Reflexión y funciones ejecutivas: Bases para el aprendizaje y el desarrollo saludable

Executive function (EF) refers to the neurocognitive processes involved in the deliberate, goal-directed modulation of thought, action, and emotion. Individual differences in EF measured in childhood predict key developmental outcomes, and interventions designed to foster the healthy development of EF have the potential to help children at risk for a wide range of difficulties.  This article briefly describes a theoretical model of EF and its development, the Iterative Reprocessing model that spans levels of analysis and characterizes self-regulation as the product of a dynamic interaction between top-down (reflective) and bottom-up (reactive) influences.Las funciones ejecutivas (FE) hacen referencia a los procesos neurocognitivos involucrados en la modulación intencional del pensamiento, las acciones y las emociones dirigidos a fines. Las diferencias individuales en las EF evaluadas durante la niñez predicen aspectos clave de su desarrollo. Asimismo, las intervenciones diseñadas para fomentar el desarrollo adecuado de las FE tienen el potencial de ayudar a niños con diferentes tipos de riesgo debido a una amplia gama de dificultades. Este artículo describe brevemente un modelo teórico de FE y su desarrollo -el modelo de Reprocesamiento Iterativo, que abarca diferentes niveles de análisis y que caracteriza a la autorregulación como el producto de una interacción dinámica entre influencias de tipo top-down (reflexivas) y bottom-up (reactivas)

Neurophysiological Correlates of Emotion Regulation in Children and Adolescents

& Psychologists consider emotion regulation a critical devel-opmental acquisition. Yet, there has been very little research on the neural underpinnings of emotion regulation across childhood and adolescence. We selected two ERP compo-nents associated with inhibitory control—the frontal N2 and frontal P3. We recorded these components before, during, and after a negative emotion induction, and compared their am-plitude, latency, and source localization over age. Fifty-eight children 5–16 years of age engaged in a simple go/no-go pro-cedure in which points for successful performance earned a valued prize. The temporary loss of all points triggered negative emotions, as confirmed by self-report scales. Both the frontal N2 and frontal P3 decreased in amplitude and la-tency with age, consistent with the hypothesis of increasing cortical efficiency. Amplitudes were also greater following the emotion induction, only for adolescents for the N2 but across the age span for the frontal P3, suggesting different but overlapping profiles of emotion-related control mechanisms. No-go N2 amplitudes were greater than go N2 amplitudes following the emotion induction at all ages, suggesting a consistent effect of negative emotion on mechanisms of re-sponse inhibition. No-go P3 amplitudes were also greater than go P3 amplitudes and they decreased with age, whereas go P3 amplitudes remained low. Finally, source modeling in-dicated a developmental decline in central-posterior midline activity paralleled by increasing activity in frontal midline re-gions suggestive of the anterior cingulate cortex. Negative emotion induction corresponded with an additional right ven-tral prefrontal or temporal generator beginning in middle childhood. &amp

Reflection, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Preschool-Age Children

Faculty advisor: Philip David Zelazo, Ph.DThis research was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

The Role of Negative Priming in Preschoolers' Flexible Rule Use on the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task

Four experiments examined the development of negative priming (NP) in 3 -5-year-old children using as a measure of children's executive function (EF) the dimensional change card sort (DCCS) task. In the NP version of the DCCS, the values of the sorting dimension that is relevant during the preswitch phase are removed during the postswitch phase. The experiments showed that the NP effect observed in the DCCS decreased during the preschool years, and they clarified the circumstances in which NP occurs. Taken together, the findings suggest that the development of EF in early childhood consists in part in disinhibiting attention to information that has previously been suppressed

Autonomy-supportive parenting and associations with child and parent executive function

Autonomy-supportive parenting appears to play an important role in children's executive function (EF) development. However, few studies have accounted for parents' EF skills when examining the link between parenting and child EF in families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. In the current study, parents and their 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 85 dyads) were assessed in the fall of preschool on well-validated behavioral assessments of EF and participated in a dyadic problem-solving task. We found that parent EF and child EF were correlated, both were associated with autonomy-supportive parenting, and these links were not moderated by socioeconomic status. Autonomy support was a predictor of child EF skills above and beyond parent EF, and boot-strapping mediational analyses confirmed that autonomy-supportive behaviors mediated the link between parent-child EF. These results provide initial evidence for the intergenerational transmission of EF through autonomy support

A Generative Connectionist Model of the Development of Rule Use in Children

The cascade correlation algorithm (CASCOR), a generative connectionist model, was used to simulate age-related changes on the dimensional change card sort (DCCS), which has traditionally been used to evaluate the complexity of children's rule-use abilities. Like 2.5-year-olds, inexperienced networks behave as if following one rule; slightly more experienced networks (akin to 3-year-old children) behave as if following a pair of rules; and the most experienced networks (akin to 5-year-olds) behave as if following two pairs of rules. Analysis of the networks' activation levels revealed that mastery of simple rules is a necessary precondition for using higher order rules. The model also generated four novel predictions that can be tested in future research with children