Relations between Executive Function and Academic Achievement from Ages 5 to 17 in a Large, Representative National Sample

By J. Best, P. H. Miller, J. Naglieri. Learning and Individual Differences, 2011

1,226 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study examined age-related changes in complex executive function (EF) in a large, representative sample (N = 2,036) aged 5 to 17 using the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS; Naglieri & Das, 1997a). Relations between complex EF and academic achievement were examined on a sub-sample (N = 1,395) given the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement–Revised (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989). Performance on the three complex EF tasks improved until at least age 15, although improvement slowed with increasing age and varied some across tasks. Moreover, the different developmental patterns in the correlations between completion time and accuracy provide clues to developmental processes. Examination of individual achievement subtests clarified the specific aspects of academic performance most related to complex EF. Finally, the correlation between complex EF and academic achievement varied across ages, but the developmental pattern of the strength of these correlations was remarkably similar for overall math and reading achievement, suggesting a domain-general relation between complex EF and academic achievement.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ab0ebcc889b67beecb3227cd733216dc1d62f586

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Citations in the corpus

Effect of classroom-based physical activity interventions on academic and physical activity outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis (2017, background): “Executive functions, inhibition in particular, have been shown to be consistently related to academic achievement [34] and therefore were considered salient to teachers.”
Physical activity and academic achievement in children: A historical perspective (2012, background): “In addition, Best et al. 90 showed that this relationship appears to vary between ages and subtests of both executive functions and academic achievement.”
Executive function and metacognition: Towards a unifying framework of cognitive self-regulation (2017, background): “This holds true for young elementary school children through to high school students (Best et al., 2011; Roebers, Röthlisberger, Neuenschwander, Cimeli, Michel, & Jäger, 2014), and for early word reading and spelling to 10-year-olds’ reading comprehension (Kieffer, Vukovic, & Berry, 2013).”