Title: Supporting cognitive and academic development in children at risk.
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Executive function (EF), the ability to regulate thoughts and actions, develops rapidly during childhood, supporting increasingly complex and adaptive behaviours. Emerging EF promotes greater autonomy and predicts life success. Specifically, it supports attention in the classroom and the ability to stay on task (e.g., ignore distractions, resist engaging in inattentive or disruptive behaviours, follow instructions), and therefore predicts learning and academic achievement to an even greater extent than intelligence or precursor literacy or mathematical skills. From early childhood on, EF is lower in children raised in low socioeconomic environments relative to children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Lower EF in these children, which represent about one in six children growing up in Western societies, often becomes more severe over time and is a major risk factor for developmental delay, academic failure, and criminality. Children with lower EF skills tend to have poorer physical and mental health, lower income, and to commit more crimes in adulthood. Cognitive training interventions may be an effective way to compensate for the long-term risks associated with lower EF in children from low socioeconomic backgrounds and set these children on a successful track. Extant training interventions have focused on basic EF processes, trying to encourage engagement of more EF resources, and task-specific strategies. Such training programmes have yielded promising EF gains but gains generalize rarely or inconsistently to cognitive and academic skills. We propose to move beyond these limitations by innovatively targeting meta-cognitive reflection on and coordination of basic EF processes (meta-EF). Such coordination ensures adaptive behaviours through differential engagement and dynamic adjustment of EF processes to match constantly changing task demands. Thus, meta-EF training should encourage not only more but also, and foremost, better and more adaptive EF engagement. We investigate basic-EF and meta-EF training programs in children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, with an emphasis on transfer to academic abilities. Specifically, children will be trained either only on engagement of EF processes, or on engagement of EF processes in conjunction with reflection on the best way to do so as a function of the specific task demands (whereas a third group of children will serve as controls to ensure that any training-related gains cannot be due to greater motivation). Critically, we examine transfer of cognitive gains to other cognitive abilities (e.g., reasoning) and academic learning (i.e., literacy and mathematics). Children will be recruited in three countries (Germany, UK, Japan) to ensure greater generalizability, and two age groups (4-6 vs. 8-10 years) to examine whether EF training is most effective and economically strategic earlier in development. This work will generate concrete educational instruments and contribute to acting against ever-increasing socioeconomic disparities by improving children's opportunities for educational equality.


Research activity codes: 3.1 PRIMARY PREVENTION INTERVENTIONS TO MODIFY BEHAVIOURS OR PROMOTE WELL-BEING
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH