Executive Function Deficits in Kindergartners Predict Later Academic Difficulties

This study investigated whether and to what extent deficits in executive functions (EF) increase kindergarten children’s risk for repeated academic difficulties across elementary school. Findings showed that deficits in EF, particularly in working memory, increased kindergarten children’s risk of experiencing repeated mathematics, reading, and science difficulties across elementary school. These predictive relations replicated across three academic domains following statistical control for domain-specific and -general autoregressors as well as socio-demographic characteristics.

Morgan, P. L., Farkas, G., Wang, Y., Hillemeier, M., Oh, Y., & Maczuga, S. (2018). Executive function deficits in kindergarten predict repeated academic difficulties across elementary school. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 46(1^st Quarter 2019), 20-32. http://dx./doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.06.009