Executive function is a collection of skills that allows us to organize our thoughts and achieve planned goals. Its ability to operate relies heavily on the prefrontal cortex. An important component of executive functioning is inhibitory control (IC) which has been known to play an important role in childhood academic success. As inhibitory control strengthens, humans gain the ability to control, or inhibit, their responses and attention among other things. This skill is especially important for children entering school, making prefrontal cortex development and inhibitory control an important research topic.
A paper titled Relations Between Frontal EEG Maturation and Inhibitory Control in Preschool in the Prediction of Children’s Early Academic Skills outlining a study done by Dr. Martha Ann Bell et al. investigated how IC is developed and what role it might play in early academic success. This longitudinal study examined changes in EEG activity in children aged 10 months to 4 years and investigated associations between IC at age 4 and academic achievement at age 6. Although the main goal of their study was to investigate neurobiological foundations of inhibitory control using analyses of EEG power, one of this study’s aims was to determine if IC in preschool-aged children was linked to their academic skills years later. The results of this study indicated that the IC seen in 4-year-old children was significantly associated with reading and math achievement. In a presentation of her research, Dr. Bell made a point to acknowledge that she studied typically developing children with a sample size of 410 that was 73% White and non-Hispanic. It was also noted in the paper that participants excluded from the sample were more likely to be non-white or Hispanic and have less educated parents. As a Hispanic woman, I am always curious when I read studies with primarily white sample sizes to see if research has been done with different participant samples and to see how they relate to each other.
An article titled Reciprocal Associations Between Inhibitory Control and Early Academic Skills: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Sample of Head Start Children (Son et al.) studied inhibitory control and early academic skills with a very different participant sample. This sample size had 939 participants from 307 Head Start classrooms and was 47.28% Hispanic, 27.54% African American, 21.96% White, and 7.12% with other backgrounds. It also was reported that 51% of the sample were girls and 2.66% were children with disability. Head Start is a federal program for children from low-income families and is often a target for developmental research investigating the effects of socioeconomic status. The current study further piqued my interest, as I participated in a Head Start program when I was a child! I have learned in previous developmental psychology classes that socioeconomic status can affect brain development, so I was very curious to see if there were any differences in prefrontal cortex development in a way that would affect IC exhibitions that could be seen between these 2 different samples. The results of this study indicated that higher IC in children was associated with higher math and reading skills. There was a reciprocal association between IC and math skills meaning that math skills benefit from early IC skills and IC skills benefit from early math skills. It was also reported that these reciprocal associations were found across sex differences and monolingual vs dual language participants.
Both of these studies confirm that inhibitory control is important for children’s early academic success across various children with different backgrounds. It is important to consider participant samples when determining the generalizability of data found in studies like these. My favorite thing about reading research papers is determining how the knowledge will affect the population and finding connections to my own life. This is not always possible with smaller sample sizes from less diverse populations, but it does always prompt me to do more research and see if there are existing studies and whether or not they contradict or corroborate. These studies can be used to develop better interventions that can be used for a diverse population that is representative of the diversity we see in the nation and makes me more confident in the generalizability of the results found.
References
Son, S.-H. C., Choi, J. Y., & Kwon, K.-A. (2019). Reciprocal associations between inhibitory control and early academic skills: Evidence from a nationally representative sample of Head Start Children. Early Education and Development, 30(4), 456–477. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2019.1572382
Whedon, M., Perry, N. B., & Bell, M. A. (2020). Relations between frontal EEG maturation and inhibitory control in preschool in the prediction of Children’s early academic skills. Brain and Cognition, 146, 105636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2020.105636
No comments:
Post a Comment