Research On The Neural Mechanism Of The Effect Of Executive Function On Development Of Children's Emotional Competence

Emotional competence?EC?refers to individuals'abilities to recognize,comprehend,express,and regulate emotions?Lahaye,Fantinihauwel,Van,Bodart,&Luminet,2011?.Which includes emotional recognition,emotional comprehension,emotional expression,and emotional regulation?Riquelme&Montero,2013;Wang et al.,2014?.It is a fundamental ability that helps children to deal with a challenge,establish a social relationship,access to greater social achievement,keep quality of married life?Y.Wang,Dong,&Zhu,2014?.And several cognitive abilities effect on children's emotional competence,e.g.executive function?EF?,attention,and solving problem.But executive function is a most important cognitive ability to the development of children's emotional competence.It has been shown that children's emotional competence is associated with their executive function?S.M.Carlson&Moses,2001;Adele Diamond,2012;Knight&Stuss,2002?.However,it is not clear that the effect mechanism of executive function and neural mechanism of executive function on children's emotional competence.Firstly,few studies combined static and dynamic methods to investigate the relationship between executive function and children's emotional competence.Secondly,few studies used experimental methods to investigate the causal relationship and mechanism between executive function and emotional competence.And previous studies have rarely investigate the neural mechanism of executive function affecting children's emotional competence.Therefore,what are the the development of the executive function affectting children's emotional competence,what are the cognitive mechanisms for these effects,what are the neural basis for these effects,it is still unclear about these questions.The article conducted three series of studies by combining horizontal and longitudinal studies,cognitive training?e.g.executive function training?and brain imaging technology?e.g.fNIRS?.The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of executive function on the development of children's emotional competence,effect mechanism and neural basis.From the perspective of behavior,study 1 investigated the executive function effects on the development of children's emotional competence by combining horizontal and longitudinal designs.From the perspective of effect mechanisms,study 2try to improve their emotional competence by training children's executive function.From the perspective of neural mechanisms,study 3 investigated the executive function effects on the neural basis of children's emotional competence by near-infrared functional brain imaging?fNIRS?.Study 1 investigate the executive function effects the development of 4⁵ years old children's emotional competence.Study 1 includes two experiments.The first experiment?N=79?adopted horizontal design to examine the executive function effects children's emotional competence during 4 year old.The results revealed that,?1?in general,it was a significantly positive association between executive function and emotional competence during 4 year old children.?2?4-year-old children's executive function could positively predict the development of emotional competence,and the executive function could explain 11.10%variation in children's emotional competence.?3?and inhibition control was closely related to children's emotional regulation.The second experiment?N=60?adopted longitudinal design and cross-lag analysis to examine the predictive effect of the executive function and its sub-core ability on children's emotional competence.Results revealed that,?1?cross-lag result revealed that it was significantly positive association between executive function and emotional competence at age of 4 and 4.5 years old.And the executive function at age of 4.5 years old can positively predict emotional competence at age of 5 years old.?2?to specific sub-cores,inhibition control of 4-years-old can significantly predict the development of their emotional competence,and the growth between 4-years-old to 4.5-years-old can significantly predict the growth of emotional competence.The cognitive flexibility at age of 4 have positive contribution to the development of emotional competence at age of 4.Working memory of 4-years-old can positively predict the development of their emotional competence,and working memory during 4.5-years-old can significantly predict the development of emotional competence during 5-years-old.These results showed that executive function affects children's development of emotional competence during 4⁵years old.every sub-core of executive functions affected the development of emotional competence inconsistently,but inhibition control was the most obvious.Study 2 used 2?group:No-training vs.EF training?×2?test time:pre vs.post?between-and-within-subjects design to investigate the effect of EF training on improving4-year-old children's emotional competence.Study 1 had showed that children's executive function can predict their emotional competence.The study adopted cognitive training?e.g.EF training?to determine the development of children's emotional competence.Fifty-five healthy Chinese kindergarteners(EF training group:N=29,M_age=50.65 months,SD=3.11months;No-training group,N=26,M_age=50.63 months,SD=3.32 months)participated in the study.The training took place twice a week over a3-month period and included 10 sessions in total.Small groups of six participants were invited to take part in interventions each time,and the same measurement tools were adopted before and after.Results that,?1?EF and EC didn't show significant difference during pretest,but No-training group performed better than EF training group on inhibition control.These result suggested that executive function promoted the development of children's emotional competence.?2?and above all,children's change in EF could predict the change in EC,?3?for specific sub-core ability,inhibition control did make a significant positive contribution to variance in total.Emotional regulation and working memory did make a significant positive contribution to variance in total emotional comprehension.These results suggested EF group can effectively improve children's emotional competence.Further sub-core abilities mainly revealed that children's inhibition control can improve their emotional regulation,and working memory can promote their emotional comprehension.Study 1 and study 2 have showed that executive function?e.g.inhibition control?effected importantly the development on children's emotional competence?e.g.emotional regulation?.However,it is still unclear that the neural basis for these affects of children's emotional competence by executive function.So,study 3 adopted near-infrared functional brain imaging?fNIRS?to investigate the neural mechanism of the sub-core ability?e.g.inhibition control?by affecting children's sub-core ability?e.g.emotional regulation?.Study 3 include two experiments.The forth experiment?N=18?investigated the neural basis of negative emotional regulation.In order to examine the effect of emotional regulation in detail,and experiment 4 included two regulating conditions?pre-regulation and post-regulation?.The pre-regulation refers to the baseline level of emotional regulation,and the post-regulation refers to after the experimental manipulation.At pre-regulation condition,the children were asked to rate the current emotional state before regulating,and the behavioral data?e.g.negative subjective emotional experience score?and brain activation data?e.g.Oxyhemoglobin content?were recorded.At post-regulation condition,the behavioral data?e.g.negative subjective emotional experience score?and brain activation data?e.g.Oxyhemoglobin content?were recorded after experimental operation?e.g.baseline level:neutral free watching;non-inhibition:negative free watching;inhibition:negative inhibition watching?.Results found that,?1?children's negative subjective emotional experience did not show significantly difference at pre-regulation condition.Children's negative subjective emotional experience score showed significantly difference at post-regulation condition,and the negative subjective emotional experience score from high to low were non-inhibition?e.g.negative free watching?,inhibition?e.g.negative inhibition watching?,and baseline?e.g.neutral free watching?.These results suggested that the emotional strategy of inhibition control can reduce effectively negative subjective emotional experience.?2?brain activation showed that,the negative subjective emotional experience score of success regulation(non-inhibition?negative free watching-inhibition?negative inhibition watching??was positively related to the Right Dorsolateral Preforntal Cortex?R dlPFC,BA9?under the condition(non-inhibition?negative inhibition watching-inhibition?negative inhibition watching??.It was significant between the negative subjective emotional experience of failure regulation(inhibition?negative inhibition watching-baseline?neural free watching??and the change of Oxyhemoglobin content in frontopolar area under the condition(inhibition?negative free watching-baseline?neural free watching??.These results suggested that Right Dorsolateral Preforntal Cortex?R dlPFC,BA9?was the neural basis of success regulation under negative emotional regulation.Experiment 5?N=18?further investigated the prediction of inhibition control effected on negative emotional regulation from behavior and brain activation.We found that,?1?the behavior result showed that it was a significant marginally correlation?r=0.451,p=0.069?between inhibition control ability?I:inconsistency?and the variability of emotional regulation.?2?brain activation results revealed that the ability of inhibition control?C-I:consistency-inconsistency?was marginally related to success regulation(non-inhibition(non-inbition?negativeinhibitionwatching?-inhibition?negative inhibition watching?in Right Dorsolateral Preforntal Cortex?R dlPFC,BA9?,r=-0.469?p=0.058?.Further regression analysis showed that the ability of inhibition control?C-I:consistency-inconsistency?can predict the activation in Right Dorsolateral Preforntal Cortex under success regulation((non-inhibition?negative inhibition watching-inhibition?negative inhibition watching??.These results suggested that emotional strategy of inhibition control can effectively reduce children's negative subjective emotional experience,and children's inhibition control can positively predict the development of emotional regulation.Right Dorsolateral Preforntal Cortex?R dlPFC,BA9?was the neural basis of success emotional regulation.Taken together,we found that,?1?executive function affects children's development of emotional competence,and inhibition control was the most obvious.?2?EF training can effectively improve children's emotional competence.Further sub-core abilities mainly revealed that children's inhibition control can improve their emotional regulation,and working memory can promote their emotional comprehension.?3?strategy of inhibition control can effectively reduce children's negative subjective emotional experience.?4?children's inhibition control can positively predict the development of emotional regulation.And Right Dorsolateral Preforntal Cortex?R dlPFC,BA9?was the neural basis of success emotional regulation and inhibition control.The paper conducted three series of studies determine executive function effects children's emotional competence by the relationship between executive function and emotional competence,effect mechanism between executive function and emotional competence,and neural basis for these effects.Overall,the study suggested that,?1?it was a significant relationship between executive function to children's emotional competence,and 4.5-years-old children's executive function can predict their development of emotional competence.?2?EF training can improve children's development of emotional competence at age of 4⁴.5 years old.The effect mainly revealed that inhibition control can improve their emotional regulation,and working memory can promote their emotional comprehension.?3?strategy of inhibition control can effectively reduce children's negative subjective emotional experience.And Right Dorsolateral Preforntal Cortex?R dlPFC,BA9?was the neural basis of success emotional regulation and inhibition control.In a word,the paper systematically investigated executive function effects children's emotional competence,which reveals relationship between executive function and emotional competence,effect mechanism between executive function and emotional competence,and neural basis for these effects.On the one hand,the study is of great theoretical value to deepen the understanding of children's emotional competence.on the other hand,the study provides a new direction for the development of emotional competence by training executive function.In addition,further study try to train children's Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex to improve children's emotional competence by transcranial direct current stimulation?tDCS?.That was also practical value for the intervention of children's emotional competence.Therefore,our findings provide reliable evidence of the relation between executive function and emotional competence,and executive function effect children's emotional competence on effect and neural mechanism.And the paper also provides empirical basis for the development of children's emotional competence in clinical and educational fields.