As children enter school, they are constantly expected to pay attention, follow rules, and concentrate on various tasks. For young students, this means having to wait their turn to engage in activities, raise their hands before speaking, and resist becoming distracted by peers. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying these types of behaviors is central to our research. Specifically, we study children’s executive function (i.e., working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility) development. Grounded in an applied developmental science perspective, and by employing longitudinal and experimental methodology, our research includes three interrelated goals:
(1) Understand the development of executive function during early childhood and its relation to learning and well-being across the lifespan.
(2) Investigate how early social and classroom contexts shape executive function development during early childhood.
(3) Examine how schools and teachers can promote children’s executive function development through teaching strategies and curricular enhancements.