Department of Pediatrics, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, IL.
Department of Pediatrics, Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.
J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2022 Sep 1;43(7):e431-e441. doi: 10.1097/DBP.0000000000001072. Epub 2022 May 17.
The development of executive function (EF) in infants and toddlers has received increased interest by clinicians and researchers. Higher rates of deficits in EF have been reported in at-risk groups of infants such as those born extremely preterm. These deficits play an important role in the etiology of early neurodevelopmental problems and are predictive of subsequent nonoptimal educational outcomes. In this study, the Bayley-4 is used to follow the developmental course of EF and to determine whether EF is a unitary concept or can be parsed into discrete components over the first 42 months.
All 81 cognitive items from the Bayley-4 normative sample of 1700 infants and toddlers were classified a priori into 6 EFs, and then, 5 age groups derived from Bayley-4 start points were factor analyzed to determine at what age EFs emerge and to address the controversy of whether the factor structure of the cognitive items for each of 5 age groups reflect a single factor or multiple factors.
Bayley-4 items form 1 to 5 EF factors for each age group, accounting for 59% to 74% of the variance. There is a developmental progression in EF as well. The results indicate EF constructs can be identified early.
Executive function tasks in infants and toddlers are interrelated with task content either remaining the same or changing with advancing age (i.e., content that is homotypic or heterotypic, respectively). EFs measured by Bayley-4 items are useful clinically and become more complex with increasing age, corresponding to more advanced brain development and integration. The findings have the potential of providing additional information in the assessment of infants at risk such as those born preterm.
婴幼儿执行功能（EF）的发展越来越受到临床医生和研究人员的关注。在早产儿等高危婴儿群体中，EF 缺陷的发生率较高。这些缺陷在早期神经发育问题的病因中起着重要作用，并可预测随后的非最佳教育结果。本研究采用贝利-4 量表跟踪 EF 的发育过程，以确定 EF 是否是一个单一的概念，或者是否可以在最初的 42 个月内分解为离散的成分。
贝利于 4 岁的 1700 名婴幼儿的正常样本中共有 81 项认知项目，根据先验分类为 6 种 EF，然后对来自贝利于 4 岁起点的 5 个年龄组进行因子分析，以确定 EF 在何时出现，并解决关于认知项目的因子结构对于每个 5 个年龄组的单一因素或多个因素的争议。
贝利于 4 岁的每个年龄组的项目形成 1 到 5 个 EF 因子，占 59%到 74%的方差。EF 也有一个发展过程。结果表明，早期可以识别 EF 结构。
婴幼儿的执行功能任务与任务内容相互关联，任务内容要么保持不变，要么随着年龄的增长而变化（即同质或异质内容）。贝利于 4 岁的项目测量的 EF 在临床上是有用的，并且随着年龄的增长变得更加复杂，与更先进的大脑发育和整合相对应。这些发现有可能为早产儿等有风险的婴儿评估提供额外的信息。
