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A Preschool Curriculum intended to Improve Executive Function (EF) skills
How much can EF skills be improved in young children and what are the neural correlates?
Does improving EF in this way improve academic achievement more than other approaches?
Can this approach close the achievement gap between economically advantaged and disadvantaged children?
Are the effects lasting, and might they get even larger over time?
Can early EF training reduce the later incidence of diagnoses of EF disorders (such as ADHD and conduct disorder)?
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Genetic Polymorphisms that may affect EF skills differentially in Males and Females
While males benefit from the version of the COMT (catechol-o-methyltransferase) gene that results in higher dopamine levels in prefrontal cortex (PFC), might females benefit from the version of the COMT that clears dopamine from PFC faster?
We expect to replicate previous findings that men homozygous for the Met version of the COMT gene show superior EF.
However, might women homozygous for the Val version of the COMT gene show better EF performance than women homozygous for the Met version, especially during the point in their menstrual cycles when estrogen levels are high?
Might males and females differ in what dosage levels of dopaminergic drugs are most efficacious? Might the efficacious dosage levels differ for a given woman by what point she is in her menstrual cycle?
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Effects of Parental Cultural Beliefs on how early classical preschool cognitive tasks are mastered
Do parental attitudes about consistency affect 3-yr-olds’ performance on tasks where inconsistency and change are emphasized?
Does that explain previously observed East-West differences in when these tasks are mastered, or are other cultural factors also affecting the results?
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Might decrements in EF skills precede and predict the onset of depression?
People who are depressed tend to show EF deficits, but what comes first, their depression or their EF deficit?
Can certain changes in EF profile and/or circadian rhythm serve as an early warning signal that intervention to avert depression is needed?
What independent and interactive effects do mother’s mood during pregnancy, mother’s mood during a child’s development, the mother having taken anti-depressant medication during pregnancy, and the child’s genotype have on a child’s general development and specifically on the development of EF skills?
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Using physical connection to help children grasp conceptual connections:
Will this help children with autism?
Might infants in general, and some developmentally-delayed young children with autism, need to see a physical connection to help them grasp an abstract conceptual connection?
Might young children with autism, even if mildly developmentally delayed, be able to learn abstract rules long thought beyond their ability if only the way materials are presented to them is slightly altered?
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Obtaining population norms for each age between 4-18 on a new Computerized EF Battery
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Might Poverty detrimentally affect cognitive development because of its effect on EF?
If so, what minimizes poverty’s detrimental effect on EF?
While many studies have shown an association between economic deprivation and impaired cognitive development, no studies have explored the impact of economic and environmental disadvantage on component neurocognitive capacities within EF.
We propose that one mechanism accounting for the impact of poverty on cognitive development may be through delayed or impaired EF.
To investigate this we have brought together people in five disciplines -- behavioral neuroscience, epidemiology, child development, neuropsychology, and economics.
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Testing Hypotheses concerning Task Switching, Spatial Incompatibility, and Stroop-like Interference
For example:
If the different sorting rules are not presented as arbitrary, but as each being embedded in a story context in which they make sense, will 3-year-olds then we able to successfully switch sorting dimensions?
Will pianists show smaller spatial compatibility effects than non-pianists including other musicians?
Why does taking more time help children on tasks like the Day-NIght Stroop-like task?
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Effects of deletion of the chromosome on which one copy of the COMT gene is located on EF and on risk for psychopathology
The 22q11.2DS, also known as velocardiofacial (VCFS) and DiGeorge syndrome, is a common syndrome resulting from a microdeletion in chromosome 22q11.2.
About 1/4 - 1/3 of individuals with 22q11.2DS develop schizophrenia-like psychotic disorders. Individuals with 22q11.2DSthe highest risk group for schizophrenia next to an identical twin or the offspring of two patients with schizophrenia.
Two neural circuits that seem to be especially affected are the frontostriatal and frontoparietal.
Might decrements in EF skills precede and predict the onset of schizophrenia?
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Long-lasting, selective visual deficits from short-term exposure to high neonatal phenylalanine levels in humans.
The visual system matures rapidly during the first days and weeks after birth.
Normally, treatment for phenylketonuria (PKU) hasn’t bee started until 10 -14 days after birth.
We have shown that that is too late to avert damage to the visual system still evident 10 years later, caused by the infant’s grossly elevated phenylalanine levels. Starting PKU treatment 2-4 days after birth averts that damage.
Based on our findings, US national health guidelines for the treatment of PKU were changed.
We are now investigating the neural bases for the visual impairments. Where in the nervous system is the damage occurring?
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ADD (ADHD without hyperactivity), a Neurobiologically and Behaviorally Distinct Disorder from ADHD (with hyperactivity)
Adele Diamond (2005)
Development and Psychopathology, 17, pages 807-825
Most studies of ADHD have focused on the combined type and emphasized a core problem in response inhibition. We’ve proposed that ADHD of the truly inattentive type is a fundamentally different disorder from the other types of ADHD, with different brain systems affected, different genes implicated, different behavioral profiles, different underlying cognitive deficits, different patterns of co-morbidities, and different responses to medication.
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The Social Simon Effect is seen as Early as the Simon Effect
Yvette Wu, Sarah Munro, & Adele Diamond (paper in preparation)
presented at the Jean Piaget Society Annual Meeting, Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 1, 2007
Perception of a stimulus on one side of space tends to activate the hand on that same side. To respond with the other hand requires inhibition of that prepotent response. Hence people are slower to act on the rule, “Press the righthand button whenever you see a star,” if the star appears on the left than if it appears on the right. This “Simon Effect” is copiously documented in adults. Recently it has been demonstrated in adults that if the task is shared with another person, so that the person sitting beside you is responsible for the righthand button and so should always press when the star appears and you are responsible for the lefthand button and so should always press when the frog appears, adults still show the Simon Effect. However if the interpersonal dimension is removed and the task is presented as a Go/No-go (press for the frog, do nothing when a star appears), the Simon Effect is NOT found, even though what you do here is exactly the same as in the interpersonal situation.
We wanted to see if this was true in children, and if so, how early it would be seen.
We tested 4 age groups: mean age in years= 3.6 (range= 3.4-3.8), 4.1 (range= 3.9-4.3), 4.7 (range= 4.5-4.9), and 20.7 (range= 18.5-22.7), 16 subjects per group (50% female).
We replicated the findings previously reported in adults: longer RTs when a stimulus appeared on the side opposite its associated response than when it appeared on the same side (the Simon effect) in the basic and team conditions, but not in go/no-go. We also replicated that the earliest age for the Simon effect is 4 years. Our 4.1-year-old group showed the Simon effect, but our 3.6-year-old group did not. The task was too difficult for them and they responded randomly.
Would children show the Social Simon effect and how early? From the earliest age that children can perform the task (4 years) they showed the Social Simon effect (a Simon effect in the Team but not the Go/No-go condition -- and comparable Simon effect in the Team and Basic conditions) and it was completely as robust as that for adults. This was true (a) if the Simon effect was determined by the usual formula: RT on incongruent trials minus RT on congruent trials. It was also true when we corrected for children’s slower RTs: (b) (RT incongruent trials minus RT congruent trials) divided by the child’s average RT in that condition.
These results imply that children as young as 4.1 years are treating the other person in Team Simon as an extension of themselves. It’s as if they themselves were pressing the other button.
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EF Advantages in Bilingual Children include Working Memory, as well as Inhibition and Cognitive Flexibility
Xiaojia Feng, Ellen Bialystok, & Adele Diamond (paper in preparation)
presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, March,
Boston, MA, Mar. 31, 2007
Bialystok and colleagues have previously shown that if children continually exercise inhibition and cognitive flexibility by inhibiting one language when using another and flexibly switching between languages, their performance on non-linguistic inhibition and switching tasks at 4-5 years of age is dramatically ahead (1-2 years ahead!) of monolingual peers.
We have extended evidence of that bilingual advantage here to working member.
Daily EF “exercise” appears to enhance and accelerate EF development much as physical exercise builds the body.
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Not quite as Grown-Up as we like to think: Parallels between Cognition in Childhood and Adulthood
Adele Diamond& Natasha Kirkham
Psychological Science, 16, pages 291-297 (2005)
Greater continuity may exist in cognition between childhood and adulthood than is usually appreciated. It was thought that after the age of 3-4 years the problem in switching from sorting by color to sorting by shape, or vice versa, disappears. We show here, however, that if speed is used as the dependent measure rather than accuracy, the effect of the first dimension is evident even in adults. Adults, like preschoolers, show difficulty in switching from a block of sorting by color or shape to a block of sorting by the other. Importantly, performance on the two sorting conditions was affected by the first dimension sorted. We hypothesize that perhaps adults never fully outgrow any of the cognitive and perceptual biases of infancy and early childhood. Other domains in which biases thought to be unique to infants and preschoolers appear still present in adults are discussed.
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