Development of Executive Control and Language Processing

Abstract

Research in executive function development has shown that children have poor control of inhibition functions, including the inhibition of prepotent responses, control of attention, and flexibility at rule‐shifting. To date, links between the development of executive function and children's language development have not been investigated explicitly. Yet, recent studies on children's sentence processing report that children tend to perseverate during sentence processing. We argue that such perseveration may be due to immature executive function.

The Relationship Between Executive Functions and Language Abilities in Children: A Latent Variables Approach

“…We found that inhibition (but not shifting or updating) was a reliable predictor of syntactic performance, even after accounting for age, SES, and IQ. Our finding with respect to the inhibition-syntax relationship is consistent with previous studies that showed an association between inhibition and syntactic comprehension abilities (Choi & Trueswell, 2010;Mazuka et al, 2009;Novick et al, 2005;Woodard et al, 2016). It is notable that prior studies have also identified relationships between syntactic performance and updating (Moser et al, 2007;Roberts et al, 2007), whereas we did not.…”

“…On the other hand, other studies have linked lexical-semantic processing with updating of working memory (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990;Khanna & Boland, 2010;Weiland, Barata, & Yoshikawa, 2013), although it is notable that many of these studies used verbal measures of working memory (e.g., Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990;Weiland et al, 2013). Whereas some studies have also found that syntactic processing was associated with inhibition and/or shifting (Mazuka et al, 2009;Novick et al, 2005), others have linked syntactic processing with updating (Moser et al, 2007;Roberts et al, 2007). It is possible, and even likely, that different aspects of language processing (and/or different language-processing tasks) are associated with distinct EF skills.…”

“…Previous studies that have documented a connection between inhibition and syntactic abilities have typically targeted a specific syntactic process such as the ability to recover from garden path sentences (e.g., Mazuka et al, 2009;Novick et al, 2005;Woodard et al, 2016). This process requires one to resolve syntactic ambiguity and thus shares task demands with inhibitory control tasks that also require one to resolve ambiguity in the input.…”

“…There is evidence to suggest that language and EF abilities also interact in typical populations (e.g., Choi & Trueswell, 2010;Mazuka, Jincho, & Onishi, 2009;Moser, Fridriksson, & Healy, 2007;Slevc, 2011;Woodard, Pozzan, & Trueswell, 2016). For instance, inhibition skills have been implicated in the resolution of lexical and syntactic ambiguity in children (ages 7-10 years) and young adults (Khanna & Boland, 2010).…”

“…It is possible, and even likely, that different aspects of language processing (and/or different language-processing tasks) are associated with distinct EF skills. For instance, in the work on syntactic processing, the ability to recover from garden path sentences has been linked with inhibition/shifting (Mazuka et al, 2009;Novick et al, 2005;Woodard et al, 2016), while the ability to identify errors in sentences (Gangopadhyay, Davidson, Ellis Weismer, & Kaushanskaya, 2016) and the ability to integrate a word into the broader sentence structure (Roberts et al, 2007) have been linked with updating. However, because the vast majority of prior work focusing on language-EF relationships targeted a single EF task and a single language task, there remains the question regarding the specificity and the generality of the language-EF relationships.…”