Disentangling Age and Schooling Effects on Inhibitory Control Development

• In Event: Causal Impacts of Schooling on Children’s Cognitive and Brain Development

Abstract

Children show marked improvements in several cognitive processes between the ages of 4 and 6 years. In many societies, this period coincides with the start of formal education. During formal schooling, children are required to follow a specific set of rules in a structured environment, drawing heavily on their cognitive control processes. Cognitive control in childhood is positively associated with later academic achievement, including math and reading abilities. However, it is unclear to what extent this relationship is driven by the experience of formal schooling or age-related changes in brain maturation. The objective of the current study was to investigate the longitudinal development of inhibitory control, as an aspect of cognitive control, and its neural correlates, as well as how these relate to school entry. Measurements were collected across two years in two groups of children with little variation in birthdate. At T1, all children (n = 81) were roughly 4.5 years of age and neither group had attended formal schooling. At T2, all children were around 5.5 years of age, and one group (P1, n = 41) had completed one full year of schooling while the other group (KG, n = 40) had stayed in kindergarten. We used a portable 8 x 8 channel fNIRS system to record from the frontal and parietal cortices of children while they completed a Go/No-Go task in their home. In the “go” condition, children saw the picture of a dog and were instructed to press the spacebar. In the “no go” condition, children saw the picture of a cat and were instructed to withhold pressing the spacebar. Pictures of cats and dogs were presented for 500ms, followed by a fixation cross that ranged in duration from 2 to 8 seconds. To tease apart age- and schooling- related changes in inhibitory control, we employed structural equation modelling (SEM), specifically using latent change score (LCS) models. We fitted a univariate LCS model to investigate the degree of change in a corrected measure of accuracy (go correct – no go incorrect). P1 children showed a significant increase in scores between T1 and T2 (change = .134, SE = .047, z = 2.846) while KG children did not (change = .059, SE = .047, z = 1.270). However, the difference in time effect between the groups was not significant, suggesting that P1 children and KG changed similarly across the school year. Analysis with the fNIRS data will utilize image reconstruction method to obtain voxel-wise measures of brain activation, with the goal of detecting longitudinal changes in brain processes involved in inhibitory control, and the potential schooling group differences therein.

Authors

• Yee Lee Shing, Goethe University Frankfurt
  Presenting Author

• Sobanawartiny Wijeakumar, University of Nottingham
  Non-Presenting Author

• Courtney McKay, University of Stirling
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eva Rafetseder, University of Stirling
  Non-Presenting Author