Abstract
Executive function (EF) has long been considered to be a unitary, domain-general cognitive ability. However, recent research suggests differentiating “hot” affective and “cool” cognitive aspects of EF. Yet, findings regarding this two-factor construct are still inconsistent. In particular, the development of this factor structure remains unclear and data on school-aged children is lacking. Furthermore, studies linking EF and overweight or obesity suggest that EF contributes to the regulation of eating behavior. So far, however, the links between EF and eating behavior have rarely been investigated in children and non-clinical populations. First, we examined whether EF can be divided into hot and cool factors or whether they actually correspond to a unitary construct in middle childhood. Second, we examined how hot and cool EF are associated with different eating styles that put children at risk of becoming overweight during development. Hot and cool EF were assessed experimentally in a non-clinical population of 1657 elementary-school children (aged 6–11 years). The “food approach” behavior was rated mainly via parent questionnaires. Findings indicate that hot EF is distinguishable from cool EF. However, only cool EF seems to represent a coherent functional entity, whereas hot EF does not seem to be a homogenous construct. This was true for a younger and an older subgroup of children. Furthermore, different EF components were correlated with eating styles, such as responsiveness to food, desire to drink, and restrained eating in girls but not in boys. This shows that lower levels of EF are not only seen in clinical populations of obese patients but are already associated with food approach styles in a normal population of elementary school-aged girls. Although the direction of effect still has to be clarified, results point to the possibility that EF constitutes a risk factor for eating styles contributing to the development of overweight in the long-term.
Highlights
Self-regulation, which is one of the major achievements in early childhood, is facilitated through a variety of processes which are referred to as executive functions
The 3 cool Executive function (EF) tasks showed low to modest positive correlations with the fluid intelligence measure, whereas the 2 hot EF tasks did not
Neuroimaging studies suggest that the VM-prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is associated with hot EF, plays a role in the reinforcing value of food, satiety, and the control of eating (Rolls, 2004), we did not find the expected negative associations between hot EF and food approach behavior
Summary
Self-regulation, which is one of the major achievements in early childhood, is facilitated through a variety of processes which are referred to as executive functions. Executive function (EF) has been found to be strongly (but not exclusively) linked to the prefrontal cortex (PFC; for a meta-analysis see Alvarez and Emory, 2006) and enables the control of thoughts, actions, and emotions (e.g., Zelazo et al, 2008) via a number of related but distinct subfunctions, including shifting, updating, and inhibition (Miyake et al, 2000). EF has long been considered to be a unitary, domaingeneral cognitive function with its subfunctions working together in a consistent fashion across different situations and content domains (e.g., Zelazo et al, 1997). This assumption was partly based on traditional theories emphasizing exclusively one facet of EF measured by relatively abstract, decontextualized problems. A distinction has been proposed between cognitive “cool” EF, which is activated when solving abstract novel problems, and affective “hot” EF, which is required for problems demanding high affective involvement or flexible appraisals of the affective significance of a stimulus (Zelazo and Müller, 2002)
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