Children’s Elementary School Social Experience and Executive Functions Development: Introduction to a Special Section

Abstract

Children's executive functions, encompassing inhibitory control, working memory and attention are vital for their self-regulation. With the transition to formal schooling, children need to learn to manage their emotions and behavior in a new and complex social environment that with age increases in the intensity of social interactions with peers and teachers. Stronger executive functions skills facilitate children's social development. In addition, new experiences in the social environments of school also may influence executive function development. The focus of this special section is on this potential impact of elementary school social experiences with peers and teacher on the development of children's executive functions. The collection of papers encompass various aspects of peer and teacher social environments, and cover broad as well as specific facets and measures of executive functions including neural responses. The collection of papers sample developmental periods that span preschool through mid-adolescence. In this introduction, we summarize and highlight the main findings of each of the papers, organized around social interactions with peers and interactions with teachers. We conclude our synopsis with implications for future research, and a specific focus on prevention and intervention.

Is Poor Working Memory a Transdiagnostic Risk Factor for Psychopathology?

“…Arguably one of the best ways to incorporate accuracy and speed of performance into a single set of indices is through a computational approach known as diffusion modelling (Ratcliff & McKoon, 2008). This approach, which has long been used in the cognitive sciences and cognitive neurosciences, has recently begun to be adopted in the developmental (Cohen-Gilbert et al, 2014; Ratcliff, Love, Thompson, & Opfer, 2012), aging (Ratcliff, Thapar, & McKoon, 2004, 2011; Starns & Ratcliff, 2010), and clinical (Huang-Pollock et al, 2016; Huang-Pollock, Karalunas, Tam, & Moore, 2012; Karalunas, Huang-Pollock, & Nigg, 2012; Moustafa et al, 2015; Weigard, Huang-Pollock, & Brown, 2016; Weigard & Huang-Pollock, 2014; Wiecki, Poland, & Frank, 2015) literatures.…”

“…Similarly, substantial heterogeneity in neurocognitive performance is also found in depression (McClintock, Husain, Greer, & Cullum, 2010), with evidence that executive dysfunction is not observed among depressed patients who demonstrate valid effort during testing (Benitez, Horner, & Bachman, 2011; Rohling, Green, Allen, & Iverson, 2002). However, even though motivation-cognition interactions on performance are relevant to a wide range of processes outside of WM (Botvinick & Braver, 2015; Braver et al, 2014) and are also observed among externalizing disorders (Luman, Oosterlaan, & Sergeant, 2005), the association between externalizing behavior and executive dyscontrol survives even when task engagement is controlled (Huang-Pollock et al, 2016; Huang-Pollock, Mikami, Pfiffner, & McBurnett, 2007; Shanahan, Pennington, & Willcutt, 2008; Shiels et al, 2008). …”

“…ADHD diagnoses (see Huang-Pollock et al, 2016, for full details) were made via standardized ratings of behaviors provided by parents and teachers, as well as structured diagnostic interview of the primary care provider (DISC-IV) to confirm age of onset, duration, cross-situational severity, impairment, and symptom count (using the “or” algorithm to integrate DISC and teacher report, following DSM-IV field trials: Lahey et al, 1994). Other DSM-IV diagnoses were identified using DISC-IV algorithms that include duration, impairment, and symptom count (age of onset restrictions and cross situational severity are not required for diagnoses of ODD, MDD/DD, or GAD).…”

Socioeconomic Risk and School Readiness: Longitudinal Mediation Through Children's Social Competence and Executive Function

“…Additional research has explored the concept that reciprocal paths, in which earlier social skills influence the subsequent development of EFs, may exist (Carlson, 2009; Lewis and Carpendale, 2009; Moriguchi, 2014; van Lier and Deater-Deckard, 2016). Indeed, it has long been theorized that humans develop higher mental functions within the context of interpersonal activity and social relationships (Luria, 1966; Vygotsky, 1978).…”

“…This idea that EF development occurs via social interactions has been scientifically explored, primarily through the study of adult-child social interactions in scaffolding EFs (Landry et al, 2002; Bibok et al, 2009; Hughes and Ensor, 2009; Lewis and Carpendale, 2009; Blair et al, 2011; Roskam et al, 2014; de Wilde et al, 2016). However, a small but growing body of literature has assessed this in terms of peer interactions (Moriguchi, 2014; van Lier and Deater-Deckard, 2016). This body of literature has provided evidence that social interactions with peers are essential to developing self-regulation (Lindsey and Colwell, 2003) and EFs such as cognitive flexibility (Bateson, 2005) and inhibitory control (Peterson and Flanders, 2005).…”