The Influence Of Types And Organizational Characteristics Of Daily Activities Outside Of School On Young Children’s Executive Functions

The level of executive function development in early childhood has a significant predictive effect on individual academic performance,behavioral problems,and social adaptation at school age and later.Executive function development is malleable.Previous studies have shown that cognitive training similar to the executive function measurement paradigm(e.g.,Cog Med Working Memory training)can effectively improve children’s executive function.However,the cognitive training paradigm is new and additional for children and educators,and it is difficult to integrate into children’s daily activities.This training method is not ecological enough,necessitating further exploration of ecological approaches to executive function development in young children.Children’s executive function is developed in daily activities.Some researchers have explored the influence of the types of daily activities on children’s executive functions.For example,the frequency and duration of play activities,physical activities,and art activities in children’s daily life are positively correlated with executive functions;uncontrolled video media viewing activities have a negative impact on young children’s executive functions,but educational APP use activities promote executive functions in young children;bilingual activity promotes children’s executive functions.Other researchers have explored the effects of organizational features of daily activities on the development of executive functions in young children.For example,low-structured activities are conducive to the development of cognitive flexibility.However,existing research lacks an ecological collection of types and organizational characteristics of daily activities.Moreover,the same type of activities may also show different organizational characteristics(e.g.,painting activities are low-structured when children graffiti at will,and high-structured when adults require children to learn according to certain rules and steps).The circumplex model of characteristics proposed by Aelterman et al.was originally positioned to analyze the teaching style of teachers’ classrooms.According to the model,the organizational characteristics of daily activities for young children can be classified as "encouraging children to participate","following the child’s pace","guiding","clarifying","demanding","domineering","abandoning" and "wasting time".In summary,this study used an Experience Sampling Method,drawing on and adapting the model described above,to analyze the effects of the type and organizational characteristics of young children’s out-of-school daily activities on their executive functions,particularly after controlling for their age and baseline executive functions.A total of 78 families were recruited in this study.The study was conducted in the order of ’baseline information collection and baseline executive function measurement→collection of daily activities outside of school →post-test executive function measurement’.The children’s baseline and post-test executive function tests included the Self-ordered Pointing Task,the Head-Toe-Knee-Shoulder,the Flexible Item Selection Task,and Gift Wrap/Delay task.The types and organizational characteristics of daily activity outside of school were collected through telephone interviews with parents once a week for 7 consecutive weeks.Results: In terms of the types of daily activities outside of school,after controlling for children’s age and baseline executive function level,the total duration of participation in’academic preparation activities’ still positively predicts the executive function level of children ’s post-test.In terms of the organizational characteristics of daily activities outside of school,after controlling the age of children and the level of baseline executive function,adult’s ’clarifying’ behavior no longer continues to predict the performance of executive function in children’s post-test.This study found that the total duration of participation in ’academic preparation activities’ is conducive to the performance of post-test executive function;the organizational characteristics of daily activity outside of school cannot predict the performance of children’s post-test executive function.