RUNNING HEAD: EF AND RESPONSE TO INSTRUCTION

EF AND RESPONSE TO INSTRUCTION5

Executive Functioning and Response to Instruction

by

Mia C. Daucourt

A Thesis submitted to the

Department of Psychology

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation

with Honors in the Major

Degree Pending:

Spring 2016

Executive Functioning and Response to Instruction

Abstract

Recent achievement research suggests that executive function (EF), a set of regulatory processes that control both thought and action, is related to reading outcomes. This project examines EF as measured by its components, Inhibition, Updating Working Memory, and Shifting, and its response to instruction. Response to instruction was operationalized as a constellation model that includes four reading disability (RD) symptoms, with students classified as responders or non-responders. The four-criteria included low achievement (calculated by a 25%tile cut on spring word reading scores), unexpected low achievement (calculated by a 25%tile cut on spring word reading scores, controlling for fall word reading scores), discrepancy between listening and reading comprehension (calculated by a 25%tile cut on spring reading comprehension scores, controlling for spring vocabulary scores), a dual-discrepancy RTI model: low achievement and low growth (calculated by falling below both a 25%tile cut on low spring word reading scores and a 25%tile cut on low growth of word reading across the school year). The constellation model is set so that any child could have none of the above four criteria, one of the four, two of the four, three of the four, or all four of the criteria. The results of this study show that EF is significantly related to response to instruction when defined as the most severe non-responders, although the EF subcomponents are not differentially associated with response to instruction. Post hoc Tukey tests showed that the four-symptom group was significantly worse than all other groups for Letter Word Identification (LWID), and significantly worse than all other groups but the three-symptom group for Passage Comprehension (PC) and worse than only the one-symptom group for Picture Vocabulary (PV). Treatment resistors tend to have multiple deficits, and poor EF is likely one of them. EF may serve as important indicator of real reading disability and could potentially be added to the constellation model of RD.

Moving away from a focus on general intelligence, recent achievement research has shifted to a concentration on other cognitive and behavioral correlates of academic achievement, including self-regulation. One of the main components of self-regulation is a concept originally introduced by Baddeley and Hitch in 1974 as the central executive, which is currently referred to as executive function. Executive function, or EF, comprises the skills required for an individual to work toward a goal and make judgments in novel, unforeseen situations and includes regulation of both thought and action. Examples of these self-directed skills include planning ahead, problem solving, decision making, attention maintenance and direction, emotional regulation and behavioral control (Sesma, Mahone, Levine, Eason & Cutting, 2009).

Due to the broad scope of the processes and capacities mediated by EF, there is a lack of consensus among researchers about the specific constituents that make up the EF construct (Sadeh, Burns & Sullivan, 2012). A significant inquiry about EF is whether EF is a part of the unified intelligence construct of g, or if it forms its own discrete unitary or multicomponent system. The unity and diversity paradigm (Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki & Howeter, 2000; Becker et. al., 2014) reconciles this debate by claiming that the EF subcomponents are both inter-related and separate. The shared variance among EF components points to a common thread present in all EF abilities, while the unique variance linked to each individual constituent represents what is distinctive about that particular component of EF (Miyake et. al., 2000; Miyake & Friedman, 2012). Research has shown support for EF as an independent yet unitary construct in younger children in both pre-kindergarten and kindergarten (Miyake & Friedman, 2012; Fuhs, Nesbitt, Farran & Dong, 2014). On the other hand, many factor analyses conducted with older populations, including twins, normal young and elderly adults, adults with brain damage, and children with neurocognitive pathologies provide evidence for a multi-component EF system, by demonstrating that different EF tasks are not significantly correlated (Banich, 2009; Miyake et. al., 2000). Even though the precise rudimentary components of EF are still debated, the most common division of EF includes three subcomponents: updating and monitoring of working memory, mental set shifting, and preponent response inhibition (Miyake & Friedman, 2006; Miyake et. al., 2000; Best & Miller, 2010). Updating working memory is a screening and coding system that reviews information based on significance, constantly eliminating extraneous information and replacing it with more relevant information. Shifting involves back and forth movement between tasks and higher and lower levels of mental processing. Inhibition is the capacity to obstruct automatic or dominant responses when they are not appropriate for the context at hand (Miyake et. al., 2000; Toplak, West & Stanovich, 2013; St.Clair-Thompson & Gathercole, 2006). I will use the theoretically-postulated three component model of EF that includes inhibition, updating working memory, and shifting, in order to determine the unique associations of distinctive aspects of EF with response to instruction.

EF and Literacy Outcomes

Brain imaging studies have shown an evolution of EF that begins in early childhood and continues to evolve in sporadic surges through early adulthood (Miyake et. al., 2000; Anderson, 2002). The skills and abilities that are involved in this evolution play an important role in human learning and memory (Mcauley et al., 2010) and have been consistently linked to educational achievement outcomes, (St.Clair-Thompson & Gathercole, 2009; Becker, Miao, Duncan & McClelland, 2014; Fuhs et. al., 2014), literacy attainment, and school success for a variety of age groups (Foy & Mann, 2012; St. Clair-Thompson & Gathercole, 2006).

In a study conducted in England on students with a mean age of 11 years and 9 months, St. Clair-Thompson & Gathercole (2006) found small but significant associations between national curriculum test scores for English, math, and science and the EF constituents of inhibition and two components of updating working memory: verbal working memory and visuospatial working memory. Inhibition and visuospatial working memory were related to scores in all three subject areas, while verbal working memory was associated with English scores. This evidence supports the idea of updating working memory and inhibition as domain general contributors to all academic realms and highlights the unique contribution to literacy made by verbal working memory (St. Clair-Thompson et. al., 2006; Engle de Abreu, Abreu, Nikaedo, Puglisi, Touriho, Miranda, Befi-Lopes, Bueno & Martin, 2014). Results from the study also bolster a multicomponent view of EF, identifying separate updating working memory and inhibition components, but failing to find evidence for the existence of shifting as a third component.

Another important literacy skill thats related to EF and plays a major role in future learning and academic achievement is reading comprehension (Sesma, Mahone, Levine, Eason & Cutting, 2009; Foy & Mann, 2012). A study conducted with 9- to 15-year-olds with and without reading disabilities found that, after controlling for individual differences in vocabulary, decoding, reading fluency, and attention, verbal working memory (a subcomponent of updating working memory) and planning (another sub-index of EF) were significantly related to reading comprehension achievement but not to single word reading (Sesma et.al., 2009). These findings imply that EF may be a vital component in the transition from emergent literacy skills, like single word reading, to the more complex ability of reading comprehension. A study examining 6- to 8-year-old Brazilian children further reinforced the relationship between EF and reading achievement by revealing a significant association between shortcomings in working memory and cognitive flexibility and reading comprehension problems in early readers, corroborating the strong influence of updating working memory on reading skills and deficits (Engle de Abreu et. al., 2014).

As evidenced by the aforementioned studies, a majority of the exploration of EFs role in literacy development focuses on updating working memory because the research on this EF subcomponent is more widespread, and thus better understood and less controversial than the other EF constituents (e.g., Miyake & Friedman, 2006; Sesma et. al., 2008). Another important component of executive function, inhibition, was recently linked to literacy in kindergarteners from low-income homes after controlling for confounds, like intelligence and preschool attendance. Inhibitory control was found to be associated with letter knowledge and phonemic awareness, both of which function as strong indicators of future word reading ability (Kieffer, Vukovic & Berry, 2013). Updating working memory consistently correlates with school attainment and reading outcomes, across a vast span of ages, but much less attention has been paid to the relationship between the other EF constituents and school achievement (Kieffer et. al., 2013). In this study, I will explore