von Suchodoletz Antje, Slot Pauline L, Shroff Delshad M
Department of Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Department of Child, Family, and Education Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Psych J. 2017 Mar;6(1):16-28. doi: 10.1002/pchj.156.
Executive function (EF), including cognitive flexibility, attention shifting, and inhibitory control, has been linked to a range of outcomes across the lifespan, such as school readiness and academic functioning, job performance, health, and social-emotional well-being. Yet, research investigating links between parent EF and child EF is still limited. This is partly due to challenges in measuring the same EF abilities in parents and their children. The current study investigated the applicability of a computer-based battery of various EF tasks for use with both mothers and children. The battery included the following EF tasks: Dimensional Change Card Sort, Hearts and Flowers, and Fish Flanker. Participants were 80 Indian mothers and their 4-year-old daughters. EF was measured with regard to accuracy scores, response time, and inverse efficiency (IE) scores of the most complex blocks of each task. Scoring patterns indicated that children's task performance appeared to be determined by their ability to recognize the cue indicating which task to perform at any given trial and to inhibit an incorrect response. In contrast, mothers' performance appeared to be determined by response time, that is, their ability to be quick in giving the correct response. However, for both children and mothers, IE scores best captured individual differences in EF performance between participants. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analyses found that, for both children and mothers, all EF measures loaded on a latent factor, suggesting that the measures shared common variance in EF. There appeared to be no significant association between mothers' and children's EF scores, controlling for several background variables. Directions for further research include examining the applicability of the EF task battery to reliably describe developmental trajectories of EF abilities over time, and further examining variability in the parent-child EF association across the lifespan.
执行功能（EF），包括认知灵活性、注意力转移和抑制控制，与一生中的一系列结果相关，如入学准备和学业表现、工作绩效、健康以及社会情感幸福感。然而，调查父母执行功能与孩子执行功能之间联系的研究仍然有限。部分原因在于在测量父母及其孩子的相同执行功能能力时存在挑战。当前研究调查了一套基于计算机的各种执行功能任务组合对母亲和孩子的适用性。该任务组合包括以下执行功能任务：维度变化卡片分类、红心与花朵以及鱼形侧抑制任务。参与者为80名印度母亲及其4岁女儿。通过每个任务最复杂模块的准确率得分、反应时间和反向效率（IE）得分来测量执行功能。得分模式表明，孩子的任务表现似乎取决于他们识别指示在任何给定试验中执行哪个任务的线索以及抑制错误反应的能力。相比之下，母亲的表现似乎取决于反应时间，即她们快速给出正确反应的能力。然而，对于孩子和母亲来说，IE得分最能体现参与者在执行功能表现上的个体差异。此外，验证性因素分析发现，对于孩子和母亲来说，所有执行功能测量指标都加载在一个潜在因素上，这表明这些测量指标在执行功能方面共享共同方差。在控制了几个背景变量后，母亲和孩子的执行功能得分之间似乎没有显著关联。进一步研究的方向包括检验执行功能任务组合在可靠描述执行功能能力随时间的发展轨迹方面的适用性，以及进一步研究亲子执行功能关联在一生中的变异性。
