Parental, Home,and Early Education Predictors of Children's Executive Function:Evidence From Three Countries

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Decades of research have highlighted the relevance of executive function (EF) skills for children’s positive and negative developmental outcomes (Clark et al., 2002; van der Sluis et al., 2007). EF skills show an exponential growth during the preschool years, and broad variability and change can be observed. Several theoretical models have proposed that parents contribute to children’s EF through both socialization and biological mechanisms (Bridget et al., 2015), and evidence from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies points out that parental EF skills, caregiving behaviors and the home and early childhood education environment have a crucial role (Cuevas et al., 2014). Despite this, we still know little about the source of individual differences in children’s EF and the evidence so far has focused mainly on mothers. In the proposed paper symposium, we provide a coherent approach to the environment children are exposed to and examine how different aspects of it relate to children´s EF skills. Paper 1 examines the influence of mothers’ and fathers’ EF on parenting and toddlers’ development. Paper 2 examines the direct and indirect effect of maternal and paternal EF and parenting dimensions on children’s EF, in a sample of Chilean families. Taken together, these papers deepen our understanding of the specific influence of parental EF, parenting and home environment on the development of child EF skills.

Sub Unit

• Attention, Learning, Memory

Chair

• Fernanda Prieto, Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD)

Individual Presentations

• The Influence of Mothers’ and Fathers’ Executive Function on Parenting and Toddlers’ Language Skills - Presenting Author: Kelsey McKee, Office of Head Start; Non-Presenting Author: Natasha J Cabrera, University of Maryland - College Park; Non-Presenting Author: Stephanie M Reich, University of California - Irvine

• The Contribution of Fathers’ and Mothers’ Executive Function and Parenting on Children´s Executive Function - Presenting Author: Fernanda Prieto, Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD); Non-Presenting Author: Daniela Aldoney, Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD)