Family Environments and Children's Executive Function: The Mediating Role of Children's Affective State and Stress

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that inadequate family environments (family material environment and family psychosocial environment) are not only social problems but also factors contributing to adverse neurocognitive outcomes. In the present study, the authors investigated the relationship among family environments, children's naturalistic affective state, self-reported stress, and executive functions in a sample of 157 Chinese families. These findings revealed that in inadequate family material environments, reduced children's cognitive flexibility is associated with increased naturalistic negative affectivity and self-reported stress. In addition, naturalistic negative affectivity mediated the association between family expressiveness and children's cognitive flexibility. The authors used a structural equation model to examine the mediation model hypothesis, and the results confirmed the mediating roles of naturalistic negative affectivity and self-reported stress between family environments and the cognitive flexibility of Chinese children. These findings indicate the importance of reducing stress and negative emotional state for improving cognitive functions in children of low socioeconomic status.

Executive Function and Mood: The Moderating Role of Athletic Expertise

“…Our finding of a positive association between positive affect and shifting was also reported by Cserj esi et al 2009who found a positive relationship between positive affect and faster reaction times on the Trails Making Test A and B. He and Yin (2016) also reported a positive relationship between negative affect and shifting performance, but, in contrast to our findings, He and Yin (2016) reported no effects between measures of planning, inhibition and updating with negative affect and no relationship between positive affect and any EF measure. It is likely that these differences across studies could be explained by variation in sampling which might have affected EF (e.g., age; Miyake et al, 2000).…”

“…It is likely that these differences across studies could be explained by variation in sampling which might have affected EF (e.g., age; Miyake et al, 2000). Our participants were healthy volunteers aged 18-25 years, whereas Simpson et al (2014) recruited elderly participants, Cserj esi et al (2009) recruited females with an obesity diagnosis, and He and Yin (2016) recruited families with children.…”

“…They also reported a negative relationship between positive affect and performance on the D2 attention endurance test (Brickenkamp, 1994) such that positive affect was associated with poorer attentional capacities. In a separate study, He and Yin (2016) reported a positive relationship between negative affect and shifting, as indexed by faster performance on the Trails Making Test A and B; but these investigators found no associations between negative affect and EF measures of planning, inhibition and updating, and no relationship between positive affect and any EF tasks. Gabel and McAuley (2018) reported a positive relationship between negative affect and a latent inhibition measure consisting of a stop-signal, flanker, and spatial-compatibility task (meaning that negative affect was associated with a poorer performance on this measure).…”

“…For example, Verburgh et al (2014) reported that athletes with more expertise make more effective, but not necessarily more efficient, decisions. Additionally, much of this work (see He & Yin, 2016, for an exception) has failed to test a model of EF, using instead a selection of different cognitive tasks across a series of separate studies (e.g., Cserj esi et al, 2009;Gabel & McAuley, 2018;Simpson et al, 2014). This approach has limited our understanding of the relationship between mood and EF in their effects on sport performance.…”

Psychological Disorders and Ecological Factors Affect the Development of Executive Functions: Some Perspectives

“…Moreover, mediation models help us to better understand the interaction between macro-environmental and the development of EF: the links between SES and EF are at least partially explained by associated variations in parenting behaviors (57). Besides, the level of stress, associated with a negative affectivity, has also been pointed out for its mediation role between macro-environmental factors and the development of EF (58). …”