Development Of Cognitive Control Research Articles

Cognitive control in infancy: Attentional predictors using a tablet-based measure.

Cognitive control is a predictor of later-life outcomes and may underpin higher order executive processes. The present study examines the development of early cognitive control during the first 24-month. We evaluated a tablet-based assessment of cognitive control among infants aged 18- and 24-month. We also examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between attentional disengagement, general cognitive skills and cognitive control. Participants (N=60, 30 female) completed the tablet-task at 18- and 24-month of age. Attentional disengagement and general cognitive development were assessed at 5-, 8-, 12-, 18- and 24-month using an eye-tracking measure and the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL), respectively. The cognitive control task demonstrated good internal consistency, sensitivity to age-related change in performance and stable individual differences. No associations were found between infant cognitive control and MSEL scores longitudinally or concurrently. The eye-tracking task revealed that slower attentional disengagement at 8-month, but faster disengagement at 18-month, predicted higher cognitive control scores at 24-month. This task may represent a useful tool for measuring emergent cognitive control. The multifaceted relationship between attention and infant cognitive control suggests that the rapid development of the attentional system in infancy results in distinct attentional skills, at different ages, being relevant for cognitive control development.

The Development of Cognitive Control in Preschoolers and Kindergarteners: The Case of Post-Error Slowing and Delayed Disinhibition.

This study aimed to investigate two specific behavioral manifestations of the executive attention systems in preschoolers and kindergarteners, beyond the unique contribution of intelligence. We tested post-error slowing [RT¯Post-error trial-RT¯Not post-error trial] as a marker of reactive control and delayed disinhibition as a novel marker for proactive control. One hundred and eighty preschool- and kindergarten-aged children, as well as their mothers (final sample: 155 children and 174 mothers), performed an adapted task based on Go/NoGo and Stroop-like paradigms-the emotional day-night task. The children showed reliable post-error slowing and delayed disinhibition (mean size effects of 238.18 ms and 58.31 ms, respectively), while the adult size effects were 40-50% smaller. The post-error slowing effect was present for both sexes in all the tested ages, while the delayed disinhibition effect was present only for girls. Both effects showed large individual differences that became smaller in adulthood. Our findings emphasize the earlier maturation of reactive control compared to proactive control, and the earlier maturation of proactive cognitive control in girls compared to boys.

What’s Next? Advances and Challenges in Understanding How Environmental Predictability Shapes the Development of Cognitive Control

Forming predictions about what will happen next in the world happens early in development, without instruction, and across species. Some environments support more accurate predictions. These more predictable environments also support what appear to be positive developmental trajectories, including increases in cognitive control over thoughts and actions. Such consequences of predictable environments have broad-reaching implications for society and have been explained across ecological, psychological, computational, and neural frameworks. However, many challenges remain in understanding the effects of environmental predictability, including adaptive responses to unpredictable environments and the mechanisms underlying the effects of predictable environments on developmental trajectories. Future work addressing different dimensions of predictability—across timescales, locations, actions, people, and outcomes—and their interactions will advance the ability to understand, predict, and support developmental trajectories.

FORMATION OF LANGUAGE:PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL ASPECTS

In child development, language plays a crucial role in the processes of differentiation and reintegration into new situational forms. These forms include "others," "language for others," "themselves," and "language for themselves," among others. Language is both a process and a product that gains unique sense and character through joint activity between parents and the child. The structure, functions, and contents of indirect speech act as the basis for individual consciousness. Some researchers have provided evidence that the dialectics of communication with others and oneself is central to the conscious self-control of children.According to L. Vygotsky, the language initially acquired by a child is not an independent version of grammar but a means of communication created through interactions between parents and the child. A. Luria's research indicates that for all higher cognitive processes, it is necessary to transition from external social experience to internal psychological control. In other words, the development of cognitive control requires the shift from relying on social experiences to relying on internal psychological processes.

A Rational Account of Cognitive Control Development in Childhood

Cognitive control is defined as a set of processes required for the organization of goal-directed thoughts and actions. It is linked to success throughout life including health, wealth, and social capital. How to support the development of cognitive control is therefore an intensively discussed topic. Progress in understanding how this critical life skill can be optimally scaffolded in long-lasting ways has been disappointing. I argue that this effort has been hampered by the predominant perspective that cognitive control is a competence or ability, the development of which is driven by predetermined maturational sequences. I propose that this traditional view needs to be overhauled in light of a growing body of evidence suggesting that cognitive control allocation is a both highly dynamic and rational process subject to cost–benefit analyses from early in development. I discuss the ramifications of shifting our perspective on cognitive control mechanisms in relation to how we design interventions. I close by spelling out new avenues for scientific inquiry.

A First Theoretical Model of Self-Directed Cognitive Control Development

ABSTRACT Cognitive control (also referred to as executive functions) corresponds to a set of cognitive processes that support the goal-directed regulation of thoughts and actions. It plays a major role in complex activities and predicts later academic achievement. Importantly, while growing up, children are progressively transitioning from engaging cognitive control in an externally driven fashion, i.e., relying on external guidance, to exerting it self-directedly, i.e., autonomously determining when and how to engage it. Although growing self-directedness in cognitive control engagement is critical to autonomy gains during childhood, relatively little is known about the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Incorporating previous main proposals in cognitive control development, we propose that self-directed control development is driven by the ability to identify relevant goals, facilitated through accumulated knowledge on how to engage cognitive control with age. Importantly, we argue that there are two key processes that are part of successful goal identification: context-tracking and goal selection. We argue that most developmental changes are linked to context-tracking as the demands on this process are particularly high in self-directed situations. We then derived main predictions from this theoretical model as well as promising future directions.

Development of Proactive Control and Anxiety Among Behaviorally Inhibited Adolescents.

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is an infant temperament characterized by heightened reactivity and negative affect in response to novel people and situations. BI is among the earliest and strongest predictors of future anxiety problems. However, not all children with a history of BI will manifest anxiety problems. A growing body of evidence suggests that proactive control skills may help buffer youth with BI from future anxiety difficulties; yet, it remains unclear how temperament may interact with the development of cognitive control to influence anxiety risk. The present study tested whether enhancements in proactive control occurring during adolescence may reduce risk for anxiety among youth with a history of BI. Participants included 185 adolescents (56% female) whose temperament was assessed during toddlerhood. In adolescence, participants completed anxiety assessments and an AX Continuous Performance Test (AX-CPT) to assess cognitive control strategy. Both assessments were administered at age 13 years and again at 15 years. Latent change score modeling revealed that, on average, participants increasingly used proactive control strategies and experienced worsening anxiety from age 13-15 years. Early BI was associated with a smaller anxiety increase from 13-15 years, but only among participants whose proactive control skills improved at mean or greater rates. The present findings suggest that greater proactive control development during adolescence protects youth with high BI from age-related increases in anxiety. Results support a framework that highlights cognitive control as a key moderator of anxiety risk among children with a history of high BI.

Development of cognitive control during adolescence: The integrative effects of family socioeconomic status and parenting behaviors

Cognitive control is of great interest to researchers and practitioners. The concurrent association between family socioeconomic status (SES) and adolescent cognitive control is well-documented. However, little is known about whether and how SES relates to individual differences in the development of adolescent cognitive control. The current four-year longitudinal investigation (N = 167, 13–14 years at Wave 1) used multi-source interference task performance (reaction time in interference correct trials minus neutral correct trials) and corresponding neural activities (blood oxygen level dependent contrast of interference versus neutral conditions) as measures of cognitive control. SES and parenting behaviors (warmth, monitoring) were measured through surveys. We examined direct and indirect effects of earlier SES on the development of cognitive control via parenting behaviors; the moderating effect of parenting also was explored. Results of latent growth modeling (LGM) revealed significant interactive effects between SES and parenting predicting behavioral and neural measures of cognitive control. Lower family SES was associated with poorer cognitive performance when coupled with low parental warmth. In contrast, higher family SES was associated with greater improvement in performance, as well as a higher intercept and steeper decrease in frontoparietal activation over time, when coupled with high parental monitoring. These findings extend prior cross-sectional evidence to show the moderating effect of the parenting environment on the potential effects of SES on developmental changes in adolescent cognitive control.

Understanding autonomous behaviour development: Exploring the developmental contributions of context-tracking and task selection to self-directed cognitive control.

Gaining autonomy is a key aspect of growing up and cognitive control development across childhood. However, little is known about how children engage cognitive control in an autonomous (or self-directed) fashion. Here, we propose that in order to successfully engage self-directed control, children identify, and achieve goals by tracking contextual information and using this information to select relevant tasks. To disentangle the respective contributions of these processes, we manipulated the difficulty of context-tracking via altering the presence or absence of contextual support (Study 1) and the difficulty of task selection by varying task difficulty (a)symmetry (Study 2) in 5-6 and 9-10-year-olds, and adults. Results suggested that, although both processes contribute to successful self-directed engagement of cognitive control, age-related progress mostly relates to context-tracking.

Towards a hybrid criminological and psychological model of risk behavior: The developmental neuro-ecological risk-taking model (DNERM)

Adolescents have long been characterized as the stereotypical risk-takers, due to their apparent heightened risk behavior (e.g., delinquency, substance use). Hence, the raising of minimum ages for substance use are common legal actions that presume that limiting the exposure to substances (i.e., “risk exposure”) will decrease such heightened adolescent risk behavior. This ecological concept of risk exposure (access to risk conducive situations) is acknowledged in criminological models—to some extent. However, risk exposure is virtually absent from contemporary psychological models, which focus on neuropsychological development, particularly socio-affective and cognitive control development. Moreover, when theories in these disciplines do consider risk exposure, the ubiquitous developmental (i.e., age-dependent) component of this concept is overlooked. For example, in the real-word, adolescents encounter far more risk conducive situations (both offline and online) than children, which could at least partially account for heightened adolescent risk behaviors compared to children. A meta-analysis (Defoe et al. 2015) on laboratory studies provided suggestive evidence for this assertion. Namely, this meta-analysis showed that in laboratory settings—where risk exposure is equal for all participants regardless of age—children and adolescents are generally equally susceptible to engage in risks. Hence, in the above-mentioned meta-analysis, a hybrid Developmental Neuro-Ecological Risk-taking Model (DNERM) was put forward. DNERM emphasizes an interaction between adolescents’ neuropsychological development and their changing physical- and social- ecology, which is further embedded in a cultural context. The current paper further develops DNERM’s aims, which include bridging contemporary psychology models with criminology models to comprehensively describe the development of risk behavior during the youth period (ages 11–24).

The development of cognitive control in children with autism spectrum disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder: A longitudinal fMRI study

Repetitive behavior is a core symptom of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and has been associated with impairments in cognitive control. However, it is unclear how cognitive control and associated neural circuitry relate to the development of repetitive behavior in children with these disorders. In a multicenter, longitudinal study (TACTICS; Translational Adolescent and Childhood Therapeutic Interventions in Compulsive Syndromes), the development of cognitive control was assessed during late childhood using a longitudinal fMRI design with a modified stop-signal task in children with ASD or OCD, and typically developing (TD) children (baseline: N = 95 (8-12 y), follow-up: N = 53 (10-14 y), average interval: 1.48 y (sd: 0.36, range: 0.98–2.52 y). Stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) decreased over development, regardless of diagnosis. Repetitive behavior in children with ASD and OCD was not associated with performance on the stop-signal task. There were no whole-brain between-group differences in brain activity, but ROI-analyses showed increases in activity in right precentral gyrus over development for children with OCD. In sum, even though subtle differences were observed in the development of brain activity in children with OCD, overall the findings suggest that the development of cognitive control, as assessed by the stop signal task, is similar to typical in children with ASD and OCD.

Adaptation in the face of adversity: Decrements and enhancements in children's cognitive control behavior following early caregiving instability.

Cognitive control is typically described as disrupted following exposure to early caregiving instability. While much of the work within this field has approached cognitive control broadly, evidence from adults retrospectively reporting early-life instability has shown more nuanced effects on cognitive control, even demonstrating enhancements in certain subdomains. That is, exposure to unstable caregiving may disrupt some areas of cognitive control, yet promote adaptation in others. Here, we investigated three domains of cognitive control in a sample of school-age children (N=275, Age=6-12 years) as a function of early caregiving instability, defined as the total number of caregiving switches. Results demonstrated that caregiving instability was associated with reduced response inhibition (Go/No-Go) and attentional control (Flanker), but enhanced cognitive flexibility (Dimensional Change Card Sort Task Switching). Conversely, there were no statistically significant associations with group (i.e., institutional care versus foster care) or maltreatment exposure and these patterns. These findings build on the specialization framework, suggesting that caregiving instability results in both decrements and enhancements in children's cognitive control, consistent with the hypothesis that cognitive control development is scaffolded by early environmental pressures.

Post-error adjustment among children aged 7 years with a familial high risk of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder: A population-based cohort study.

The cognitive control system matures gradually with age and shows age-related sex differences. To gain knowledge concerning error adaptation in familial high-risk groups, investigating error adaptation among the offspring of parents with severe mental disorders is important and may contribute to the understanding of cognitive functioning in at-risk individuals. We identified an observational cohort through Danish registries and measured error adaptation using an Eriksen flanker paradigm. We tested 497 7-year-old children with a familial high risk of schizophrenia (N = 192) or bipolar disorder (N = 116) for deficits in error adaptation compared with a control group (N = 189). We investigated whether error adaptation differed between high-risk groups compared with controls and sex differences in the adaptation to errors, irrespective of high-risk status. Overall, children exhibited post-error slowing (PES), but the slowing of responses did not translate to significant improvements in accuracy. No differences were detected between either high-risk group compared with the controls. Boys showed less PES and PES after incongruent trials than girls. Our results suggest that familial high risk of severe mental disorders does not influence error adaptation at this early stage of cognitive control development. Error adaptation behavior at age 7 years shows specific sex differences.

Developmental neuroscience of cognitive control: the futurepath and layout

<p indent=0mm>Cognitive control is the top-down process by which individuals store, plan, and manipulate relevant information through the deployment of resources during information processing. Cognitive control encompasses different research perspectives such as selective attention, conflict resolution, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, each of which has its own unique lifelong developmental characteristics. It is of great significance to combine the psychophysical and neuroimaging techniques, in order to elucidate the developmental mechanism of cognitive control, investigate the delicate balance and interaction between cognitive control and other psychological functions, and explore the plasticity and training of cognitive control. This may contribute to solving the problems such as addictive behavioral disorders caused by the imbalance of cognitive control development as well as decline of cognitive control in cognitive aging. At present, large-scale standardized testing of cognitive control is still lacking. Considering that cognitive control consists of several sub-dimensions, future research should focus on the development of standardized test battery, the construction of normative databases, and the combination of existing big data analysis techniques to examine the developmental and regulatory factors of cognitive control at different levels. This review article analyzed the opportunities and challenges faced by the current research in China, and also proposed the future development plan and roadmap based on previous research on the lifelong development of cognitive control.

Disentangling the Respective Contribution of Task Selection and Task Execution to Self-Directed Cognitive Control Development.

Task selection and task execution are key constructs in cognitive control development. Yet, little is known about how separable they are and how each contributes to task switching performance. Here, 60 4- to 5-year olds, 60 7- to 8-year olds, and 60 10- to 11-year olds children completed the double registration procedure, which dissociates these two processes. Task selection yielded both mixing and switch costs, especially in younger children, and task execution mostly yielded switch costs at all ages, suggesting that task selection is costlier than task execution. Moreover, both task selection and execution varied with task self-directedness (i.e., to what extent the task is driven by external aids) demands. Whereas task selection and task execution are dissociated regarding performance costs, they nevertheless both contribute to self-directed control.

The error-related negativity as a neuromarker of risk or resilience in young children.

IntroductionThe error‐related negativity (ERN) is a neural response that reflects error monitoring. Contradictorily, an enlarged (more negative) ERN has been cited as both a risk factor and a protective factor, which hinders its utility as a predictive indicator. The aim of the current study was to examine the associations between ERN measured in early childhood with the development of cognitive control (CC), emotion regulation, and internalizing/externalizing symptoms over 1–2 years.MethodsWhen children were ages 5–7, EEG was collected during a Go/No‐Go task. A subset of the original participants (n = 30) were selected based on their baseline ERN in an extreme‐case design: half with high‐amplitude ERN, matched by age and sex with another group with low‐amplitude ERN.ResultsAt follow‐up, children in the High‐Amplitude group showed better executive function, less self‐reported anxiety and depression, less affect dysregulation, more parent‐rated CC, less lability/negativity, and fewer parent‐reported externalizing problems. Many results held even when accounting for baseline levels. Further, emotion dysregulation mediated the relationship between the ERN and both anxiety and externalizing problems, while CC mediated the ERN's relationship with externalizing problems only.ConclusionsThese results can inform identification and intervention efforts for children at risk for psychopathology.

Systematic exploration and uncertainty dominate young children's choices.

Organisms need to constantly balance the competing demands of gathering information and using previously acquired information to obtain rewarding outcomes (i.e., the "exploration-exploitation" dilemma). Exploration is critical to obtain information to discover how the world works, which should be particularly important for young children. While studies have shown that young children explore in response to surprising events, little is known about how they balance exploration and exploitation across multiple decisions or about how this process changes with development. In this study, we compare decision-making patterns of children and adults and evaluate the relative influences of reward seeking, random exploration, and systematic switching (which approximates uncertainty-directed exploration). In a second experiment, we directly test the effect of uncertainty on children's choices. Influential models of decision-making generally describe systematic exploration as a computationally refined capacity that relies on top-down cognitive control. We demonstrate that (a) systematic patterns dominate young children's behavior (facilitating exploration), despite protracted development of cognitive control; and (b) that uncertainty plays a major, but complicated, role in determining children's choices. We conclude that while young children's immature top-down control should hinder adult-like systematic exploration, other mechanisms may pick up the slack, facilitating broad information gathering in a systematic fashion to build a foundation of knowledge for use later in life.

Consistent use of proactive control and relation with academic achievement in childhood

As children become older, they better maintain task-relevant information in preparation of upcoming cognitive demands. This is referred to as proactive control, which is a key component of cognitive control development. However, it is still uncertain whether children engage in proactive control consistently across different contexts and how proactive control relates to academic abilities. This study used two common tasks—the AX Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT) and the Cued Task-Switching Paradigm (CTS)—to examine whether proactive control engagement in 102 children (age range: 6.91–10.91 years) converges between the two tasks and predicts academic abilities. Proactive control indices modestly correlated between tasks in higher but not lower working-memory children, suggesting that consistency in proactive control engagement across contexts is relatively low during childhood but increases with working memory capacity. Further, working memory (but not verbal speed) predicted proactive control engagement in both tasks. While proactive control as measured by each task predicted math and reading performance, only proactive control measured by CTS additionally predicted reasoning, suggesting that proactive control can be used as a proxy for academic achievements.

The role of midfrontal theta oscillations across the development of cognitive control in preschoolers and school-age children.

The development of cognitive control enables children to better resist acting based on distracting information that interferes with the current action. Cognitive control improvement serves different functions that differ in part by the type of interference to resolve. Indeed, resisting to interference at the task-set level or at the response-preparation level is, respectively, associated with cognitive flexibility and inhibition. It is, however, unknown whether the same neural mechanism underlies these two functions across development. Studies in adults have revealed the contribution of midfrontal theta (MFT) oscillations in interference resolution. This study investigated whether MFT is involved in the resolution of different types of interference in two age groups identified as corresponding to different latent structures of executive functions. Preschool (4-6years) and school children (6-8years) were tested with a task involving interference at the response level and/or the task-set level while (electroencephalogram) EEG was recorded. Behaviorally, response time and accuracy were affected by task-set. Both age groups were less accurate when the interference occurred at the task-set level and only the younger group showed decreased accuracy when interference was presented at the response-preparation level. Furthermore, MFT power was increased, relative to the baseline, during the resolution of both types of interference and in both age groups. These findings suggest that MFT is involved in immature cognitive control (i.e., preschool and school-ages), by orchestrating its different cognitive processes, irrespective of the interference to resolve and of the level of cognitive control development (i.e., the degree of differentiation of executive functions).

Effects of language proficiency on cognitive control: Evidence from resting-state functional connectivity

Cognitive studies suggest that bilingualism plays an additional role in the development of cognitive control, specifically in that bilingualism has been found to promote cognitive abilities in switching and inhibition. In recent years functional neuroimaging studies suggest that long-term experience of speaking two languages results in changes of neural activity in the cognitive control network. Here we explore the impacts of second language proficiency on intrinsic functional connectivity of the executive function network using resting-state functional MRI. Seed regions centering on different components of cognitive control were selected for the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analysis based on previous studies. We performed a functional connectivity analysis of high- versus low-proficiency bilinguals and found that language proficiency affected distinct components of the cognitive control system. Specifically, for switching, the rsFC of high-proficiency bilinguals was weaker than that of the low-proficiency peers in the left anterior cingulated cortex and for inhibition, in the right middle frontal gyrus. For working memory, however, the rsFC showed no difference as a result of proficiency. Finally, the strength of rsFC showed a significant negative correlation with behavioral performance in both bilingual groups. These findings were interpreted within the current debates on bilingualism and cognitive control.