Title: Executive function skills in chilean preschool children /
Authors: Barata, M. Clara.; Harvard University.
Year: 2011
Subjects: Child development Chile.; Preschool children Education Chile.; Readiness for school Chile.
Abstract: Executive functions are a set of cognitive processes integral to the emerging self-regulation of behavior, and the development of social and cognitive competence in young children. There is limited research on the factor structure of executive function during the preschool years, and it is mostly restricted to English-speaking samples. There is some evidence that children's early executive functions provide scaffolding for emergent academic skills in preschool, but that evidence is mostly restricted to samples from high-income countries. In these two studies, a sample of 1,083 4-year olds from low-income urban neighborhoods of Chile completed a battery of executive-function and emergent mathematics and literacy tasks. Using confirmatory factor analysis and structural modeling, I tested a set of hypotheses about the factor structure of executive functions and the relationship between executive functions at the beginning of preschool and emergent mathematics and literacy skills at the end of preschool.