The Longitudinal Contributions of Preschool Executive Functions and Early Math Abilities to Arithmetic Skills in Elementary School.

Executive functions (EFs) are linked to children's overall math performance, although few studies have considered the joint role of prior math abilities for specific math subskills, such as arithmetic. The current study examined the longitudinal contributions of preschool EFs and early math abilities to children's accuracy and reaction time on arithmetic problems. Two hundred and eighty-three children completed EF and numeracy assessments at 5.25 years old. Children completed an arithmetic problem task in first (Mage = 7.14), second (Mage = 8.09), and third grade (Mage = 9.08). Results indicated that preschool EFs and math abilities are uniquely linked to children's accuracy and reaction time at age 7, whereas preschool EFs alone continue to predict accuracy at age 8 and reaction time at age 9, even after accounting for intervening arithmetic performance. The study highlights the sustained, unique importance of early EFs for children's arithmetic acquisition.

Teachers' Self-Efficacy and Perceptions of School Climate are Uniquely Associated with Students' Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior Problems.

Early externalizing and internalizing problems undermine children's school success and long-term well-being. Leveraging a large, U.S.-representative dataset (N ≈ 14,810), we examined how kindergarten teachers' self-efficacy and school climate perceptions were linked to students' behavior problems in kindergarten and first grade. Teachers' self-efficacy and school climate perceptions were uniquely linked to kindergarteners' externalizing and internalizing behaviors, after controlling for demographic covariates and children's executive functions. Kindergarten teachers' higher self-efficacy predicted lower levels of children's externalizing problems in first grade, while teachers' positive school climate perceptions predicted children's lower internalizing problems in first grade. Longitudinal models demonstrated that teachers' perceived school climate and self-efficacy were uniquely associated with decreases in children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors from kindergarten to first grade. Findings highlight the importance of teachers' self-efficacy and school climate for children's socio-emotional development and underscore an urgent need to determine how best to support teacher well-being to optimize children's outcomes.

The unique relevance of executive functions and self-regulation behaviors for understanding early childhood experiences and preschoolers' outcomes in rural Pakistan.

Performance-based measures of children's executive functions (EFs) do not capture children's application of these skills during everyday emotionally-laden and socially-mediated interactions. The current study demonstrates the value of using assessor report of self-regulation behaviors (inhibitory control and positive affect/engagement) in addition to EF tasks when studying early childhood experiences and development in a rural lower-middle-income country setting. In a sample of 1302 disadvantaged 4-year-olds living in rural Pakistan, we found that directly assessed EFs were significantly related to assessor observations of children's inhibitory control and positive affect/engagement during a structured assessment protocol. However, EFs and two types of self-regulation behaviors demonstrated unique associations with children's (1) contextual experiences, as indexed by family socio-economic resources, participation in parenting interventions, and children's physical growth; and (2) age-salient developmental outcomes, as indexed by direct assessment of pre-academic skills and maternal report of prosocial behaviors and behavior problems. First, family wealth uniquely predicted only observed positive affect/engagement, whereas maternal education uniquely predicted only EFs. Second, children's antecedent linear growth was a significant predictor of both EFs and positive affect/engagement, but exposure to an enhanced nutrition intervention during the first 2 years of life and preschoolers' hair cortisol concentration were associated only with observed self-regulation behaviors. Finally, both EFs and observed positive affect/engagement uniquely predicted children's pre-academic skills. In contrast, only assessors' ratings of positive affect/engagement uniquely predicted maternal report of prosocial behaviors and only assessors' ratings of inhibitory control uniquely predicted maternal report of behavioral problems.

Moving beyond executive functions: Challenge preference as a predictor of academic achievement in elementary school.

Intrinsic motivation and executive functions (EFs) have been independently studied as predictors of academic achievement in elementary school. The goal of this investigation was to understand how students' challenge preference (CP), an aspect of intrinsic motivation, is related to academic achievement while accounting for EFs as a confounding variable. Using data from a longitudinal study of 569 third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders (50% female), we tested students' self-reported CP as a predictor of mathematics and English language arts (ELA) achievement in multilevel models that controlled for school fixed effects and student demographic characteristics. CP was positively associated with mathematics and ELA over and above the set of covariates and EFs. While also controlling for prior achievement, CP continued to explain a small amount of unique variance in mathematics, but not in ELA. These results underscore the importance of including measures of students' intrinsic motivation, in addition to EFs, to obtain a comprehensive understanding of academic success.

Biological sensitivity to context in Pakistani preschoolers: Hair cortisol and family wealth are interactively associated with girls' cognitive skills.

Many young children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face heightened risk for experiencing environmental adversity, which is linked with poorer developmental outcomes. Children's stress physiology can shed light on why children are differentially susceptible to adversity. However, no known studies have examined whether links between adversity and children's development are moderated by children's stress physiology in LMICs. The present study revealed significant interactive effects of hair cortisol concentrations, an index of chronic physiological stress regulation, and family wealth on preschoolers' cognitive skills in rural Pakistan. In a sample of 535 4-year-old children (n = 342 girls), we found significant associations between family wealth and direct assessments of verbal intelligence, pre-academic skills, and executive functions only in girls with lower hair cortisol concentrations. Specifically, girls with lower cortisol concentrations displayed greater cognitive skills if they came from relatively wealthier families, but lower cognitive skills if they came from very poor families. There were no significant associations among boys. Results provide evidence of biological sensitivity to context among young girls in a LMIC, perhaps reflecting, in part, sex differences in daily experiences of environmental adversity.

Early executive functioning in a global context: Developmental continuity and family protective factors.

This study extends the methodological and theoretical understanding of executive functions (EFs) in preschoolers from low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). First, the authors describe a rigorous process of adapting and evaluating six EF tasks to produce a culturally and developmentally appropriate measure of emerging EFs in a large sample of at-risk children in rural Pakistan. Next, the authors identify critical developmental and family factors that relate to preschoolers' EFs over the first 4 years of life. Direct assessment of children's general cognitive skills at age two showed developmental continuity with EFs at age four, and these early cognitive skills mediated the effect of an antecedent parenting intervention on EFs as well as associations of targeted individual and family factors with EFs. Furthermore, directly assessed maternal cognitive capacities and observed maternal scaffolding uniquely predicted EFs in preschoolers. This study is also the first to demonstrate a significant overlap between direct assessments of IQ and EFs in young children from LMIC. Children's general intelligence mediated the associations of EFs with antecedent physical growth and cognitive skills as well as concurrent family factors (maternal verbal intelligence, maternal scaffolding, and home stimulation). After controlling for shared variance between preschoolers' general intelligence and EFs, three factors emerged as unique predictors of EFs: exposure to an early parenting intervention, physical growth status at age two, and number of older siblings. The findings have important implications for the design of interventions that aim to improve EFs in young children in LMIC. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/316329544/5abde94cd7.

Linking executive function skills and physiological challenge response: Piecewise growth curve modeling.

This study employed piecewise growth curve modeling to examine how children's executive function (EF) skills relate to different components of children's physiological response trajectory - initial arousal, reactivity, and recovery. The sample included 102 ethnically diverse kindergarteners, whose EF skills were measured using standard tasks and observer ratings. Physiological response was measured via changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in response to a laboratory socio-cognitive challenge. Children's cool and hot EF skills were differentially related to both linear and quadratic components of RSA response during the challenge. Greater hot EF skills and assessor report of EF skills during laboratory visit were related to quicker RSA recovery after the challenge. These findings demonstrate that children's physiological response is a dynamic process that encompasses physiological recovery and relates to children's self-regulation abilities.

Executive functions, motivation, and children's academic development in Côte d'Ivoire.

The role of executive function skills and motivation in supporting children's academic achievement is well-documented, but the vast majority of evidence is from high-income countries. Classrooms in sub-Saharan Africa tend to be large, teacher-driven, and lecture-focused, which may provide extra challenges for children to stay engaged in the learning process. Based in self-regulated learning theory, we tested the contributions of executive functions and motivation for children's literacy and numeracy skills over 1 school year. Our preregistered study of 2,500 primary school students in Côte d'Ivoire used lagged models with a robust set of demographic covariates. Executive functions were directly assessed, and children reported on their levels of motivation for schooling. Findings indicated strong longitudinal continuity of both literacy and numeracy skills over the academic year. Further, we found unique associations of executive functions and intrinsic motivation with changes in children's literacy skills and a unique association of executive functions, but not intrinsic motivation, with changes in children's numeracy skills over the school year. Overall, these results provide evidence for the importance of nonacademic skills for children's learning in a rural, sub-Saharan African context. Implications include improving access to preprimary education, the quality of primary school experiences, and teacher training and supports to increase children's early academic skills, self-regulation skills, and motivation for learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Increases in Income-Related Disparities in Early Elementary School Obesity, 1998-2014.

OBJECTIVE: Research shows that population-level rates of obesity, which rose dramatically from the 1970s through the mid-2000s, have since plateaued or even started to decline. However, overall improvements may mask differences in trends for different subgroups. For instance, obesity rates have continued to climb among low-income adolescents, leading to growing income-related gaps in obesity. By comparison, we know little about whether income-related disparities have also changed among elementary school children. To address this gap, we examined two cohorts of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten cohort, which followed children entering school in 1998 and 2010. We hypothesized that income-related disparities in obesity have also grown larger over time among young children. METHODS: We used data from nationally representative samples of children who entered kindergarten in 1998 and 2010. We documented rates of overweight and obesity from kindergarten through third grade, examined how rates differed for children from high- and low-income families, and tested whether income-related disparities changed over time. RESULTS: Rates of overweight and obesity were 2 to 5 percentage points higher in the later cohort, and overall increases masked substantial variation by income. Specifically, these increases were driven by children in lower-income households, resulting in substantially larger income-related disparities in overweight and obesity in the later cohort. CONCLUSIONS: As we hypothesized, income-related disparities in young children's obesity grew between 1998 and 2014. This suggests that efforts to curb increasing rates of obesity may have been more successful for higher-income families. We discuss potential mechanisms that may account for increasing disparities.

Associations between publicly funded preschool and low-income children's kindergarten readiness: The moderating role of child temperament.

Publicly funded center-based preschool programs were designed to enhance low-income children's early cognitive and social-emotional skills in preparation for kindergarten. In the U.S., the federal Head Start program and state-funded public school-based pre-kindergarten (pre-k) programs are the two primary center-based settings in which low-income children experience publicly funded preschool. Although evidence suggests that these programs generally promote cognitive and social-emotional skills for low-income children overall, whether the benefits of program participation vary for low-income children with difficult temperaments is unexplored. Difficult temperament status is a source of vulnerability that connotes increased risk for poor early school outcomes-risks that may be ameliorated by public preschool programs known to promote kindergarten readiness among other vulnerable populations. Using a nationally representative sample of low-income children (N ≈ 3,000) drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), this study tests whether associations between public preschool participation and children's cognitive and social-emotional skills in kindergarten are moderated by difficult temperament status. We focus on Head Start and public school-based pre-k, comparing both with parental care and with each other. Results provide weak evidence that public preschool's benefits on children's cognitive and social-emotional skills in kindergarten are moderated by child temperament. School-based pre-k is significantly associated with better reading skills relative to parental care only for children with difficult temperaments. Additionally, for children with difficult temperaments, Head Start is significantly associated with better approaches to learning relative to parental care, and with reduced externalizing behavior problems relative to school-based pre-k. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Measuring and understanding social-emotional behaviors in preschoolers from rural Pakistan.

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is widely-used to measure symptoms of common childhood behavioral problems that may lead to mental health difficulties. In a sample of 1,302 highly-disadvantaged mothers and their preschoolers, we evaluated the factor structure and reliability of the parent-report version of the SDQ in rural Pakistan. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the original structure of the SDQ was not appropriate for our data. We created conceptually- and empirically-coherent measures of children's externalizing behavior problems and prosocial skills. Child and family correlates of social-emotional behaviors were similar to those found in other countries, supporting the validity of our new composites. Girls and children with more siblings had fewer externalizing behavior problems and more prosocial behaviors at four years. Further, maternal depressive symptoms and food insecurity were uniquely linked to more externalizing behavior problems at four years. In contrast, maternal education, home environment quality, and social-emotional skills at two years were associated with more prosocial behaviors at four years.

Maternal scaffolding and home stimulation: Key mediators of early intervention effects on children's cognitive development.

This study contributes to the understanding of how early parenting interventions implemented in low- and middle-income countries during the first 2 years of children's lives are sustained longitudinally to promote cognitive skills in preschoolers. We employed path analytic procedures to examine 2 family processes-the quality of home stimulation and maternal scaffolding behaviors-as underlying mechanisms through which a responsive stimulation intervention uniquely predicted children's verbal intelligence, performance intelligence, and executive functioning. The sample included 1,302 highly disadvantaged children and their mothers living in rural Pakistan, who from birth participated in a 2-year, community-based, cluster-randomized, controlled trial designed to promote sensitive and responsive caregiving. Family processes were assessed at 2 developmental time points using parent reports, ratings of home environments, and observed parent-child interactions. Cognitive skills at age 4 were assessed using standardized tests. Controlling for socioeconomic risk (e.g., wealth, maternal education, food insecurity) and individual factors (e.g., gender, growth status), the quality of current home stimulation as well as both earlier and concurrent measures of maternal scaffolding independently mediated the intervention effects on cognitive skills at age 4. In addition, the intervention had a significant direct effect on executive functioning and performance intelligence over and above significant family processes and other covariates. We highlight implications for future program design and evaluation studies. (PsycINFO Database Record