Selective Auditory Attention Associated With Language Skills but Not With Executive Functions in Swedish Preschoolers.

Signe Tonér,Petter Kallioinen,Francisco Lacerda

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.664501

Abstract

Associations between language and executive functions (EFs) are well-established but previous work has often focused more on EFs than on language. To further clarify the language–EF relationship, we assessed several aspects of language and EFs in 431 Swedish children aged 4–6, including selective auditory attention which was measured in an event-related potential paradigm. We also investigated potential associations to age, socioeconomic status (SES), bi-/multilingualism, sex and aspects of preschool attendance and quality. Language and EFs correlated weakly to moderately, indicating that relying on measures of vocabulary alone may overestimate the strength of the language–EF relationship. Contrary to predictions, we found no correlations between selective attention and EFs. There were however correlations between morphosyntactic accuracy and selective auditory attention which is in line with previous work and suggests a specific link between morphosyntax and the ability to suppress irrelevant stimuli. In Sweden, socioeconomic differences are rather small and preschool is universally available, but nevertheless, aspects of parental SES predicted children’s performance on all measures. Bi-/multilingual children performed lower on language also when controlling for SES, highlighting the need for interventions to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes already in preschool. A female advantage was found for both language and EFs, whereas preschool attendance and quality were not significantly related to outcome measures. Future work should include longitudinal studies of language and EF development, include children from diverse SES backgrounds and contribute toward a theoretical framework that further clarifies the language–EF relationship.

Highlights

The development of language skills and executive functions (EFs), including selective attention, seem to be overlapping processes, but the direction and nature of the relationship is still somewhat unclear
Children who gave some verbal output, for instance in form of one-word and/or elliptical utterances in the narrative task were included in analysis, which entails that a score of 0 is possible for several of the language measures
All EF measures correlated significantly with one another (p < 0.001), but the correlations were moderate at best, the strongest correlations were found between the Flanker task and BDS (ρ = 0.47), between Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) and HTKS (ρ = 0.45) and between HTKS and BDS (ρ = 0.43)

Summary

Introduction

The development of language skills and executive functions (EFs), including selective attention, seem to be overlapping processes, but the direction and nature of the relationship is still somewhat unclear. Both language and EF are amenable to improvement (see e.g., Diamond and Lee, 2011; Diamond and Ling, 2016; Grøver et al, 2020; Tarvainen et al, 2020), and improved knowledge about the language-EFs association has possible applications in preschool practices and curricula. For typically developing Swedish preschoolers, little is known about the possible relationships between language and EFs and potential differences in these skills due to factors related to the individual and to the environment. Information Parents provided information via a questionnaire about the child’s age, family background, medical conditions, heredity for language or reading difficulties, languages spoken at home as well as income and educational level.

Results

Discussion

Conclusion