Parents of young children probably recognize the morning of a drya, filled with children to eat breakfast, brush their teeth and wear shoes – and hurry up, you will be late!
Many young children cannot independently control the following morning routine because they lack the necessary functions of executive power: skills that influence people, make targeted decisions that are in line with their goals. It is these skills that make it possible to set and achieve short -term goals such as breakfast cooking, and long -term goals, such as a successful career.
Early childhood denotes a significant development of the ability of the executive function. Studies show that children with better executive function usually grow as financially stable, healthy and productive adults. For this reason, many psychologists and educators are looking for ways to help children develop these skills in early childhood, to potentially encourage them to later success.
However, like these skills, attempts to understand where they come from and how to teach them were mostly unsuccessful – so far.
We are psychologists at the University of Tennessee, paying attention to the brain and cognitive laboratory, and in our recent study new insights on how the executive function develops.
Where previous attempts failed
There have been many attempts to teach children’s executive functions in the hope that improvements mean other cognitive skills. However, this was mainly unsuccessful for two reasons.
First, although these experiments have learned specific tasks, they did not learn the skills that would mean the real world. It’s like learning about your action can help you get better action, but not necessarily better to acquire the skills you need for your future work.
Second, it is more difficult to measure the brain activity of young children. MRI is too restrictive – not to mention the terrible – use for children before they are doing tasks.
We applied children to our laboratory with lightweight caps with almost infrared sensors to measure which parts of the brain were active during the sorting tasks. University of Tennessee, Knoxville
New tools offer new insights
Now, many researchers use a more children’s neurchanting apparatus called functional almost infrared spectroscopy, which involves placing sensors on the child’s head-simply light cap to monitor their brain function. This laser system monitors blood flow in the outer layer of the brain, known as the surface of the bark. Blood flow indicates nervous activity and reveals the areas of the brain that are most busy.
This technology is a step in the right direction, but it is still difficult to ensure that the sensors are placed just as much from one session to another and from one child to another. This challenge is particularly pronounced in longitudinal research, as the heads of the children are growing over time.
To solve this problem, our team has developed 3D image reconstruction methods that allow us to follow where brain activation is taking place. With the 3D model, we can associate and measure the individual regions of the brain of each child.
Our advanced analysis tools allowed us to collect several records from the same children over the years, convinced that the sensors were in the right, sequential places on their heads for each stage of the study.
By performing a wide range of tasks that use different aspects of neurocognitive function, we have been able to determine exactly which brain regions are active because they develop the executive skills.
To understand the nature of the executive function
One important aspect of the executive function is the ability to filter what information is important to achieve your goals. Based on previous executive function studies and our mathematical brain communications model, our team believes that the key is what we call learning labels – that is, learning to name and sort objects in your environment, taking into account the various categories they fit.
Label learning allows you to go through your world to find tools you need to achieve your goals and flexible objects around you. For example, the understanding of the label “smooth” and “concave” would help you recognize the spoon. Knowing how the properties of the spoon are related to other objects or processes such as “mixing”, “digging” or “direction” can lead to a flexible use of a spoon to realize that you can use a spoon for chocolate milk, eat grain or even kidnap breakfast on your brother.
Thus, all that learning on the early basics of a child, such as color, shape and basic sounds and words, prepares them for life where they can determine what they need to set and achieve their goals, small and large.
In addition, understanding how to recognize and mark elements in your environment can help you be flexible and notice different aspects of the object as your goals change. For example, if there is no cow’s milk, but you know that almond milk enters the same category, you can use it as a substitute. In this way, you can set and act around the goal of the objects around you while learning the labels of objects.
What we found
Using our almost infrared spectroscopy, we have studied 20 children’s brain function in tasks. First we appreciated the understanding of their label at the age of 2 ½, asking them simple questions about objects such as “which is red?” Or “What color is this?”
Two years later, when the children were 4 ½, we returned them to the laboratory to perform an executive function task. First, they will play a few rounds of the figure sorting game. The research assistant would then ask them to move to the sorting of the same objects by color. This task requires flexible thinking about objects and making different decisions on them when the rules change.
We found that brain activity differed before children learned to divide the influences by shape and color. In addition, we found that children who were stronger activated in the anterior bark region of their brain, with simpler color and form marking tasks, when 2½ century, better performed a complex task of 4 ½. We believe that this shows that those children in 2.5 were further in the trajectory of the development category of surrounding objects, so they had richer neurocognitive resources 4 ½ when completing the complex task of executive function.
Our conclusions show that learning a label not only includes language, but also influences how children can control and regulate their behavior. That is, having ways to mark different aspects of objects or environment, children have ways to focus on this information to direct their behavior.
What’s next?
Our results open the door to find ways to teach children’s execution function skills. Scientists can now try to create interventions focused on label learning and group grouping based on their physical qualities. The training will probably be supported by training naturally with guardians during the game, as well as children’s books and EduTainment videos.
Our team has already started the next step in this work, examining how to facilitate these learning processes. Our goal is to create interventions aimed at improving executive function skills in early childhood, which will improve the broad development results when children are aging.
This article has been published from a conversation, non -profit, independent news organizations that provide you with facts and reliable analysis to help you give meaning to our complex world. This has written: Aaron Buss, University of Tennessee and Alexis McCraw, University of Tennessee
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Aaron Buss received funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Children’s Health and Human Development.
Alexis McCraw is not working, consulting, having any funding of any company or organization, or receiving funding that is beneficial from this article, and has not disclosed any important relationships for their academic appointment.