Early Childhood Teachers’ Psychological and Neuro-cognitive Functioning and Children’s Executive Function

• In Event: Leveraging Developmental Insights to Address the Cross-Sector Consequences of COVID-19 for Early Educators

Abstract

Children’s executive functioning (EF) plays a critical role in the development of cognitive, emotional, social, and behavioral readiness for school (Blair, 2002). EF is defined as the ability to set a goal, make goal-directed plans, inhibit a dominant response, and activate subdominant responses in order to achieve the goal (Garon et al., 2008). Because EF skills develop rapidly during early childhood, preschool is a critical period to provide a supportive environment for children to learn and explore those skills.

Children’s EF is supported by sensitive and responsive caregiving, ample opportunities to explore their social and physical environments, and by encouraging sustained goal-directed behavior (Lengua et al., 2007). Although previous studies have shown significant associations between classroom quality and children’s EF, teacher characteristics that are associated children’s EF are unclear. Given the important role that teachers play in early care and education (ECE) settings to support children’s EF, we examined both cognitive and emotional aspects of teachers’ capacity and their associations with children’s EF. We hypothesized that poorer teacher psychological functioning (as indicated by greater depressive symptoms and perceived stress) would be associated with lower levels of child EF. We also hypothesized that higher levels of teachers’ neuro-cognitive functioning (as indicated by EF) would be associated with higher child EF (as measured by inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility).

We collected data from 111 three- and four-year-old children (44% female), their parents, and their 20 ECE teachers who were recruited from eight child-care centers in a midsize urban city. Teachers’ and children’s EF were assessed using two iPad tasks from the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery and Early Childhood Cognition Battery (Weintraub et al., 2013). Teachers also responded to survey items about their depressive symptoms from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, Short Form (Radloff, 1997) and stress from the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al., 1983).

We conducted multilevel analysis using Stata 13.0. Controlling for child gender, child race, length of time in childcare, parent educational attainment, family household income, and teacher receptive vocabulary, children’s EF was regressed onto teachers’ EF. An identical model was used to analyze the association between teachers’ psychological functioning (depressive symptoms and stress) and children’s EF. Table 1 shows that teacher depressive symptoms were significantly associated with child cognitive flexibility. Teacher stress was not related to child cognitive flexibility. Neither of the indicators were significantly associated with child inhibitory control. Table 2 shows that both measures of teacher EF were significantly associated with child cognitive flexibility. Unexpectedly, higher levels of teacher inhibitory control were related to lower cognitive flexibility among children. As hypothesized, teacher cognitive flexibility was positively related to child cognitive flexibility. Only teacher inhibitory control was significantly related to child inhibitory control.

This exploratory study suggests that teachers’ psychological and neuro-cognitive functioning might be an important factor to consider in children’s EF development. Future studies are needed to replicate the findings using a larger and more representative sample. More intervention and/or prevention approaches should be considered to support ECE teachers’ functioning.

Authors

• Lieny Jeon, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Presenting Author

• Sara B. Johnson, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

• Jodi Miller, Johns Hopkins University