Poster #11 - The Combined Impact of Common Risk Factors on Executive Function Ability in Early Adolescence

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

Executive function (EF), or the attentional and control processes necessary to facilitate goal directed behavior, is strongly predictive of mental health, academic achievement, and economic success. Given the strong predictive ability of EF on many critical life outcomes, it is important to better understand the factors that influence the development of EF. Most work investigating the development of EF has centered on early childhood. However, improvements in more complex and demanding EF tasks continue through adolescence into early adulthood. Additionally, EF research typically examines one or a few factors at a time, instead of examining how many factors together influence the development of EF ability.
Here we aim to test how various factors commonly thought to independently influence EF ability come together in unique ways to better explain EF in early adolescence. Many independent bodies of work have explored how factors such as one’s social environment, socioeconomic status, physical health and mental health impact EF abilities. Largely, most work across these topics have found that worse outcomes in one factor (i.e., worse physical environments) relates to worse EF outcomes. However, in naturalistic settings, it is rare to have only one factor be impacted in isolation of other issues. For instance, those who are exposed to more unstable or risky environments are also more likely to develop mental health disorders. Alternatively, being more physically active has been shown to relate to better mental health outcomes. It is feasible that by studying these factors together, we could identify protective factors that allow for typical EF development despite the presence of many risk factors. Considering how closely related these factors are to one another and to EF ability, we wanted to explore whether various profiles will emerge that differentially predict EF ability. To test our research question, we will leverage the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) dataset, which includes 10,040 individuals ages 9-10 years at the second year of data collection. We will create composite scores from multiple ABCD measures that reflect data across 6 factors of interest: 1) family environment, 2) family resources, 3) distal environment (i.e., school and neighborhood), 4) social connectedness, 5) physical health, 6) mental health- internalizing, 8) mental health- externalizing. We will then apply a latent profile analysis on our composite measures and relate the various profiles to EF ability. We hypothesize that individuals who have moderate distress across several factors will have worse EF ability followed by those with acute distress in one factor. Finally, those with little to no distress across all six factors will have the best EF ability.
The current project will allow us to explore whether certain factors are particularly predictive of EF ability or whether several factors need to be considered in conjunction to best predict EF ability in early adolescence. Ultimately, we hope this work can bring us one step closer to identifying areas for effective intervention to improve EF outcomes.

Authors

• Eliya Ben-Asher, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Blaire Porter, University of Texas at Austin

• Jessica A Church, University of Texas at Austin