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Executive functions (EF) and oral language (OL) are important for learning reading and writing (RW) and for the development of other skills in preschool. The study investigated the progression and the relationships between the performances in these competences in pre-schoolers. Participants were 90 children, mean age 4.91 years, students from Kindergarten years I and II of a private school in SP, assessed, individually, with a battery with nine instruments for EF, OL, and RW. There was increase of the performances as a result of educational level for all OL and RW measures, but only for attention in the field of EF. Significant correlations were found between the measurements assessing the same cognitive domain, as well as inter-domain, although portraying a different pattern. The results indicate that OL and RW seem to develop rapidly in the course of preschool, while the EF have slower development. The fields of OL and RW, EF and RW are more interdependent, and EF and OL are relatively independent. Keywords Funciones Ejecutivas, Lenguaje Oral y Escrito en los Niños en Edad Preescolar: Desarrollo y CorrelacionesResumen: Las funciones ejecutivas (FE), el lenguaje oral (LO) son importantes para aprender a leer y escribir (LE) y para el desarrollo de otras habilidades en el período preescolar. El estudio investigó la evolución y las relaciones entre los rendimientos en estas habilidades en los niños preescolares. Participó en 90 niños, edad promedio de 4,91 años, estudiantes del Jardín I y II de una escuela privada en SP, evaluadas, de forma individual, con una batería con nueve instrumentos para FE, LO, y LE. Hubo un aumento en el rendimiento en función del nivel educativo en todas las medidas de LO y LE, pero sólo en la medida de atención en FE. Se encontraron correlaciones significativas entre las medidas que evalúan el mismo dominio cognitivo, así como inter-dominio, a pesar de representar un patrón diferencial. LO y LE parecen desarrollarse rápidamente en el curso de la enseñanza preescolar, mientras que FE tiene un desarrollo más lento. Los campos LO y LE, FE y LE son más interdependientes; FE y LO son relativamente independientes.

Executive abilities have been suggested to show differential age-related changes. This study aimed to extend this evidence to a Brazilian sample, which was composed of 572 children and adolescents aged 6 to 14 years, assessed in tests of visual and auditory working memory, selective attention, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, attentional abilities, verbal fluency and planning. ANOVAs revealed significant age effect on performance in all tests, with a trend toward better performance with the progression of age, even in differential ways. Overall, the performance on simpler tests, such as the basic attention, increased with age progression until around 11 or 12 years, when performance becomes more stable. However, in more complex tasks, including working memory tasks, the performance showed a more continuous improvement. There was gender effect in two measures: visual working memory, in which boys outperformed girls, and verbal fluency, in which the girls outperformed boys. In general, the results of this Brazilian sample were similar to those reported by studies conducted in other countries, what suggests that Brazilian socio-cultural specificities, at least of the participants of this sample, were not sufficient to reveal a distinct pattern of progression.

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Executive functions (EF) provide top-down control of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Such abilities are related to learning, emotional control, and adjustment. A promising line of research on EF examines early interventions to promote EF development; however, in developing countries, evidence of EF-related early interventions remains limited. In this study, 70 five-year-old preschool children and their four teachers were divided into an experimental group (EG) and a control group (CG). EG teachers were trained to administer the Intervention Program for Self-regulation and Executive Functions in a classroom context over four and a half months. All children were assessed with tests to measure EF at two time points: before and after the intervention period. EG children exhibited significant gains in attention and inhibition post-intervention. The results suggest that the intervention program is more effective at promoting EF development than the regular curriculum. This finding may have practical relevance to public politics in education, primarily in disadvantaged contexts, as in certain developing countries.

Objective: To investigate if verbal fluency impairment in schizophrenia reflects executive function deficits or results from degraded semantic store or inefficient search and retrieval strategies. Method: Two groups were compared: 141 individuals with schizophrenia and 119 healthy age and education-matched controls. Both groups performed semantic and phonetic verbal fluency tasks. Performance was evaluated using three scores, based on 1) number of words generated; 2) number of clustered/related words; and 3) switching score. A fourth performance score based on the number of clusters was also measured. Results: Individuals with schizophrenia produced fewer words than controls. After controlling for the total number of words produced, a difference was observed between the groups in the number of cluster-related words generated in the semantic task. In both groups, the number of words generated in the semantic task was higher than that generated in the phonemic task, although a significant group vs. fluency type interaction showed that subjects with schizophrenia had disproportionate semantic fluency impairment. Working memory was positively associated with increased production of words within clusters and inversely correlated with switching. Conclusion: Semantic fluency impairment may be attributed to an inability (resulting from reduced cognitive control) to distinguish target signal from competing noise and to maintain cues for production of memory probes.

ResumoFunções executivas constituem um conjunto de processos cognitivos que permitem a regulação da cognição e do comportamento, possibilitando o engajamento do indivíduo em ações complexas. Essas habilidades estão comprometidas em uma diversidade de condições clínicas e este artigo teórico teve como objetivo oferecer uma revisão não-sistemática de alguns quadros nos quais estas habilidades apresentam-se prejudicadas, sobretudo em crianças e adolescentes. Verificou-se que condições como transtorno do déficit de atenção e hiperatividade, transtorno obsessivo-compulsivo, síndrome de Tourette, transtornos globais do desenvolvimento, transtornos de aprendizagem como a dislexia e a discalculia, além de alterações cromossômicas, como a síndrome de Down e de Prader-Willi, cursam com algum grau de comprometimento do funcionamento executivo. Este conhecimento tem implicações à prática e à pesquisa psicológica e pode ser útil a profissionais que atuam com crianças e adolescentes com alguma destas condições, contribuindo a um maior conhecimento acerca das funções executivas e suas alterações. Palavras-chave: funcionamento executivo, neuropsicologia, desenvolvimento. EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS DAMAGE IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS AbstractExecutive functions are a set of cognitive skills that allows the cognition and the behavior regulation, enabling an individual to take part in complex actions. Those abilities are committed in a diversity of clinical conditions and this theoretical article aimed offer an unsystematic revision of some conditions in which these abilities are injured, especially in children and adolescents. It was verified that conditions as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ObsessiveCompulsive Disorder, Tourette Syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Learning Disabilities, like as Dyslexia and Dyscalulia, beyond cromossomic alterations, as Down's and Prader-Willi Syndromes, follow with some degree of executive functioning compromise. This knowledge has implications to the psychological practice and research, and can be useful to professionals who act with children and adolescents with some of these conditions, contributing to a greater knowledge about executive functions and its damages.

This systematic review aimed to characterize empirical studies on neuropsychological interventions to stimulate executive functions in children with typical development. Searches were conducted according to the PRISMA method. Nineteen (19) studies on the analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention programs in pre-school and school children were obtained. There was a predominance of studies that used computerized cognitive training, most of them involving the stimulation of working memory. Others used pen and paper forms, or hybrid tasks, and some programs used a school curriculum approach aiming to improve self-regulation. Results provide preliminary evidence on the effectiveness of such on the executive performance in children with typical development. Each executive component, as well as each type of intervention has its peculiarities. Computerized trainings and pen and paper tasks tend to improve the targeted executive functions, but transfer effects are still inconsistent. Regarding the effects of programs using school curriculum approach, they seem to be more generalizable, with functionality gains accomplishing mainly socio-emotional regulation. Multimodal approaches may be even more effective. Follow-up studies should be targeted in order to track the maintenance of direct and transfer effects regarding mainly cognitive and social development associated to school achievement.