Changing Nature of Executive Control in Preschool

Executive control (EC) is a central construct in developmental science,although measurement limitations have hindered understanding ofits nature and development in young children, relation to social risk,and prediction of important outcomes. Disentangling EC from thefoundational cognitive abilities it regulates and that are inherentlyrequired for successful executive task completion (e.g., language, visual/spatial perception, and motor abilities) is particularly challenging atpreschool age, when these foundational abilities are still developing andconsequently differ substantially among children. A novel latent bifactormodeling approach delineated respective EC and foundational cognitiveabilities components that undergird executive task performance ina socio demographically stratifi ed sample of 388 preschoolers in alongitudinal, cohort-sequential study. The bifactor model revealed adevelopmental shift, where both EC and foundational cognitive abilitiescontributed uniquely to executive task performance at ages 4.5 and 5.25years, but were not separable at ages 3 and 3.75. Contrary to the viewthat EC is vulnerable to socio-familial risk, the contributions of householdfinancial and learning resources to executive task performance werenot specific to EC but were via their relation to foundational cognitiveabilities. EC, though, showed a unique, discriminant relation withhyperactive symptoms late in the preschool period, whereas foundationalcognitive abilities did not predict specifi c dimensions of dysregulatedbehavior. These findings form the basis for a new, integrated approachto the measurement and conceptualization of EC, which includesdual consideration of the contributions of EC and foundationalcognitive abilities to executive task performance, particularly in thedevelopmental context of preschool.