Social factors in the development of early executive functioning: a closer look at the caregiving environment

Abstract

This study investigated prospective links between quality of the early caregiving environment and children's subsequent executive functioning (EF). Sixty-two families were met on five occasions, allowing for assessment of maternal interactive behavior, paternal interactive behavior, and child attachment security between 1 and 2 years of age, and child EF at 2 and 3 years. The results suggested that composite scores of parental behavior and child attachment were related to child performance on EF tasks entailing strong working memory and cognitive flexibility components (conflict-EF). In particular, child attachment security was related to conflict-EF performance at 3 years above and beyond what was explained by a combination of all other social antecedents of child EF identified thus far: child verbal ability and prior EF, family SES, and parenting behavior. Attachment security may thus play a meaningful role in young children's development of executive control.

The development of children’s inhibition: Does parenting matter?

“…This style has been previously found to be positively related to good EF in children (Hughes & Ensor, 2009). In this way, it is close to the scaffolding model where the parents provide support and treat their children as individuals with minds (Bernier et al, 2012). The results from the current study, therefore, confirm previous conclusions that maternal positive parenting is among the strongest predictors of children's EF (Bernier et al, 2010;Hughes & Ensor, 2009).…”

“…However, children's EF and parents' behavior are dynamic variables, the development of which need to be studied and related together (Hammond et al, 2012;Roskam & Meunier, 2012). Third, the panel of parenting behaviors that has been studied in relation to EF development is somewhat limited, focusing in particular on child-rearing behaviors similar to scaffolding (Bernier et al, 2012).…”

Associations of Memory and Executive Functioning With Academic and Adaptive Functioning Among Youth With Perinatal HIV Exposure and/or Infection

“…Early caregiving and quality of parent-child relationships provide the context for development of self-regulation and EF in young children [27,29,30], and interactions between children and their family and school environments promote school readiness [31] and development of higher-order cognitive and academic skills [32]. Families living with HIV are often living in stressful circumstances [3]; thus, psychological and educational interventions to support children with PHIV exposure in the context of family, neighborhood, and school settings are warranted, as are interventions to address EF and memory directly.…”

Maternal mind-mindedness and children’s school readiness: A longitudinal study of developmental processes.

“…In line with this, there is evidence that effortful control in the preschool years (Blair & Razza, 2007;Merz et al, 2014) and kindergarten (Valiente, Lemery-Chalfant, & Castro, 2010) relates to subsequent pre-academic skills. Given evidence from one study that effortful control also relates to prior mind-mindedness (Bernier, Carlson, Deschênes, & Matte-Gagné, 2012), it could constitute an additional stepping stone in the developmental process linking early maternal mind-mindedness and child language to child cognitive school readiness. Hence, mindmindedness could operate indirectly on children's school readiness via a sequential mediated pathway involving both child language and effortful control.…”