What are the kids doing? Exploring young children's activities at home and relations with externally cued executive function and child temperament

Abstract

Research Highlights• Explored relation between children's activities at home and externally cued executive function in 93 3-to 5-year-old children at home at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic • More time and variety in less-structured activities was related to externally cued executive function, controlling for age, family income, caregiver education, and verbal knowledge • Caregivers were more involved in their children's less-structured versus structured activities • Caregiver ratings of children's temperament were related to how children's time was

Special issue on development of self‐regulation, cognitive control, and executive function, Part I: Editorial note

“…Sullivan et al (2022) observed that behavioral and ERP markers of inhibitory control were all associated with the IQ scores, and 5-yearolds children who experienced higher levels of psychosocial adversity had a lower accuracy of the task and lower IQ scores. Stucke et al (2022) examined home activities during the COVID-19 pandemic and time and variety of less-structured activities (wide range of activities permitting choice and interaction with caregiver) were related to successful switching on the Dimensional Change Card Sort at preschool age, controlling for age, family income, caregiver education, and verbal knowledge. Moreover, executive function performance can be substantially influenced by prior knowledge and immediate contextual factors.…”

“…Stucke et al. (2022) examined home activities during the COVID‐19 pandemic and time and variety of less‐structured activities (wide range of activities permitting choice and interaction with caregiver) were related to successful switching on the Dimensional Change Card Sort at preschool age, controlling for age, family income, caregiver education, and verbal knowledge. Moreover, executive function performance can be substantially influenced by prior knowledge and immediate contextual factors.…”

Rethinking Executive Functions in Mathematical Cognition

“…According to Doebel (2020), success in the task may be predicted by factors such as prior knowledge and experiences. Indeed, Stucke, Stoet, and Doebel (2022) provide evidence that 3-to-5-year-olds' success in the DCCS is predicted by time doing less structured and more self-directed activities, such as play, as opposed to more structured and more adult-directed activities, such as classroom instruction. Alternatively, according to Perone et al (2021), success indicates that the child has learned the visual dimensional label (color or shape), as measured by neural responses (Buss & Kerr-German, 2019).…”

Towards a dimensional model of risk and protective factors influencing children’s early cognitive, social and emotional development during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…For example, parental provision of resources and activities (e.g., provision of books, encouragement of learning, and going on excursions) has been concurrently associated with child executive function at ages 5 to 6 years, and with growth in executive functions over time (Rosen et al, 2020), whilst parental responsiveness and cognitive stimulation predict change in executive function between the ages of 3 to 5 years . In the specific context of the pandemic, more exposure to parent-child enriching activities (e.g., talking, singing cooking, exercise…) during two periods of social distancing spanning a 6-month period, is associated with higher cognitive executive functions, but not emotion regulation, amongst 15-to 36-month-olds) , and the greater the number of activities (excluding screen use, lessons and physical play) engaged in during the pandemic, the higher 3-to 5-year-olds' concurrent performance on an executive function task (Stucke et al, 2022). It is not yet known whether these effects will be sustained over a longer period, or whether the benefits of parent-child enriching activities are specific to older toddlers compared with infants.…”