et al, ; Wijeakumar, Kumar, M. Delgado Reyes, Tiwari, & Spencer, ). Milosavljevic et al (), for example, test the adaptation of the Mullen Scales of Early Learning in the Gambia and cast light on developmental patterns in children aged 5–24 months.…”

“…They identify a pattern of older children receiving lower scores and suggest that this may reveal a developmental period during which infants at risk for cognitive delay begin to exhibit early behavioral manifestations of exposure to adversity (e.g., poverty and malnutrition). Willoughby et al () demonstrate the utility of computerized, performance‐based executive functions measures in a large‐scale study of preschool children in Kenya.…”

“…Numerous studies included in this issue present adaptation and/ or testing of behavioral and neuroimaging measures to ensure that these are locally appropriate, feasible, and acceptable for measurement of children's behavioral (Milosavljevic et al, 2019;Obradović et al, 2019;Willoughby, Piper, Oyanga, & Merseth, 2019), language (Dulay, Cheung, & McBride, 2019;Jasińska, Wolf, Jukes, & Dubeck, 2019;Knauer, Kariger, Jakiela, Ozier, & Fernald, 2019;Lervåg, Dolean, Tincas, & Melby-Lervåg, 2019), and neural develop- (Cook et al, 2019). Many of these factors undermine or promote child development in similar ways in low-, middle-, and high-income countries.…”