The Assessment of Executive Control Functions in Young Children: Implications for Learning

MUSSO, M.

Estocolmo

Conferencia; 8th annual Conference, Assessment Educational Association- Europe; 2007

Assessment Educational Association- Europe

Attentional mechanisms (Rothbart and Posner, 1994) and the executive or effortful control system play a fundamental role in the emerging self-regulation, making possible more complex functions of problem solving. Even if intervention programmes for stimulating attentional processes in school-age children exist (Posner et al., 2003; Ison, 2005), there are few studies related to the assessment and the intervention during early childhood over executive control in instruction/learning processes. The present research focuses on the assessment of indicators of appropriate emergence of inhibition rather than focusing on errors in the activation of inhibitory responses.The processes are studied with measures to take into account latencies, corrections, and other types of response.Strategies of intervention over executive control mechanisms were designed for and adapted to situations of school instruction/learning.It was hypothesised that children would improve their performance in executive control mechanisms after intervention.Findings could have concrete application in the development of better school-centred intervention programmes, and positively influence learning. Results showed there was a significant improvement of Executive Control after the interventions, and the novel assessment methods designed for this study were very efficient and reliable for application in school environments.The assessment found that children increase their abilities as they grow older, moving from rudimentary, rigid, controls, to more flexible mechanisms of adaptation that enables them to exert conscious, intentional, or effortful control to regulate their own motivational functions.This early detection provides better opportunities, as well as an improvement of the conditions for learning (Kotliarenco, Cáceres and Fontecilla, 1997).Specific interventions over executive and self-regulation functions comprised environmental changes and instruction in planning, meta-cognitive, and verbal abilities. The presentation will describe details of the complex assessment procedures for the determination of control functions and their implications for the improvement of learning and educational outcomes