Hot/Cool Framing, Parent Emotion Regulation and Executive Function: A Preliminary Investigation Among Preschoolers

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

Understanding the development of executive functions (EF) has been a challenge since it’s components may develop on their own trajectories, are difficult to isolate, and appear to develop in rapid spurts over childhood. These skills enable children to organize their thinking and behavior more flexibility and decrease reactive responding (Barkley, 2001; Bierman et al., 2008). Recently, a pointed interest has been in understanding the development of children’s EF skills on a hot-cool continuum. Cool tasks are affectively neutral, while hot tasks attempt to account for affective salience (i.e., rewards or removal of rewards) with behavioral regulation (Zelazo & Müller, 2002). While some studies find differences between hot and cool EF tasks, others do not (Allan and Lonigan, 2011). Thus, this study aims to shed light on the development of children’s EF skills in both hot and cool domains by utilizing parent reports and performance tasks. Further, this investigation explores the role of parent self-reported emotion regulation strategies on children’s EF skills.

As part of an ongoing study, nineteen (N = 19) four-year-old’s completed multiple EF measures: bear/dragon, day/night, and two adapted versions of the Conners Kiddie Continuous Performance Test (KCPT) administered via a laptop. The affective version of the KCPT contains children’s facial expressions of joy, sadness, anger, and fear (faces validated, see LoBue, Baker, & Thrasher, 2018) and the child must inhibit their response to happy faces. The affectively neutral version contains images such as basketballs, bikes, and phones and the child must inhibit their response to the basketball. In an effort to replicate previous hot-cool framing (Allan and Lonigan, 2014), children were given small prizes prior to affective tasks (i.e., bear/dragon; affective KCPT) and told they would lose prizes if they responded incorrectly on trials. Parents completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003), Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (Gross and John, 1995), and Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey & Fischer, 2001).

So far, raw inhibitory control scores suggest that children are performing better on hot affective tasks. Specifically, children correctly inhibit 75% of the time on the affective KCPT versus 62% on the affectively neutral KCPT. On the noncomputerized tasks, they correctly inhibit 90% of the time on the bear/dragon and 78% on the day/night. Moreover, children’s inhibition, impulsivity or attentional focus as reported by the parent was not significantly correlated to any of the cognitive tasks. With regards to parents emotion regulation strategies, parents overall expressivity was moderately correlated with their child’s attentional focus r(17) = .56, p = .018.

First, it should be noted that more data is needed fully assess differences between hot and cool tasks. However, at this initial stage our findings replicate research which suggests that cognitive and questionnaire measures of EF may be assessing distinct underlying mechanisms that both relate to efficient goal achievement in different ways (Toplak, West, & Stanovich, 2013; Gerst, Cirino, Fletcher, & Yoshida, 2017). Understanding why these measures consistently differ can be informative to the developmental study of EF in children and will be further discussed.

Author

• Anabel Castillo, WestEd
  Presenting Author