儿童的执行性功能

执行性功能是指为达到未来目标而保持适当的问题解决定势的能力，是儿童认知发展的重要方面。章简要介绍了儿童执行性功能的概念、构成成分、研究方法、年龄发展等问题。发展心理学领域的儿童执行性功能研究的深度和广度有待于进一步加强。     

Executive functions in kindergarten children at risk for developmental coordination disorder

Executive functioning (EF) is a key cognitive process for development. Little is known about EF in Kindergarten children at risk for developmental coordination disorder (DCD), despite this age being one of the most critical and intensive period of motor and cognitive development. In our investigation we compared EF in kindergarten children at risk for DCD with Typically Developing (TD) children. Participants were 36 Italian children, 18 at risk for DCD (9 boys and 9 girls) who had a mean age of 4.6 years and 18 TD (9 boys and 9 girls) who had a mean age of 4.6. Executive functions were measured by tasks targeting cold executive functioning (working memory, fluency, inhibitory control) and two assessments of hot executive functioning (Snack Delay and Gift Wrap). Significant differences were found between children at risk for DCD and TD children on cold EF tasks of visuo-spatial working memory abilities, fluency and inhibitory control, but not on hot EF tasks. The findings suggest that it is advisable to implement preschool cognitively challenging physical activities programmes.     

学龄前儿童执行功能与注意缺陷多动症状的元分析:抑制控制和工作记忆的作用

注意缺陷多动障碍(ADHD)的执行功能缺陷理论已在学龄期儿童和青少年中被广泛证明,学龄前是执行功能发展的重要时期,学龄前儿童执行功能与ADHD症状的关系尚存争议.采用元分析的方法整合国内外近十年的文献,探讨学龄前儿童执行功能与ADHD症状的关系,并分析影响因素.通过文献检索,纳入符合要求的文献28篇,共70个有效数据,...     

Executive functioning and word reading in Hong Kong Chinese children: A 1-year longitudinal perspective

This study examined the bidirectionality between kindergarten children's executive functioning (EF) and word reading across two time points. Participants were 523 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking children (mean age at Time 2 = 64.59 months; 52.9% male) and their parents. At Time 1, children were administered the measures of EF skills: inhibitory control, attention shifting, working memory and Chinese word reading. They were reassessed with these measures at Time 2 one year later. Results from the cross-lagged panel model revealed that, controlling for child age, gender and parental education levels, children's word reading at Time 1 was significantly predictive of their working memory at Time 2, but that the three EF skills at Time 1 were not predictive of word reading at Time 2. These findings underscored the role of early word reading in promoting children's working memory.     

注意缺陷多动障碍儿童的抑制控制与转换

目的:探讨注意缺陷多动障碍(ADHD)儿童的抑制控制和转换功能.方法:采用图形选择测验、威斯康星卡片分类测验(WCST)、昼夜Stroop测验和字色Stroop测验,以23例ADHD儿童和22例普通对照儿童为研究对象,对其抑制控制能力、转换能力进行测试比较.结果:1.ADHD儿童完成图形选择测验转换任务时间较普通对照组儿童明显延长,犯错误数明显增多;2.ADHD儿童完成威斯康星卡片分类测验的错误应答数、持续性错误数明显比普通儿童多,差异极其显著;3.两组儿童完成昼夜Stroop测验时冲突任务平均时上有显著性差异,ADHD儿童的反应时多于普通儿童;4.ADHD儿童完成字色Stroop测验的干扰任务反应时较普通对照组儿童显著延长.结论:ADHD儿童的抑制控制能力和转换能力显著低于普通儿童.     

Fluid reasoning,working memory and planning ability in assessment of risk for mathematical difficulties

ABSTRACT

The demands on mathematical problem-solving have increased in almost all school systems internationally and may constitute a barrier for children with special educational needs (SEN). This study explored the role of fluid reasoning (FR), working memory (WM) and complex executive function of planning (EF) in children (N = 62) referred for assessment of SEN, and specifically of risk for mathematical difficulties (MD). Performances on FR, WM and complex EF of planning were used to predict risk for MD. Results showed that planning ability predicted children at risk for MD, beyond FR or WM ability, when comparing with children not at risk for MD. It was concluded that assessing the complex EF of planning in addition to FR and WM ability is crucial in identifying children at risk for MD. The importance of understanding how planning ability affects children’s mathematical problem-solving is discussed, in relation to assessment and teaching practices.     

浅谈高校机关作风建设

高校机关作风的好坏。影响学校的形象和办学效益。好的机关作风应该具有过硬的思想作风、强烈的敬业精神、高度的责任意识、优良的服务态度、锐意改革的创新精神和团结协作的大局观念。加强高校机关作风建设．应该致力于建设服务型、学习型、效能型、节约型、务实型和创新型机关。     

Attentional and executive function behaviours in children with poor working memory

The purpose of this study was to explore the profiles of classroom behaviour relating to attention and executive functions in children with very poor working memory, and to test the hypothesis that inattentive behaviour and working memory problems co-occur. Teachers rated problem behaviours of 52 children with low working memory scores aged 5/6 and 9/10 years on teacher rating measures of attention and executive function behaviours. The majority of children with low working memory scores obtained atypically high ratings of cognitive problems/ inattentive symptoms, and were judged to have short attention spans, high levels of distractibility, problems in monitoring the quality of their work, and difficulties in generating new solutions to problems. These results extend previous findings that working memory problems and inattentive behaviour co-occur to a non-clinical sample. It is suggested that reduced working memory capacity may play a causal role in the problem behaviours of these children.     

War and children in Finland during the Second World War

This article focuses on Finnish children during the Second World War, looking at children from two different points of view. First, it provides information on around 70,000 children who were transferred to Sweden and Denmark; so‐called “war children”. Second, it discusses the results of a survey of Finns born between 1927 and 1938 who stayed in Finland during the war years.

The majority of “war children” lived in private homes and many of them forgot their Finnish roots; around 15,000 emigrated permanently. Many of these transferred children do not feel at home in either country. Their educational level is lower than the average Finn’s, but their health is better owing to good medical care and nutrition during the war. The Finns who spent their childhood in Finland during the war suffered from hunger. Those in the countryside had better lives than those in cities or evacuees from the war zone. The children’s nightmares faded away with time and only a minority still see tanks and bombings in their dreams.

Compared with those from other European countries, Finnish children lived well and avoided seeing the horrors of war. However, they had to work and assist non‐governmental organisations more than did English children.     

Longitudinal contributions of executive functioning and visual-spatial skills to mathematics learning in young Chinese children

One hundred sixty-five Hong Kong Chinese children were administered measures of early mathematics, visual-spatial skills, and executive functioning (working memory, inhibition, shifting, updating) once in kindergarten (mean age?=?62.80 months, SD?=?3.74) and again in first grade (mean age?=?77.25 months, SD?=?4.60). In kindergarten, visual-spatial skills, inhibition, shifting, and working memory were all uniquely associated with concurrent mathematics performance; in first grade, only working memory and visual-spatial skills were significantly related to concurrent mathematics abilities. Furthermore, working memory and visual-spatial skills in kindergarten predicted 19% of the variance in children’s mathematics performance in first grade, beyond the autoregressive effects of mathematics performance in kindergarten as well as demographic variables. Findings highlight the importance of working memory and visual-spatial skills for young Chinese children in mastering mathematics.     

Deaf children and children with ADHD in the inclusive classroom: working memory matters

This study compared the working memory functioning of deaf children, children with ADHD and typically developing children. Working memory is involved in the storage and mental manipulation of information during classroom learning activities that are crucial for the acquisition of complex skills and knowledge. Thus, it is important to determine how these groups compare in this regard as this has implications for teaching them together in an inclusive classroom. Simple and complex visuo-spatial and verbal working memory were assessed in 24 children with ADHD and 20 control children with no diagnosed ADHD, to determine whether any differences existed between these groups. A second comparison occurred between the simple and complex visuo-spatial working memory of the latter two groups, as well as 24 deaf children, all matched on age, gender and home language. The control group scored significantly higher than the deaf children and the children with ADHD on all components of simple and complex working memory. The implications of this finding are that children with ADHD and deaf children may share similar working memory profiles, making it easier to accommodate both sets of children together in the inclusive classroom. Suggestions are given for how educators could assist these children by reducing the demands on working memory.     

Self-regulated learning and executive function: exploring the relationships in a sample of adolescent males

This study investigated relationships between SRL and EF in a sample of 254 school-aged adolescent males. Two hypotheses were tested: that self-reported measures of SRL and EF are closely related and that as different aspects of EF mature during adolescence, the corresponding components of SRL should also improve, leading to an age-related increase in the correlation between EF and SRL. Two self-report instruments were used: the strategies for self-regulated learning survey (SSRLS) and the behavioural rating instrument of executive function (BRIEF). Strong correlations between the measures of EF and SRL were found, especially in areas associated with metacognitive processes. Correlations between EF and SRL were found, with weaker correlations between behavioural regulation and SRL were found to be weaker for the younger participants in the sample while the relationship between EF and SRL appears to grow stronger during the initial years of high school even though self-reported levels of EF along with motivation for SRL and important components of SRL such as goal setting and planning were found to decrease with age. Decreasing levels of motivation for learning during adolescence are speculated to moderate the deployment of SRL and EF in a school context.     

Preschool provision and children of migrants in Beijing

Chinese children with an urban household registration (hukou) normally attend subsidized preschools for three years prior to primary school. This is an experience available to relatively few of China's many millions of migrant children whose families are registered as rural residents but choose to migrate to urban areas. This paper presents research, in the form of a case study, which examined an informal playgroup for rural-registered migrant children whose parents worked in a Beijing market. The playgroup was established by volunteers to provide an affordable, though limited, alternative preschool experience for migrant children. The original programme was derived from community concepts that initially underpinned the “Sure Start” intervention in the United Kingdom. In the paper, survey data is utilized to determine if an informal playgroup can be a positive alternative in a context where migrant children have little capacity to access the preschool programmes available to their urban counterparts.     

Short-term memory and working memory in children as a function of language-specific knowledge in English and Spanish

This study determined the degree to which the phonological and executive components of memory reflect language-specific capacities in Spanish and English vocabulary. We tested whether the memory processes in a sample of English language learners found in Grade 1 also emerged in Grade 2. For the total sample (N = 90), Grade 1 English STM measures shared a common construct with Spanish STM, whereas Grade 2 STM measures were language dependent. In contrast, WM measures were language independent across grades 1 and 2. When vocabulary subgroups were analyzed, a subgroup × type of memory task emerged. The results showed that performance on Spanish and English STM tasks were a function of high and low Spanish and English vocabulary knowledge, whereas WM was not. The relationship between language-specific processes in memory was discussed.     

Theory of mind,executive function and social competence in boys with ADHD

Abstract

Twenty-two boys with a diagnosis of ADHD were com-KEYWORDS pared with 22 typically developing boys on an advanced theory of mind task and on two tasks measuring aspects of executive function. Parents completed rating forms measuring general social competence, as well as mentalizing and non-mentalizing social behaviours. There were no differences between the groups on the advanced theory of mind measure.The children with ADHD scored more poorly than controls on an inhibition task but not on a planning task once age and IQ had been covaried. Ratings of social competence were correlated with theory of mind and executive function ability for the typically developing controls but not for the children with ADHD. The results are discussed in terms of inhibitory and social information processing accounts of ADHD.     

Executive function mediates socio-economic and racial differences in early academic achievement

Although associations between socio-economic status, race, and academic achievement are well established, the specific mechanisms that underlie the relation remain incompletely understood. This longitudinal investigation, involving a sample of 206 children from economically and racially diverse backgrounds, examined the influence of executive function and expressive vocabulary assessed in kindergarten on academic achievement in Grade 1. The use of structural equation modeling revealed that both SES and race had indirect effects on achievement test scores through their effects on executive function, even when accounting for differences in expressive vocabulary. As expected, executive function was more strongly related to math than literacy achievement. The results provide support for the importance of targeting executive skills and intervening early in efforts to improve academic performance in young children. Moreover, the findings suggest that improving executive function may mitigate the impact of social risk factors on academic achievement.     

The contributions of parental management language to executive function in preschool children

This study investigated relations between preschoolers’ emergent executive function skills and their interactions with parents, with particular focus on the verbal utterances parents use to guide children's behavior (i.e., management language). Parent–child dyads (n = 127) were videotaped during a structured play task and the frequency of two types of management language, Direction (high control) and Suggestion (low control), was observed. Children's executive function was assessed using the Head–Toes–Knees–Shoulders (HTKS) task. Latent growth modeling was used to investigate relations between management language and the development of children's executive function. Direction language (i.e., commands) was negatively associated with children's age three executive function but not significantly related to the rate of executive function development over time. Conversely, Suggestion language (i.e., questions and statements that offer children some degree of choice) was positively related to executive function at age three but negatively related to growth. The potential importance of management language as a parenting behavior that contributes to various aspects of children's self-regulation during preschool and kindergarten is discussed.     

Phonological working memory, phonological awareness and language in literacy difficulties in Brazilian children

One of the most usual flaws that lead to literacy disability regards cognitive difficulties and alterations some children present in the literacy process. Many studies have found alterations in phonological processing, more specifically in phonological working memory (PWM) and phonological awareness (PA). Therefore, our aim was to identify alterations in skills of phonological working memory, phonological awareness and language (semantic, syntactic and phonological aspects) of Brazilian children with literacy disabilities (age 7–8). They were divided into two groups: (1) Group of Normal Literacy (NL); and (2) Group With Literacy Disabilities (LD). The evaluation comprised tests that assessed general cognitive functions and the skills at stake. The LD presented a poorer performance than the NL in the skills of PWM, PA and language aspects. The factor analysis showed that these skills prevailed in differentiating the groups. Thus, children with literacy disabilities presented deficits in phonological processing and language. These deficits seem to be a result of alterations of the phonological representations and poor language skills that are prior to the literacy period. Consequently, we believe that the early identification of these alterations can be very useful for the prevention of future literacy problems.     

Optimization of membership function for fuzzy control based on genetic algorithm and its applications

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