North American Ed - Coping and competence

2.4 Executive function

Malik is demonstrating an interrelated set of regulatory skills known as executive function. We continue to develop executive function skills throughout life.

Mastery of executive function skills help us regulate our emotions, behaviour and attention and ultimately reach our goals.

The following video from the Harvard Center for the Developing Child provides an overview of executive function and explains how executive function skills help prepare children to cope well in school and in life.

Now read some information from the website on executive function and child development. Explore the second resource that provides practical examples about ways to promote executive function skills for various ages of children.

Dr. Philip Zelazo, a developmental psychologist and neuroscientist from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, describes what is meant by the term executive function, how it relates to self-regulation and elaborates on the three processes involved.

Differences in executive function explain why some children seem much more ready for school – to listen, to show some independence, to be able to complete a task – than others. In the following clip, Zelazo explains that executive function is a key developmental outcome.

Executive function can easily be observed in many daily tasks and interactions in children’s daily lives. As you watch the next video, consider the child’s ability to stay on task and the various ways his attention is being challenged.

The next short video shows a child mastering matching numbers on a small game device.

In the next clips, Zelazo describes the emergence of executive function and how it is measured by researchers during infancy and the preschool years.

Dr. Jo-Anne LeFevre, director of the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University, provides another example of how children’s spatial attention or working memory can be measured.

Executive function and brain development

Executive function is orchestrated by the brain’s prefrontal cortex (PFC – the cerebral cortex covering the front part of the frontal lobe) with neural pathways connected to the limbic system. In the next two videos, Dr. Bryan Kolb, from the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge, explains how play affects brain development and the role of the PFC and the frontal lobe.

Dr. Megan Gunnar, former director of the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, discusses findings from the Bucharest studies (see Ecology of Childhood module, 2.2 Early child development programs for more information) that relate to children’s long-term attention abilities. Gunnar points out the impact of early adversity on brain development and later attention regulation.

Supporting executive function

Adults can encourage and support the development of executive function in children but, as Zelazo explains below, it is important that they understand it develops gradually.

Mindfulness

Recently, a state of being called “mindfulness” has become prevalent in education as well as in popular culture. Mindfulness means staying calm and focused in the moment and not being judgmental of your reactions – rather like the “calmly focused and alert” state described by Shanker on p. 1.1 of this module. In this next video, Gunnar describes new research related to mindfulness and its effect on children’s abilities to attend.

Does teaching children mindfulness techniques, such as sitting still and focusing on their breath, really make a difference? Dr. Kimberly Shonert-Reichl is the NoVo Foundation Endowed Chair in Social and Emotional Learning and Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Former Applied Developmental Psychologist and a Professor in the Human Development, Learning, and Culture area in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC); and the Former Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) in the School of Population and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. In the next video, Dr. Shonert-Reichl describes the Wave 6 results in British Columbia as well as her research on mindfulness with school-age children and kindergarten children.

Lying and executive function

Dr. Kang Lee, from the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study at the University of Toronto, studies the development of lying throughout childhood. He also does cross-cultural comparisons that highlight how different cultures view lying and situations in which it is considered acceptable. In the next videos, Lee explains some of his research and the connection between the development of lying and executive function.