Interventions shown to Aid Executive Function Development in Children 4–12 Years Old

By A. Diamond, Kathleen Lee. Science, 2011

2,815 citations recorded by the source corpus.

To be successful takes creativity, flexibility, self-control, and discipline. Central to all those are executive functions, including mentally playing with ideas, giving a considered rather than an impulsive response, and staying focused. Diverse activities have been shown to improve children’s executive functions: computerized training, noncomputerized games, aerobics, martial arts, yoga, mindfulness, and school curricula. All successful programs involve repeated practice and progressively increase the challenge to executive functions. Children with worse executive functions benefit most from these activities; thus, early executive-function training may avert widening achievement gaps later. To improve executive functions, focusing narrowly on them may not be as effective as also addressing emotional and social development (as do curricula that improve executive functions) and physical development (shown by positive effects of aerobics, martial arts, and yoga).

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Psychiatry and Mental health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3ba8d3b9c28e4cd55498f25e7b1f942b5794b018

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Citations in the corpus

Executive functioning predicts academic achievement in middle school: A four-year longitudinal study (2016, background): “…Johnson, & Roy, 1999; Bull & Scerif, 2001; Duncan et al., 2007; Lehto, 1996; Lorsbach, Wilson, & Reimer, 1996; McLean & Hitch, 1999; Russell, Jarrold, & Henry, 1996; Swanson, 1993, 1999; Swanson, Ashbaker, & Lee, 1996) and succeed in school (Blair, 2002; Blair & Razza, 2007; Diamond & Lee, 2011).”
A Mindfulness-Based Social and Emotional Learning Curriculum for School-Aged Children: The MindUP Program (2016, positive): “Executive functions (EF) refer to higher cognitive processes utilized in problem solving, reasoning, and planning (Diamond & Lee, 2011 ), and thus are intertwined with social and emotional competencies, especially with the core competency of self-management (Lawlor, this volume).”
Executive Function Skills and School Success in Young Children Experiencing Homelessness (2012, background): “Thus, it is not surprising that EF skills relate to school success and are viewed as a key element of school readiness (Blair, 2002; Blair & Razza, 2007; Diamond & Lee, 2011).”
Early Reading Skills and Academic Achievement Trajectories of Students Facing Poverty, Homelessness, and High Residential Mobility (2012, neutral): “These school readiness skills involve early academic skills, such as counting and naming letters, and also self-regulation skills that enable children to focus attention, follow directions, and get along with teachers and peers (Diamond & Lee, 2011).”
A Pilot Study of Contemplative Practices with Economically Disadvantaged Preschoolers: Children’s Empathic and Self-Regulatory Behaviors (2016, background): “Secular mindfulness practices for children make use of mental training and selfmanagement techniques (Rempel 2012), with the primary goals of increasing sustained attention and self-regulation (Diamond and Lee 2011; Johnson et al. 2011).”
Psychosocial and Psychophysiological Effects of Human-Animal Interactions: The Possible Role of Oxytocin (2012, positive): “Also, the presence of a dog creates a pleasant social atmosphere, which is known to be an essential component for optimal executive functioning (Diamond and Lee, 2011), which represents a precondition for learning.”
Enhancing Preschoolers’ Self-Regulation Via Mindful Yoga (2015, background): “Given the great importance of self-regulation for children’s school readiness and success (Blair 2002; Eisenberg et al. 2004; Raver 2012), these skills have become an increasingly popular target for early intervention (see Diamond 2012; Diamond and Lee 2011).”
Specifying Links Between Executive Functioning and Theory of Mind during Middle Childhood: Cognitive Flexibility Predicts Social Understanding (2015, background): “…analyses to specify the nature of this important relation across development, especially during periods of rapid reorganization of the prefrontal cortex in early and middle childhood and the transition to adolescence (Diamond & Lee, 2011; Kray & Ferdinand, 2013; Zelazo & Carlson, 2012).”
Handwriting in early childhood education: Current research and future implications (2015, positive): “…literature (Blair, 2003; Blair and Diamond, 2008; Blair and Razza, 2007; Bodrova and Leong, 2007, 2008; Davidson et al., 2006; Diamond et al., 2007; Diamond and Lee, 2011; McClelland et al., 2000; Ponitz et al., 2009), and writing, particularly copying letters and symbols, may require that…”
Toward a Science of Effective Cognitive Training (2020, background): “…meta-analytic studies presented above, whereby isolated training focusing only on specific aspects of cognition without any embedding led to limited transfer, whereas training that was contextualized in terms of how and where it was delivered was shown to be more effective (Diamond & Lee, 2011).”