The Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders Revised: Links to Academic Outcomes and Measures of EF in Young Children

Abstract

The measurement of self-regulation in young children has been a topic of great interest as researchers and practitioners work to help ensure that children have the skills they need to succeed as they start school. The present study examined how a revised version of a commonly used measure of behavioral self-regulation, the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task (HTKS) called the HTKS-R, and measures of executive function (EF) was related to academic outcomes between preschool and kindergarten (ages 4–6years) in a diverse sample of children from families with low income participating in Head Start in the United States. Participants included 318 children (53% female; 76% White; and 20% Latino/Hispanic) from 64 classrooms in 18 Head Start preschools who were followed over four time points between the fall of preschool and the spring of kindergarten. Results indicated that children with higher HTKS-R scores had significantly higher math and literacy scores at all-time points between preschool and kindergarten. The HTKS-R was also a more consistent predictor of math and literacy than individual EF measures assessing inhibitory control, working memory, and task shifting. Parallel process growth models indicated that children who had high initial scores on the HTKS-R also had relatively higher initial scores on math and literacy. In addition, growth in children’s scores on the HTKS-R across the preschool and kindergarten years was related to growth in both children’s math and literacy scores over the same period independent of their starting points on either measure. For the HTKS-R and math, children’s initial scores were negatively associated with growth over the preschool and kindergarten years indicating that lower skilled children at the start of preschool started to catch up to their more skilled peers by the end of kindergarten.

The development of uncertainty monitoring during kindergarten: Change and longitudinal relations with executive function and vocabulary in children from low‐income backgrounds

“…At the start of kindergarten, children were distributed across 69 classrooms across 39 sites (average cluster size = 1.62 children per classroom). Children in this study came from a single cohort of a larger longitudinal study examining the relation between measures of executive function and academic outcomes (McClelland et al, 2021). Approximately 60% of participants returned a parent demographic form while their child was enrolled in the study.…”

“…The current study utilized the HTKS-R to measure children's executive functioning skills, and the HTKS-R is a complex measure of executive function that captures multiple subcomponents of children's executive abilities (McClelland et al, 2014;Schmitt et al, 2017). The HTKS-R is also often one of the strongest predictors of many different child outcomes (McClelland et al, 2014(McClelland et al, , 2021Wanless et al, 2011), but a latent variable approach that utilizes many measures of children's executive function to explicitly model the different subcomponents as they develop might better elucidate the relation between children's executive function and uncertainty monitoring over time. Thus, future research can better elucidate how children's early inhibitory control skills and later developing working memory relate to the development of children's uncertainty, as well as explore possible reciprocal relations between the development of these two constructs over time.…”

Mastery‐orientedmotor competence intervention improves behavioral but not cognitiveself‐regulationin head start preschoolers: Randomized controlled trial results

“…This may indicate floor effects and/or sample characteristics. Floor effects can occur particularly in young, high‐poverty samples; 46 recent work has sought to adapt the HTKS to address this concern 47,48 . Although direct assessments like HTKS and computer‐based tasks allow objective measurement, it may also be helpful to combine them with teacher reports 49 .…”

“…Floor effects can occur particularly in young, high-poverty samples; 46 recent work has sought to adapt the HTKS to address this concern. 47,48 Although direct assessments like HTKS and computer-based tasks allow objective measurement, it may also be helpful to combine them with teacher reports. 49 Floor effects on direct assessments may be due to competence-performance distinctions, for example, such that children who may possess SR skills cannot perform them for the examiner in the moment.…”

Early Teacher–Child Relationships Promote Self-Regulation Development in Prekindergarten

“…It may be that different results would emerge with a different type of self-regulation assessment. This work could be extended by examining the association between children’s relationships with prekindergarten teachers and their performance on Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (McClelland et al, 2021) [ 55 ], which is a brief, direct assessment that captures general self-regulation in prekindergarten aged children.…”