Development of Executive Control Processes in Young Children

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Development of Executive Control Processesin
Young Children

• Kerry Howland, M.S., CCC-SLP
• Department of Speech,
• Language and Hearing Sciences
• Boston University

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What Are Executive Control Processes?

• Welsh and Pennington (1988) define Executive
  Functions as the ability to maintain an
  appropriate problem solving set for attainment of
  a future goal.
• Diamond (2006) emphasizes the executive control
  skills are needed in conditions where going on
  automatic would lead one astray.

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Executive Control Processes

• Managing attentional focus
• Engaging in goal directed behavior/Employing
  strategies
• Inhibiting irrelevant/inappropriate responses
• Planning
• Prioritizing
• Reflecting on the learning process
• Taking anothers perspective

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IMPACT OF EXECUTIVE CONTROL DEFICITS

• Waber (2003) found that executive control skills
  predicted academic success more effectively than
  tests of academic achievement or cognitive
  ability.
• Children with poor EC skills are at high risk for
  dropping out of school.
• Children with poor EC skills are also at high
  risk for social/behavioral problems.
• EC skills are essential to the development of
  theory of mind abilities.

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Executive Systems

• Generally associated with frontal systems,
  specifically the pre-frontal cortex
• Pietrus (2005) Networks almost always have an
  office in the pre-frontal cortex.

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Development of Executive Control Skills

• The pre-frontal cortex is one of the last areas
  of the brain to fully develop.
• Myelin is a coating on axons that serves to
  increase speed of transmission.
• There is a rapid increase in myelination of the
  PFC during adolescence
• This development continues through the early 20s.

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Executive Control and Older Students

• As educators, we have increasingly and
  appropriately focused on development of EC skills
  in middle school and high school
• But... executive control skills dont suddenly
  emerge in adolescence. The foundation is laid in
  early childhood and builds throughout the school
  years.
• We cant afford to wait until middle school to
  work on executive control.

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Environmental Influences

• Development of executive control is driven not
  just by maturation, but also by EXPERIENCE
• Given the right experiences, children can improve
  executive control skills
• Children who live in urban areas are at high risk
  for problems in executive control.

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So...

• We need a developmentally appropriate curriculum
  to directly teach executive control skills from
  the start of school.
• Rather than problem behaviors that need to be
  managed, we need to think of executive control
  processes as skills to be developed

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What does this have to do with speech and
language?

• Executive control processes are intricately
  linked to language development.
• Language is a primary tool for self-regulation,
  so the child with language deficits may, as a
  result, experience problems with executive
  control.
• We cant escape the impact of EC skills in our
  therapy sessions!

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Three Core Executive Control Skills

• Working Memory
• Planning
• Inhibition

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8-12 months

• Working Memory
• Emergence of object permanence.
• Planning
• Emergence of cause-effect and means-ends
  relations.
• Inhibition
• Detour Reaching
• Searching for a displaced object

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12-24 months

• Working Memory
• Large increase in vocabulary, ability to refer to
  objects not visibly present.
• Persistence increases? tantrums and self directed
  behavior
• Planning
• Develops and sustains plan for accomplishing a
  goal.
• Inhibition
• Can inhibit actions that are not consistent with
  immediate goals.
• Little self-regulation Adults act as regulators.

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Pre-School Years

• Working Memory
• Can hold information on-line to recount
  experiences.
• Keeps track of events in a story becomes
  interested in plot driven stories.
• Planning
• Major advance in ability to conceptualize beyond
  what is here and now.
• Carries through on a sequence of events in play.
• Change from 3-4 year olds in the degree of
  explicit planning during play.

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Pre-School Years

• Primary Goal Development of Inhibition
• Significant changes in ability to self-manage
  inhibition occur between three and four years of
  age.
• These changes co-occur and are thought to
  underlie the development of theory of mind skills.

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Inhibition

• The ability to stop a pre-potent response from
  occurring.
• Often measured by Go/No Go Tasks
• A fundamental ability that is key to
• Regulating attention
• Social adaptation
• Effective learning
• Inhibition is HARD WORK

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Development of Inhibition

• 3 year olds can understand the rules to Go NO GO
  games, but they often cannot inhibit their
  response despite their knowledge (Carlson et al,
  2004).
• 4 year olds begin to inhibit effectively.
• Skill at inhibition continues to develop over the
  early school years.

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Inhibition and Theory of Mind

• We know 3 year old have trouble with TOM tasks.
• Requires a high degree of working memory
• Requires inhibition of the pre-potent response
  (the childs own knowledge)

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Inhibition in Children at Risk for Language and
Reading Impairment

• Inhibitory control is well established four years
  of age in typically developing children,
  especially those with pre-school experience.
• For many of our at-risk children, development of
  inhibition lags behind.
• Lack of inhibitory control becomes socially and
  academically penalizing by kindergarten and first
  grade

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EC in Typical K-1st Grade Children

• Development of planning skills predominates
• Children create elaborate pretend play schemas
  with multiple roles.
• Children begin to employ strategies in playing
  sports and board games.
• Children begin to self regulate their behavior
  and use verbal mediation to do so.
• Sustained attention increases dramatically.
• EC skills are used heavily to acquire academic
  skills, especially reading.
• All of these skills will be impeded if inhibition
  has not developed sufficiently.

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Assessment of EC Skills in Young Children

• Isquith BRIEF Pre-School Rating Scale.
• Isquith Shape Box
• Storybook characters of different shapes and
  colors.
• Child names colors not shapes
• Hats are added, child names shape of hat, or
  color of non-hatted character.
• Dimensional Card Sort Game
• Tower of Hanoi
• CPT has been used with pre-schoolers.

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Inhibition Skills in At-Risk Children

• Boston Public School Early Learning Center
• Children are teacher-referred for support in
  developing phonological awareness skills.
• We noted that a high percentage of the k2-1st
  grade children who were referred had trouble with
  inhibition.

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Facilitating Inhibition

• Distance helps
• Hala and Russel (2001) found that three year olds
  could perform strategic deception if they pointed
  with a pointer, not with their own hand.
• Children perform more successfully on false
  location tasks if the change in location is
  described but not observed by the child.
• Dowsett and Livesy (2000) found that inhibition
  can be directly taught
• Performance on a go/no-go task improved after
  children practiced a cognitive flexibility task
  (similar to Wisconsin Card Sort).
• Just training inhibition alone is not as
  effective as embedding inhibition into a more
  complex task.

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Incorporating Inhibition Into Therapy

• Games
• Visual Reminders
• Prophylactic Cueing

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Combining Inhibition and Phonological Awareness

• Tap the card that starts with a given sound?
  suppress responses to other cards.
• Feed cards with target sounds to puppet, throw
  the others in the trash.
• Variations on UNO (letter and color rather than
  number and color).
• Board Games that require go/no-go responses.
• Earning an inhibition game as a reward for
  successful participation in the session.

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Games to Develop Inhibition

• Duck Duck Goose
• Freeze Tag
• Simon Says (simplify for the younger child, do
  what the good puppet says, not what the
  naughty puppet says).
• Slap (Tap) Jack (we do this with letters)
• Musical Chairs
• Mother May I?

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Visual Reminders

• Rule board with simple visual symbols. (we use
  boardmaker symbols)
• Thought bubbles and whispered responses to help
  inhibit talking out of turn.
• Self-cues
• Fingers to lips to inhibit talking
• Hands behind back to help resist touching
  materials.

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Prophylactic Cueing

• Treat inhibition as a skill that is being taught.
• Cue and remind before mistakes are made.
• If needed cue continuously through the no-go
  time.
• Set small goals and make them attainable.
• Make it motivating, fun and desirable to inhibit.

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Perspective Taking

• Inhibition co-develops with theory of mind
  skills.
• Build theory of mind games into circle time
  activities.
• Play barrier games in the classroom.
• Discuss character perspectives, feelings and
  during story telling activities.

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Building Planning Skills

• K0/K1
• Plan out pretend play scenarios, participate in
  pretend play with the children.
• Give out roles, discuss the story line of the
  play
• Plan out art activities with a visual sequence of
  steps to be followed
• K2/1st grade
• Emphasize planning in story telling activities
  (what is the problem, how can they solve the
  problem? What should they do first?)
• Plan aloud group projects like science
  experiments. Use visual cues for each step of
  the plan.
• Verbalize your own planning process in simple
  terms throughout the school day.
• Readers Theater is a great way to combine
  planning, perspective taking, inhibition and
  reading fluency

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Strategies to Remember

• Keep in mind that you are teaching a skill not
  managing a behavior this will free you up to
  bring your expertise as a teacher!
• Remember the child may not be able to inhibit a
  response even when he or she knows and can recite
  the rule.
• Provide a behavior to replace the one that needs
  to be inhibited Tell the child what TO do.
• Break the skill into manageable steps.
• Use visual cues to remind children what is
  expected.
• Remind often, scold seldom.
• Give the child a way to remind themselves.
• Use rewards and motivators. Executive control is
  hard work!

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References

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