Separable but Correlated: The Role of Executive Functions and Effortful Control in the Transition to School Age

TL;DR

This study examines how executive function and effortful control relate and predict behavior in children transitioning to school age.

Contribution

The study confirms EF and EC are distinct but correlated constructs and identifies their predictive roles in behavioral outcomes.

Findings

EF predicts externalizing behaviors one year later, but EC does not.

Internalizing behaviors are stable over time and predict future externalizing behaviors in school-age children.

EF and EC are separable yet correlated constructs with partial invariance across age groups.

Abstract

Executive function (EF) and effortful control (EC) are two similarly defined constructs implicated in self-regulation. Recent debates have questioned whether EF and EC may in fact represent a single construct, and they have undergone scrutiny regarding construct independence. Efforts to differentiate them have further queried whether one may in fact precede the other in early childhood. In a cohort-sequential study of 191 typically developing 4-to-7 year olds (97 girls, 59.7% White), confirmatory factor analysis supported the correlated yet separable two-factor structure of EF and EC with partial scalar invariance across preschool and school-age groups. Longitudinal multi-group modeling was then used to identify predictive pathways between EF, EC, and psychopathology. For both developmental groups, EF predicted externalizing behaviors one year later while EC did not directly predict behavioral outcomes. Internalizing behaviors were found to be highly stable and predictable over time and across age; however, externalizing behaviors significantly predicted internalizing behaviors one year later in the school-age group but not the preschool group. These findings have implications for the measurement of EF and EC in early childhood, as well as the development and prediction of internalizing and externalizing behaviors across the transition to school.

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