Cognitive Control Characteristics Of Children With Intellectual Disabilities And The Role Of Working Memory

Cognitive control plays an important role in adapting to complex and changeable daily life and resolving conflicts.The dual mechanisms of cognitive control theory divides cognitive control into proactive control and reactive control,opening a new perspective of cognitive control research.Studies based on this theory have found that children with learning difficulties,schizophrenia and other special populations have poor proactive control,but the current research on cognitive control of children with intellectual disabilities is still very rare,and their cognitive control characteristics need to be explored.Simultaneously,cognitive control is closely related to working memory.The relationship between cognitive control and working memory of children with intellectual disabilities is still unclear.Based on the theory of dual mechanisms of cognitive control,this study aims to investigate the characteristics of cognitive control of children with intellectual disabilities,and to further explore the relationship between cognitive control and working memory of children with intellectual disabilities.Experiment 1 aims to explore the cognitive control characteristics of children with intellectual disabilities.The experiment subjects were 38 children with moderate intellectual disability,and 38 typically developing children were matched by physiological age and gender.There are 28 boys and 10 girls in each of the two types of children,ranging in age from 9 to 16 years old.The average age of children with intellectual disabilities is 12.51±1.93 years old,and the average age of children is12.36±1.64 years old.The children’s version of the AX-CPT task is used to measure proactive control and reactive control.The results showed that the proactive control of children with intellectual disabilities was significantly worse than that of typically developing children,but the reactive control was not significantly different from that of typically developing children.Experiment 2 aims to explore the relationship between cognitive control and working memory of children with intellectual disabilities.Participants were the same as experiment 1.The backward of the digital memorization task was used to measure verbal working memory,and the backward of the corsi block-tapping task was used to measure visual-spatial working memory.The results showed that the verbal working memory and visual-spatial working memory of children with intellectual disabilities and typically developing children were not related to reactive control.After controlling for age and gender,verbal working memory could still significantly predict proactive control.However,visual-spatial working memory can only significantly predict the proactive control of typically developing children but not children with intellectual disabilities.Experiment 3 aims to explore the causal relationship between verbal working memory and proactive control of children with intellectual disabilities.Twenty children with intellectual disabilities were divided into experimental group(8 boys and 2 girls,with an average age of 13.02±1.75 years)and control group(7 boys and 3girls,with an average age of 12.79±2.09 years).There were no significant differences between the two groups of children in gender,age,pre-tested verbal working memory and proactive control.Then the children in the experimental group received verbal working memory training lasting for one month,while the control group received the game company for the same time.The post-test task was consistent with the pre-test task,which consisted of the backward of the digital memorization task and the AX-CPT task.It was found that verbal working memory training can significantly improve proactive control in short intervals rather than long intervals.This indicates that verbal working memory training can affect the proactive control of children with intellectual disabilities to a certain extent.Through three experiments,this study found that there is no significant difference in the reactive control of children with intellectual disabilities compared with typically developing children.However,there are defects in the proactive control of children with intellectual disabilities.The verbal working memory of children with intellectual disabilities is significantly positively correlated with proactive control,and verbal working memory training can improve proactive control to a certain extent.These study results not only enrich the research results on cognitive control of children with intellectual disabilities,but also explore new ways to improve the proactive control of children with intellectual disabilities.They also provide important enlightenment and theoretical support for special education teachers and parents to carry out educational and teaching activities.