Investigating the early development of control of attention and Executive Function in typically and atypically developing children

Often in life we have to stop ourselves from doing something ('inhibitory control'), to keep some information in mind whilst also adding to or changing it ('working memory') and to switch our actions during a changing situation ('cognitive flexibility'). This group of skills is known as Executive Function (EF). When we use EF skills we can set and work towards goals. Not surprising then that strong EF skills are linked to better performance at school and higher levels of health, wealth and happiness in later life.

The long-term aim of my research is to find out why some children go on to develop strong EF skills and not others. This information will be useful for identifying which children are most at risk for poor EF, and for designing targeted support programmes to nudge their development towards a more positive outcome. The 2011 Allen Review on Early Intervention for Children highlighted the first 3 years of life as critical for early development, and argued for the importance of early support whilst the brain is most responsive to change. However, current established measures of EF are only suitable for children older than 2.5 years, making it difficult to identify those children most in need of early help: my research aims to address this issue by developing new ways of measuring differences in EF and attention skills in infants and toddlers.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been linked to increased difficulties with EF. During my PhD I studied the early development of EF in children with an increased risk of developing ASD, because they have an older sibling already with a diagnosis. To do this, I had to develop new ways of measuring EF in toddlers, who are limited in terms of their ability to understand complex instructions. My measures include 'eye-tracking' tasks which enable us to record exactly where, and for how long, toddlers look at different images on a screen, problem-solving games and touchscreen tasks. My initial results suggest that differences in EF skills can be seen in children by age 2 years, and that poorer EF skills are linked to more severe symptoms of ASD: this is important for the kinds of early support that such toddlers might benefit from. I also found during my PhD that differences in the development of babies' ability to control their attention has an influence on later EF skills, raising the possibility that we can spot some warning signs even earlier than age 2. In my fellowship I plan to explore this exciting possibility by fine-tuning my measures for babies and using a range of approaches to get a deeper understanding of how babies' brains and behaviour develop during these critical first years of life. To do this, I will combine the kinds of simple games and toys that babies enjoy with high-tech (but perfectly safe) methods with which I can measure their brain and heart activity. I will also check that what we capture in a laboratory setting corresponds to children's day-to-day behaviour by comparing performance on the lab measures with responses on a new parent questionnaire that I am developing to find out about related behaviours in the home.

With this combination of measures I hope to be able to find out more about the range of EF-related skills that babies are capable of, and to start to uncover how these behaviours are linked to changes in their developing brain. I will share both my results and the measures that I am developing with other researchers, healthcare workers, and early intervention providers, in order to accelerate the development of screening and intervention programmes for children who need early support in order to achieve their full potential.