Cognitive, Intervention, and Neuroimaging Perspectives on Executive Function in Children With Reading Disabilities

Abstract

The role of executive function (EF) in the reading process, and in those with reading difficulties, remains unclear. As members of the Texas Center for Learning Disabilities, we review multiple perspectives regarding EF in reading and then summarize some of our recent studies of struggling and typical readers in grades 3-5. Study 1a found that a bi-factor structure best represented a comprehensive assessment of EF. Study 1b found that cognitive and behavioral measures of EF related independently to math and reading. Study 1c found that EF related to reading, above and beyond other variables, but Study 1d found no evidence that adding an EF training component improved intervention response. Study 1e found that pretest EF abilities did not relate to intervention response. Neuroimaging studies examined EF-related brain activity during both reading and nonlexical EF tasks. In Study 2a, the EF task evoked control activity, but generated no differences between struggling and typical readers. The reading task, however, had group differences in both EF and reading regions. In Study 2b, EF activity during reading at pretest was related to intervention response. Across studies, EF appears involved in the reading process. There is less evidence for general EF predicting or improving intervention outcomes.

Left posterior prefrontal regions support domain‐general executive processes needed for both reading and math

“…This overlap may simply reflect the fact that both math and reading rely upon visual input and symbols that are subsequently translated to more abstract representations with amodal meaning. Exactly how executive processes might influence the learning of reading and math during this adolescent developmental stage of life is not clear, although this issue has been considered with regard to pre‐school and grade‐school children (Church et al , ; Cragg et al , ).…”

“…Whilst the conceptualization of executive processes as used in studies relevant to reading and reading abilities is quite varied (Church et al , ) and similar issues hold with regard to mathematical abilities (Bull & Lee, ), there are at least two aspects of executive function that are likely to influence both reading and math. A prominent model of executive function, the unity and diversity model (Friedman & Miyake, ; Miyake et al , ) proposes that there is a unitary factor, referred to as common executive function (EF), underlying all executive function tasks, much as g is thought to undergird performance across intelligence tasks.…”

Executive Function and Planning Features of Students With Different Types of Learning Difficulties in Chinese Junior Middle School

“…Students’ mathematics and reading abilities are both found to be closely related to the core cognitive function, that is, executive function (EF; Blair & Razza, 2007; Müller et al, 2008; Willoughby et al, 2019). Recent studies have begun to explore the features of EF in students with learning difficulties, but they generally focused on students with either RD only (Church et al, 2019) or MD only (Abu-Hamour, 2018; Toll et al, 2011). To our best knowledge, only a few studies have focused on the cognitive characteristics of students with different learning difficulties (Cirino et al, 2015).…”

Risk and Resilience Correlates of Reading Among Adolescents with Language-Based Learning Disabilities During COVID-19

“…EF is of particular interest for individuals with LBLD or reading difficulties, because EFs are closely linked to underlying processes for reading (Church et al, 2019). EF in early-childhood is predictive of later reading abilities (Blankenship et al, 2019;Thompson et al, 2015), and high EF may help to differentiate between children at risk for dyslexia who do or do not go on to develop reading impairments (Eklund, Torppa & Lyytinen, 2013).…”