Poster #13 - The elementary schooler's growth in inhibitory control predicts the academic achievements in grade 3

• In Event: Poster Session 15

Abstract

Executive function (EF) plays a vital role in school adjustment, such as academic achievement (Blair & Raver, 2015). Individual differences in growth in EF across the transition to school predict academic success at six years of age (Hughes & Enosor, 2011). EF improves most rapidly during preschool but continues to develop later (Zelazo et al., 2013). However, little is known about the relationship between EF growth after entering elementary school and academic achievement. We focused the inhibitory control (IC), the core element of EF, and examined the relationship between the growth in IC for the first three years of elementary school and the academic achievements in grade 3.

Methods. The sample consisted of 91 Japanese children (45 boys and 46 girls) from a 3-year longitudinal study of 101 children. Each child was tested at three different time points: At the end of grades 1, 2, and 3. Children’s mean age was 7.5 years (SD = 3.34 months) at grade 1. At each time point, children completed a Stroop-like task (Nakamichi, 2017) as an IC measure. In the task, children were asked to identify the word opposite to a weather picture. The number of correct responses at each time point was used as the IC score (each Max = 30). In addition, children in grade 3 took the criterion reference test for academic achievement (CRT-II: Tatsuno & Kitao, 2012) comprising language (Japanese reading and writing) and math tests (each Max = 100).

Results. Descriptive statistics for each measure were as follows: IC tasks (Ms: grade 1 = 17.73, grade 2 = 20.86, grade 3 =23.93) and academic achievements (language = 82.84, math = 90.73). There were no gender differences. We conducted a latent growth curve modeling to estimate the associations between children’s IC trajectories and academic achievements in grade 3. Figure 1 shows completely standardized parameter estimates. The average child had a fitted IC trajectory with an intercept of 17.73 and a slope of 3.10. Individual differences in the IC intercept and slop significantly predicted the latent factor of academic achievement at grade 3. Moreover, we conducted a cluster analysis to examine individual differences in more detail. The analysis revealed four groups (Table 1): Children with high IC in grade 1 and steep slope (HS group), high IC in grade 1 and gentle slope (HG group), low IC in grade 1 and steep slope (LS group), and low IC in grade 1 and no slope (LN group). A one-way ANOVA showed the main effect of group on academic achievement, F (3, 87) = 7.95, p < .001, η2p = .22. As a result, the LN group had significantly lower academic achievement score compared with the other groups (Tukey’s ps < .05).

Discussion. This study found that greater gains in IC across the first three years of elementary school predicted higher academic achievements. Our results indicate that children’s IC growth after entering elementary school is a critical factor in their academic adaptation.

Authors

• Keito Nakamichi, Chiba University
  Presenting Author

• Naoko Nakamichi, Toyo University

• Jun Nakazawa, Uekusagakuen University