Linking Executive Function and Peer Problems from Early Childhood Through Middle Adolescence

Abstract

Peer interactions and executive function play central roles in the development of healthy children, as peer problems have been indicative of lower cognitive competencies such as self-regulatory behavior and poor executive function has been indicative of problem behaviors and social dysfunction. However, few studies have focused on the relation between peer interactions and executive function and the underlying mechanisms that may create this link. Using a national sample (n = 1,164, 48.6% female) from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), we analyzed executive function and peer problems (including victimization and rejection) across three waves within each domain (executive function or peer problems), beginning in early childhood and ending in middle adolescence. Executive function was measured as a multi-method, multi-informant composite including reports from parents on the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire and Child Behavior Checklist and child’s performance on behavioral tasks including the Continuous Performance Task, Woodcock-Johnson, Tower of Hanoi, Operation Span Task, Stroop, and Tower of London. Peer problems were measured as a multi-informant composite including self, teacher, and after school caregiver reports on multiple peer-relationship scales. Using a cross-lagged design, our Structural Equation Modeling findings suggested that experiencing peer problems contributed to lower executive function later in childhood and better executive function reduced the likelihood of experiencing peer problems later in childhood and middle adolescence, although these relations weakened as a child moves into adolescence. The results highlight that peer relationships are involved in the development of strengths and deficits in executive function and vice versa.

Heterogeneity in ADHD: Neurocognitive predictors of peer, family, and academic functioning

“…Specifically, working memory abilities were associated with ADHD-related heterogeneity in all three functional domains, processing speed predicted teacher-reported social functioning, and inhibitory control predicted caregiver perceptions of family functioning. These findings were generally consistent with the developmental literature (Holmes et al, 2016) and previous comparisons of ADHD and typically developing groups (Chhabildas et al, 2001; Rapport et al, 2013; Rucklidge & Tannock, 2002), and extend previous findings by demonstrating that specific neurocognitive abilities are important for understanding heterogeneity in functional impairments among children with ADHD.…”

“…First, the neurocognitive functions implicated in ADHD have been linked developmentally with a wide array of academic (Barry, Lyman, & Klinger, 2002; Thorell, 2007) and social/peer outcomes (Clark, Prior, & Kinsella, 2002; Dennis, Brotman, Huang, & Gouley, 2007; Holmes, Kim-Spoon, & Deater-Deckard, 2016). For example, developmental research suggests strong links between children’s working memory abilities and their social (Alloway et al, 2005) and academic functioning (Thorell, 2007).…”

“…To summarize, the impetus for examining the link between neurocognitive abilities and functional heterogeneity in ADHD comes from converging lines of research indicating that (a) neurocognitive abilities predict important functional outcomes in non-ADHD samples (Holmes et al, 2016; Thorell, 2007), (b) many but not all children with ADHD exhibit deficits in specific neurocognitive abilities and each area of functioning (Pelham et al, 2005; Rapport et al, 2013), and (c) neurocognitive deficits may explain behavioral and functional impairments in ADHD at the group level (Chacko, Kofler, & Jarrett, 2014). …”

Commonality between executive functioning and effortful control related to adjustment

“…Another study demonstrated that earlier EF (measured by behavioral performance) was associated with later externalizing symptomatology (controlling for the autoregressive effects of earlier externalizing symptomatology) spanning early childhood through middle childhood in a community sample (Sulik al., 2015). In a longitudinal community sample spanning middle childhood through middle adolescence, better EF (measured by behavioral performance) reduced the likelihood of experiencing problems in peer relationships later on (Holmes, Kim-Spoon, & Deater-Deckard, 2016). Finally, there is evidence that adolescents with greater neural activation during an EF task that taxes cognitive/attention network exhibited decreases in social competence over time, particularly in chaotic home environments (Kim-Spoon, Maciejewski, Lee, Deater-Deckard, & King-Casas, 2017).…”

Household chaos as a context for intergenerational transmission of executive functioning

“…These functions work together to guide goal-directed behaviors and are predictive of a number of social (Holmes, Kim-Spoon, & Deater-Deckard, 2016), academic (Becker, Miao, Duncan, & McClelland, 2014), and psychological (Letkiewicz et al, 2014; Li, 2015) outcomes. Research has demonstrated that individual differences in EF emerge throughout childhood and adolescence as a function of genetic and environmental conditions, and that EF is transmitted across generations such that strengths or deficiencies in parent EF are similarly manifested in the child (Deater-Deckard, 2014).…”