Children's Cognitive Flexibility Research Articles

Cognitive Flexibility Moderates the Predictive Effect of Phonological Awareness on Focus Structures in Chinese Preschool Children.

Focus structures, a complex aspect of information structure in language, have garnered significant attention in psycholinguistics. The question of whether Chinese preschoolers aged 4-6 years possess the ability to process focus structures in oral communication, and how cognitive factors influence this ability, remains a research focal point. To address this, we recruited 100 Chinese preschoolers aged 4-6 years as participants in our study. This study manipulated the positions of focus particles in sentences to investigate the impact of phonological awareness on young children's comprehension of focus structures. Additionally, we examined the mediating roles of cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control. Our findings indicate the following: (1) phonological awareness positively predicted the accuracy of focus structural processing; (2) inhibitory control did not significantly predict the accuracy of focus structural processing; and (3) cognitive flexibility partially mediated the relationship between phonological awareness and focus structural comprehension. These results confirmed the predictive effect of cognitive flexibility on children's comprehension of focus structures. Moreover, they demonstrate that young children's phonological awareness can predict their focus structure comprehension ability through the mediating role of cognitive flexibility. This suggests that children's cognitive flexibility can aid in understanding sentences with focus structures.

Creating classrooms for change: A qualitative study of practices to promote children's skills for adaptability in primary schools in Kigali, Rwanda

Major recent global challenges have highlighted the increasing importance of education systems fostering children's skills for adaptability and capacity for responding to change. Competences such as creativity, innovation and problem solving could be particularly valuable, but in countries like Rwanda little is currently known about how schools and teachers nurture them in the classroom. This paper adopts a psychological framework based on learners’ cognitive flexibility to address that gap, drawing on exploratory qualitative data from interviews and lesson observations in primary schools in Kigali, Rwanda. The findings identify teachers’ use of practical exercises, group work and frequent transitions between activities and languages as potentially supporting different aspects of children's cognitive flexibility. The paper concludes with implications for nurturing learners’ skills for adaptability in similar low-income contexts.

The Influence of Classroom Size and Window View on Young Children's Executive Functions and Physiological Responses, Based on VR Technology.

Despite the increasing enrollment of young children in childcare institutes, there have been few empirical studies on the effects of spatial elements on their development. This study explored the impact of preschool classroom size (large vs. small) and window view (natural vs. built environment) on young children's executive functions and physiological stress responses, using cortisol and heart rate variability (HRV) as indicators and employing virtual reality (VR) technology. Out of 144 participants aged 61-85 months, three were excluded due to missing values and outliers. Executive function tests were administered, and saliva samples were collected before and after VR exposure; HRV data were gathered during the experience. ANCOVA results indicated significant improvements in cognitive flexibility, as measured based on the Dimensional Change Card Sorting task, in the large classroom condition, and a marginally significant decrease in visuo-spatial working memory, as measured with the Corsi block task, in the small classroom condition. The classroom size conditions did not significantly differ in cortisol response, but the large classroom condition showed marginally significant HRV indices, suggesting increased relaxation. No significant effects on executive functions or physiological responses were found in either window view condition. Overall, the findings suggest that classroom size may influence young children's cognitive flexibility.

Viewing and playing fantastical events does not affect children's cognitive flexibility and prefrontal activation

Media exposure, such as viewing fantastical content, can have negative, immediate, and long-term effects on children's executive function. A recent study showed that watching fantastical content on a tablet can impair children's inhibitory control and prefrontal activation during the performance of a task. However, the same effect was not observed when children played fantastical games on a tablet. We aimed to replicate and extend this research by examining whether the same effects are observed during a cognitive flexibility task. In this study, preschool children (N = 32, 15 girls, Mean age in months (SD) = 60.6 (10)) viewed or played fantastical content on a tablet and performed a Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task before or after the media exposure. We assessed children's behavioral performance and prefrontal activation, as measured by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and found no behavioral or neural changes after exposure. Our analyses using the Bayes factor supported the null hypothesis that children's cognitive flexibility is unaffected by watching or playing fantastical content.

Growth of Executive Functions in Preschool-Age Children During the COVID-19 Lockdown: Empirical Evidence.

During the lockdown for COVID-19, children were limited in a number of activities which are essential for the development of executive functions (play, social interaction, and organized sport). Earlier studies found an increase in executive function issues in children during the pandemic, based on caregivers' reports. The present study was a pioneer in exploring the dynamics of children's executive function development during the lockdown. Our purpose was to explore the effect of the lockdown on the growth of executive functions in children over a one-year period, as compared to their peers before the pandemic. The sample consisted of two cohorts of children. All the children had been attending the same kindergartens but in different periods of time. The executive functions of both groups were assessed twice, with a year's break in-between (the first group was assessed before the pandemic; the second, during the pandemic). These groups were comparable in gender composition, age, and family's place of residence. The results have confirmed concerns about the slower growth of executive functioning in children during the lockdown versus their peers before the pandemic, especially for cognitive flexibility and working memory. Inhibition was not significantly affected by the lockdown. Moderation analysis showed that the lockdown impacted girls differently than boys in terms of working memory. The negative effect of social restrictions on working memory was significantly higher in females. Our findings illuminate the negative effects the pandemic-related social restrictions had on the growth of children's cognitive flexibility and working memory. For working memory, the effect of social isolation varied depending on the child's gender.

Executive functions and science achievement during the five-to-seven-year shift.

Executive functions (EF) are domain-general cognitive skills that predict foundational academic skills such as literacy and numeracy. However, less is known about the relation between EFs and science achievement. The nature of this relation might be explained by the theory of mutualism, which states that development is the result of complex and interacting processes, in which growth in one domain influences growth in another domain. The present study examined the bidirectional associations between science achievement and children's cognitive flexibility and working memory in a nationally representative sample of children in the United States (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 [ECLS-K:2011]; N = 18,174). Using random intercepts cross-lagged panel modeling, results revealed a heterogeneous pattern of associations between EF and science achievement, consistent with mutualism theory. Trait-like and construct stability emerged in the between-person and within-person estimates of EF and science. Cognitive flexibility and working memory in kindergarten each predicted science achievement in first grade. Science achievement at the beginning of first grade predicted cognitive flexibility at the end of first grade. There were also bidirectional associations between working memory and science achievement from the beginning to the end of the first grade year. Although effect sizes were small, findings reveal the complex interplay between EF and science achievement during early childhood and highlight a core tenet of mutualism theory-that small gains in academic and cognitive domains are positively associated with future skills and abilities within and across domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The neurobehavioral relationship between executive function and creativity during early childhood.

Increasing evidence from behavior and neuroimaging research indicates that executive function (EF) is related to creativity. However, most of these studies focused on adult and adolescent populations. The relationship between EF and creativity is unknown when EF undergoes rapid development during early childhood, due to the preschoolers' marginal skills of expressing their ideas, orally or in writing. Using a nonverbal, open-ended test, the present study examined whether creative thinking was related to cognitive flexibility in young children. Preschool children (N=26) performed the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) and the Unusual Box Test (UBT), while their brain activation was recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). We did not find any significant correlation between children's cognitive flexibility and creative thinking. However, fNIRS analyses showed that children's brain activation in the lateral prefrontal regions was significantly greater during the test phases of the UBT. Additionally, children who strongly recruited their ventrolateral prefrontal regions during the post-switch phases of the DCCS recruited the same regions while performing the UBT. Taken together, these findings suggest that children recruit their lateral prefrontal regions when expressing creative thinking, and that such creative thinking could be partially supported by cognitive flexibility in early childhood.

Are online games a blessing or evil? The moderating role of self-worth

Online games have gained prominence in people's lives. While some studies have demonstrated that online games damage students’ cognitive flexibility, others have illustrated that they improve players’ cognitive flexibility. From the perspective of self-worth orientation theory, this study hypothesized that self-worth moderates the relationship between online game use and cognitive flexibility. To explore this hypothesis, 110 participants were recruited to report online game use, self-worth, and cognitive flexibility using E-prime software. The results showed that self-worth moderated the relationship between online game use and generalization, conceptual insight, cognitive focus, and conceptual plasticity. In the case of high self-worth, playing online puzzle games can improve students’ conceptual plasticity. In the case of low self-worth, playing online puzzle games reduces generalization, cognitive focus, and conceptual plasticity, while playing online shooter games reduces conceptual insight. These results indicate that self-worth moderates the impact of online games on cognitive flexibility, and high self-worth enhances this effect, while low self-worth weakens this effect, providing a basis for improving the cognitive flexibility of youths. This also provides a new perspective for teachers and parents to evaluate the influence of online games on children's cognitive flexibility development.

Childhood Cognitive Flexibility and Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior Problems: Examination of Prospective Bidirectional Associations.

The goal of this study was to examine reciprocal associations between cognitive flexibility and externalizing and internalizing behavior problems longitudinally using data on four occasions from kindergarten through first grade and test for potential gender differences in these associations. The Dimensional Change Card Sort task was used to assess children's cognitive flexibility as a measure of executive function. Participants were 12,462 kindergarteners (49% female) from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K: 2011). Results from multivariate latent curve models with structured residuals revealed that children's cognitive flexibility at the beginning of kindergarten was not associated with their growth in either externalizing (r = -0.01, p = .174), or internalizing (r = -0.03, p = .403) problems between kindergarten and the end of first grade. However, after controlling for individual differences in growth, cognitive flexibility at each assessment directly contributed to subsequent lower levels of internalizing (but not externalizing) behavior problems at the next assessment (b = -0.004, p = 0.013; β = -0.03), suggesting that children who are more flexible in switching from one activity to another may be less prone to developing internalizing problems. At kindergarten entry boys had lower levels of cognitive flexibility (b = -0.31, p < .001, β = -.12) and higher levels of externalizing (b = 0.25, p < .001, β = .23), and internalizing problems(b = 0.04, p = 001, β = .05) compared to girls, but did not differ from girls in their rates of change in cognitive flexibility and externalizing or internalizing behavior problems.

Musical Activities, Prosocial Behaviors, and Executive Function Skills of Kindergarten Children

Prosocial behaviors and executive function are staples of child development. Engagement in music has been associated with enhanced prosocial behaviors and executive function skills in children and youth. Yet, research concerning the role of formal music programs in the development of these important behaviors and skills remains elusive. The aim of this exploratory study was to investigate the role of a 5-week music program on prosocial behaviors (instrumental helping and sharing) and executive function skills (cognitive flexibility and working memory/inhibition control) of 103 kindergarten children from two public schools in a large urban center in the United States, serving predominantly Latinx children from underserved communities. Our data suggested that the short music program positively influenced children's cognitive flexibility, but not working memory, nor prosocial skills (sharing and helping). Findings are discussed in light of earlier studies, methodological issues, and limitations, and in relation to developmental and cultural issues surrounding child participants. Implications for future research and practice are outlined.

A 4-d Water Intake Intervention Increases Hydration and Cognitive Flexibility among Preadolescent Children

Hydration effects on cognition remain understudied in children. This is concerning since a large proportion of US children exhibit insufficient hydration. This study investigated the effects of water intake on urinary markers of hydration and cognition among preadolescents. A 3-intervention crossover design was used among 9- to 11-y-olds [n=75 (43 males, 32 females); 58.2±28.5 BMI percentile]. Participants maintained their water intake [ad libitum (AL)] or consumed high (2.5 L/d) or low (0.5 L/d) water for 4 d. The primary outcomes were performance on cognitive tasks requiring inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility assessed using a modified flanker, go/no-go, and color-shape switch tasks, respectively. Secondary outcomes included urine hydration indices [i.e., color, urine specific gravity (USG), osmolality] assessed using 24-h urine collected during day 4 of each intervention. Repeated-measures ANOVAs were used to assess intervention effects. There was a significant difference in hydration across all 3 interventions. Urine color during the low intervention [median (IQR): 6 (2)] was greater than during AL [5 (2)], and both were greater than during the high intervention [18 (0)] (all P≤0.01). Similarly, osmolality [low (mean ± SD): 912±199 mOsmol/kg, AL: 790±257.0 mOsmol/kg, high: 260±115 mOsmol/kg] and USG [low (mean ± SD): 1.023±0.005, AL: 1.020±0.007, high: 1.005±0.004] during the low intervention were greater during AL, and both were greater than during the high intervention (all P≤0.01). USG and osmolality AL values were related to switch task measures (β: 0.21 to -0.31, P<0.05). Benefits of the high intervention were observed during the switch task, whereby participants exhibited 34% lower working memory cost relative to the low intervention. No significant changes in cognition were observed for the flanker and go/no-go tasks. The water intervention improved urinary markers of hydration and had selective benefits during task switching. Furthermore, children's cognitive flexibility selectively benefits from greater habitual hydration and water intake. This study is registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02816450.

Assessing children's cognitive flexibility with the Shape Trail Test.

In this paper we report an initial validation of the Shape Trail Test–Child Version (STT-CV) with a non-clinical sample of children aged 6 to 9 years. The STT-CV has been developed as an age-appropriate and culturally fair direct downward extension of the Trail Making Test (TMT) for the assessment of cognitive flexibility. Children completed the STT-CV and four established measures of executive functions that assessed working memory, inhibitory control and task switching. Results showed the expected age-based differences in completion times for both parts of the STT-CV (Trail A and Trail B). Children’s performance on the STT-CV correlated significantly with all four measures of executive functions. After controlling for the effects of chronological age, completion times for Trail B remained correlated with most other measures of executive functions. These findings provide emerging evidence for the utility of the STT-CV, and highlight the need for designing and using appropriate variants of the TMT in the behavioural assessment of cognitive flexibility in developmentally and culturally diverse populations.

Family Environments and Children's Executive Function: The Mediating Role of Children's Affective State and Stress

ABSTRACTThere is increasing evidence that inadequate family environments (family material environment and family psychosocial environment) are not only social problems but also factors contributing to adverse neurocognitive outcomes. In the present study, the authors investigated the relationship among family environments, children's naturalistic affective state, self-reported stress, and executive functions in a sample of 157 Chinese families. These findings revealed that in inadequate family material environments, reduced children's cognitive flexibility is associated with increased naturalistic negative affectivity and self-reported stress. In addition, naturalistic negative affectivity mediated the association between family expressiveness and children's cognitive flexibility. The authors used a structural equation model to examine the mediation model hypothesis, and the results confirmed the mediating roles of naturalistic negative affectivity and self-reported stress between family environments and the cognitive flexibility of Chinese children. These findings indicate the importance of reducing stress and negative emotional state for improving cognitive functions in children of low socioeconomic status.

Impact of Reminders on Children's Cognitive Flexibility, Intrinsic Motivation, and Mood Depends on Who Provides the Reminders.

Reminding children to think about alternatives is a strategy adults often use to promote children’s cognitive flexibility, as well as children’s engagement in and enjoyment of the task. The current study investigated whether the impacts of reminders on kindergarten children’s cognitive flexibility, intrinsic motivation, and mood are moderated by who provides the reminders. Eighty-three healthy 5-year-old kindergarten children were randomly assigned to 2 (Reminder: no reminders vs. Reminders) × 2 (Agent: Tester vs. Partner) conditions. Children’s cognitive flexibility was measured via the Block Sorting Task (Garton and Pratt, 2001; Fawcett and Garton, 2005). Children reported their motivation and mood before Block Sorting, after practicing for Block Sorting, and after the actual Block Sorting. Children’s intrinsic motivation was measured by evaluating children’s choices during a period of free play after Block Sorting. The results revealed that, depending on who provides the reminders, reminding children of alternatives can influence kindergarten children’s performance on Block Sorting, children’s intrinsic motivation, and children’s self-reported mood.

The Role of Stimulus Novelty on Children's Inflexible Dimensional Switching

Children's ability to flexibly shift attention between different representational schemes was investigated using the dimensional change card sorting task. Across three experiments (N=56 three-year-olds and N=40 four-year-olds in ; N=14 three-year-olds in ; and N=14 three-year-olds in ) the role of perceptual information on children's cognitive flexibility was investigated by manipulating different aspects of the task materials between pre- and postswitch phases. Better performance was observed when either task-relevant (the color or shape of the images on the cards) or task-irrelevant information (the background color or shape of the actual cards) was changed, with this improvement occurring when the changes were salient enough to induce a stimulus novelty effect.

Primed to be inflexible: the influence of set size on cognitive flexibility during childhood

One of the hallmarks of human cognition is cognitive flexibility, the ability to adapt thoughts and behaviors according to changing task demands. Previous research has suggested that the number of different exemplars that must be processed within a task (the set size) can influence an individual's ability to switch flexibly between different tasks. This paper provides evidence that when tasks have a small set size, children's cognitive flexibility is impaired compared to when tasks have a large set size. This paper also offers insights into the mechanism by which this effect comes about. Understanding how set size interacts with task-switching informs the debate regarding the relative contributions of bottom-up priming and top-down control processes in the development of cognitive flexibility. We tested two accounts for the relationship between set size and cognitive flexibility: the (bottom-up) Stimulus-Task Priming account and the (top-down) Rule Representation account. Our findings offered support for the Stimulus-Task Priming account, but not for the Rule Representation account. They suggest that children are susceptible to bottom-up priming caused by stimulus repetition, and that this priming can impair their ability to switch between tasks. These findings make important theoretical and practical contributions to the executive function literature: theoretically, they show that the basic features of a task exert a significant influence on children's ability to flexibly shift between tasks through bottom-up priming effects. Practically, they suggest that children's cognitive flexibility may have been underestimated relative to adults', as paradigms used with children typically have a smaller set size than those used with adults. These findings also have applications in education, where they have the potential to inform teaching in key areas where cognitive flexibility is required, such as mathematics and literacy.

Cognitive Flexibility, Approaches to Learning, and Academic School Readiness in Head Start Preschool Children

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine whether approaches to learning significantly mediated relations between cognitive flexibility (a component of executive functions) and school readiness in Head Start preschoolers. A total of 191 children from 22 Head Start classrooms were directly assessed on cognitive flexibility and school readiness. In addition, teachers rated children's approaches to learning in 3 domains (competence motivation, attention/persistence, and attitude toward learning) using the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale (P. A. McDermott, L. F. Green, J. M. Francis, & D. H. Stott, 2000). Results of multilevel mediation analyses revealed that 1 component of approaches to learning—attention/persistence—significantly mediated the relation between cognitive flexibility and school readiness. These results suggest that part of the effect of cognitive flexibility on school readiness may be related to cognitive flexibility supporting children's approaches to learning. Practice or Policy: This information may be useful to researchers and practitioners attempting to improve school readiness by improving children's cognitive flexibility. The findings suggest, at a very preliminary level, that improvements to children's cognitive flexibility may lead to improved approaches to learning as well as academic school readiness. This information is important to consider as preschool programs increasingly target children's executive functions.