Cross-Cultural Study of Family Influences on Executive Functions in Late Childhood

Recent advances in developmental cognitive neuroscience suggest a link between executive functions (EF) and school achievement, above and beyond the contributions of intelligence. Executive functions are often described as our ability to reason, plan ahead, multi-task or switch between tasks, sustain attention, delay gratification, and make complex decisions. Marked changes in EF occur between childhood and adulthood. Although children from Asia are widely reported to outperform children from North America and Europe on EF tasks (particularly on tests of inhibitory control and attention), the evidence is focused almost entirely on early childhood (e.g., 3- to 7-year-olds) and largely ignores the question of whether there are cross-cultural differences in EF for older children and adults. To date, these cross-cultural studies have assumed that EF tasks are culturally fair and index the same cognitive and social processes in children from different countries. In seeking to explain cultural contrasts in EF, existing studies have assumed (rather than directly measured) contrasts in parenting. In discussing these findings, the focus has been on contrasts in socialization goals (i.e., individual autonomy vs. collective harmony). It is possible that multiple factors contribute to between-country contrasts in children's social environments. In particular, to date cross-cultural studies have ignored potential differences in parental EF. Further, there is growing interest in the relation between EF and school achievement. Again, most of the research in this area has focused on early childhood and there are no existing studies attempting to explore the interplay between EF and academic achievement in a cross-cultural sample. Thus, the aim of the current study is to uniquely explore the EF skills and academic achievement in late childhood with children and parents from both the United Kingdom and Hong Kong to better understand the importance of family factors on EF development and its relation to school performance.

The study outlined here will include parent-child dyads completing a fairly extensive assessment battery. The study focuses on late childhood with participants between the ages of 8 and 11 years. The test battery will include multiple measures of EF (i.e., working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and planning), other cognitive measures (i.e., verbal skills, general cognitive ability), parenting measures (socialization goals, quality of parent child-relationships) and academic ability (i.e. literacy and numeracy skills). In this way, EF will also shed light on the cultural universality / specificity of the correlates of variation in older children's EF, family factors and academic achievement.

This collaborative venture promises to be fruitful as it brings together researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge with diverse areas of expertise (e.g., experimental task design for online testing, cognitive assessments, psychometrics, etc.). In addition, by partnering with researchers in the Departments of Psychology and Educational Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the applicants are well placed to ensure that policy-relevant findings are disseminated efficiently to educational practitioners in Hong Kong.

The impetus for this proposal came from the PI and co-PI's interest in conducting research on the cultural factors that influence cognitive development and is an extension of an existing project that the co-PI has with the HK Institute of Education. By partnering up with researchers in the Departments of Educational Psychology and Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and capitalising on their existing connections with local schools, the PI and co-PI are well-placed to communicate findings directly with educational practitioners (and those responsible for training teachers) in the UK and Hong Kong. For example, the PI regularly supervises and gives presentations to teachers and teacher trainers through her post in the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education and the CI has been a regular contributor to the Faculty's professional development workshops, which are well attended by teaching professionals in East Anglia. Thus the short term beneficiaries in both countries consist primarily of educational practitioners. In the UK and Hong Kong, policy-makers have recognized the need to invest in the family factors on cognitive development (SEAL in UK, and APASO, Assessment Program for Affective and Social Outcomes commissioned by the Education Bureau in HK), but progress to date has been hampered by the lack of effective outcome measures. By developing a battery of psychometrically robust instruments for assessing children's acquisition (and use) of executive functions, this proposal will have a positive impact on existing intervention programmes (e.g., Sure Start), such that in the long term, beneficiaries from this study will include large numbers of children in both countries, including children who lag behind their peers in terms of cognitive skills. In addition, the proposed study will, throughout the lifetime of the grant, have a positive impact on the researchers themselves, as the international dialogue required for effective collaboration will lead to a widening of horizons, both intellectually and socially. More specifically, each applicant brings a distinct set of skills and expertise, such that this bilateral project is likely to broaden and enhance the knowledge base of individual applicants. Finally, the applicants are all engaged in programmes for public outreach (e.g., via the Science Festival and Festival of Ideas hosted by the University of Cambridge), such that the beneficiaries from this research will extend beyond educational professionals (and their pupils) to include members of the general public in each country.