Relations between executive function and emotionality in preschoolers: Exploring a transitive cognition–emotion linkage

Abstract

Emotions play a crucial role in appraisal of experiences and environments and in guiding thoughts and actions. Moreover, executive function (EF) and emotion regulation (ER) have received much attention, not only for positive associations with children’s social–emotional functioning, but also for potential central roles in cognitive functioning. In one conceptualization of ER (Campos etal., 2004), processes of ER, and those of emotional expression and experience (hereafter referred to as emotionality) are highly related and reciprocal; yet, there has been little research on young children’s EF that focuses on emotionality, although it is easily observed within a classroom. The two goals of the study were to: (1) investigate the relatively unexplored role of emotionality in the development of EF in early childhood and (2) assess the relations between an observational rating of EF obtained after direct assessment with a standardized EF rating scale. We predicted that observed emotionality and EF would both demonstrate stability and predict one another within and across time. 175 children aged 35–60 months were recruited from Head Start and private childcare centers. Using partial least squares modeling, we chose T1 emotionality as the exogenous variable and tested pathways between emotionality and EF across two time points, 6 months apart. Results showed that both T1 observed EF and emotionality predicted their respective T2 counterparts, supporting the idea that both constructs build upon existing systems. Further, T1 emotionality predicted T1 observed EF and the T2 BRIEF-P composite. In turn, T1 observed EF predicted emotionality and the T2 BRIEF-P composite. These findings fit with literature on older populations in which EF and emotionality have been related, yet are the first to report such relations in early childhood. Last, T1 observed EF’s positive prediction of the T2 BRIEF-P composite lends credence to the use of both EF measures in applied and research settings.

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

“…EFs are crucial to the ability to adapt efficiently to changes in the environment (Huizinga, Dolan, & van der Molen, 2006;Zelazo, Müller, Frye, & Marcovitch, 2003), and to the ability to manage basic daily tasks, such as planning, decision making, and problem solving (Friedman et al, 2006;Miyake et al, 2000). It is not surprising then that there is a wealth of literature linking EFs and broad quality-of-life outcomes, including academic achievement (e.g., Best, Miller, & Naglieri, 2011;Blair & Razza, 2007) and social-emotional development (Broidy et al, 2003;Ferrier, Bassett, & Denham, 2014). Most relevant to the field of communication sciences and disorders, EF difficulties have been documented in populations with communication impairments, including individuals with specific language impairment (SLI; e.g., Henry, Messer, & Nash, 2012;Im-Bolter, Johnson, & Pascual-Leone, 2006), autism spectrum disorders (e.g., Joseph, McGrath, & TagerFlusberg, 2005), reading disabilities (e.g., Sesma, Mahone, Levine, Eason, & Cutting, 2009), aphasia (Yeung & Law, 2010), and traumatic brain injury (e.g., Sainson, Barat, & Aguert, 2014).…”

“…EFs are crucial to the ability to adapt efficiently to changes in the environment (Huizinga, Dolan, & van der Molen, 2006;Zelazo, Müller, Frye, & Marcovitch, 2003), and to the ability to manage basic daily tasks, such as planning, decision making, and problem solving (Friedman et al, 2006;Miyake et al, 2000). It is not surprising then that there is a wealth of literature linking EFs and broad quality-of-life outcomes, including academic achievement (e.g., Best, Miller, & Naglieri, 2011;Blair & Razza, 2007) and social-emotional development (Broidy et al, 2003;Ferrier, Bassett, & Denham, 2014) There is a great deal of interest in accurately measuring EF skills in our field, both for the purposes of documenting EF deficits in impaired populations and for the purposes of possibly influencing language outcomes through targeting EF skills. In the present study, we examined EF performance in a sample of monolingual typically developing children, with the following three goals.…”

Sleep Moderates the Association Between Response Inhibition and Self-Regulation in Early Childhood

“…We observed a positive skew in the distribution of the response inhibition measure, which may reflect a ceiling effect due to our sample of generally high-functioning children and therefore may have reduced our ability to detect significant sleep-dependent changes due to reduced variability. Experimental sleep studies that utilize observational behavioral assessments of self-regulation in real-world preschool settings are a rich area for future investigation (Ferrier, Bassett, & Denham, 2014; Ponitz, McClelland, Matthews, & Morrison, 2009). Furthermore, we enrolled a sample including only healthy children with no sleep, behavioral, emotional, or developmental problems and whose family context allowed for stable sleep schedules.…”

“…Second, we targeted only one aspect of EF (i.e., response inhibition) and did not examine discrete facial measures of emotion expression (Berger et al, 2012). Thus, future sleep-related studies should incorporate additional dimensions of cognitive control (i.e., working memory, mental flexibility) and emotion processing in their interaction with self-regulation (Ferrier et al, 2014). Third, as insufficient sleep is considered a stressor that influences cognitive control, emotion processing, and self-regulation, additional experimental sleep studies that incorporate physiological measures of sympathetic and parasympathetic activation with behavior may provide key insights into how such systems work in tandem.…”

Visual-Motor Maturity and Executive Functions in Schoolchildren

“…EFs are responsible for articulating subordinated functions such as thinking, working memory, planning, attention and inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, among others, which guide the execution of a behavior with specific aims (Ferrier, Bassett, & Denham, 2014;Miyake & Friedman, 2012;Olaithe & Bucks, 2013;Skogan et al, 2015).…”