A Study On The Relations Between Executive Function And Reasoning And Learning Ability

Executive function (EF for short), as a high-level cognitive abilities, has become the focus and front in researches on cognitive development over the last few decades. Executive function is defined as a general control mechanism that controls and coordinates the cognitive processing as to cognitive system to ensure a flexible, optimized way to achieve specific goals. A large body of evidence suggests that executive function is related to reasoning ability and is involved in scholastic abilities such as reading and arithmetic.Although relations between executive function and reading, arithmetic and reasoning have been found, difficulties in reading and arithmetic may duo to the defect in executive function. However, executive function is detachable. Researches on the relationship between the compositions of executive function and abilities did not penetrate deeply. Most of the studies concern about the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder children and who have defect in learning .In addition, there is still inconsistent pinion.The present study consists of two researches. In the first research, tasks that are suitable for children were used to investigate the performance of executive function on 113 normal children of fourth grade. Meanwhile, the children had Raven Test in group. In part two, the children were presented with the Arithmetic Tempo Test (ATT, De Vos, 1992) and One Minute Reading Test to investigate the relation between executive function and learning abilities. It showed that:(1)The correlations between executive function and reasoning suggested that there is a positive correlation between updating and reasoning, while the correlation between shifting and reasoning is significantly negative. The results of regression analysis indicated that updating and shifting had predicting power on reasoning.(2) The correlation between updating and arithmetic is significantly Positive, while the correlation between shifting and arithmetic is negative. The results of regression analysis indicated that updating had predicting power on arithmetic.(3) The correlations between executive function and reading was not significant in this study.