Executive functions from infancy into early childhood: Measuring robust cognitive and neural markers of development and risk

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This research aims to understand more about how executive functions develop in very early childhood, between approximately 9 months and 2.5 years of age. Executive functions refer to a set of skills and abilities that allow us to solve problems, plan and organise our lives, make decisions, and cope when we have to do many different things at the same time. Some of these abilities involve keeping important things in memory while solving a problem - for example doing mental arithmetic or reading a set of instructions. Other executive functions help us stop habits and overcome temptations when these are not good for us. In a way, executive functions allow us to have some control over our lives, instead of being completely ruled by habits and circumstances.Because executive functions are so important for being able to live a successful life, it is not surprising that children who have problems with executive functions also tend to struggle in other important areas, such as in school and in social situations. Children who have a diagnosis of developmental disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), also often have poorer executive functions.Unsurprisingly, young children's executive functions are far from perfect - they struggle to keep things in memory, to plan for themselves, and to resist temptation. Children improve very fast in these skills between 3 and 5 years of age and continue to improve right up until adulthood. However, we know very little about how children get their very first executive function abilities during the first 2 years of life. Of course their skills at this young age are likely to be limited, but research suggests that they are in fact present. One problem, though, is that it is quite difficult to measure executive functions in babies and toddlers. We cannot do this the usual way because very young children are limited in their motor and language skills - we cannot simply tell them what to do. Nevertheless, we can develop alternative ways of measuring these skills. For example, developmental psychologists often look at what babies prefer to look at in specially designed videos and get toddlers to play specially programmed games on a computer in order to figure out how young children understand and act on the world around them. In the present research, such videos and interactive games (called 'tasks') will be used to extract measures of even these very young children's executive function abilities.The present research aims to design more and better measures of executive functions in babies and toddlers. The tasks used to measure executive functions will be designed so they are as similar as possible for different age groups, but also get harder as children grow older. I will also use measures of brain activity to see how the brain develops alongside children's executive functions. Once I know that the tasks work well and measure what they are supposed to measure, I will study a large group of approximately 200 children from 9 months until 2.5 years of age. Because the same children will be followed as they grow older, I will be able to see if some children start to develop problems with executive functions and at what point in time this happens. This is important because if we know what the signs are that some children are developing problems, then we can start working on finding ways of helping these children. When children develop specific disorders, such as ADHD and ASD, they are often not diagnosed before they are 3-5 years old. With this new research we may one day be able to diagnose and help these children at an earlier point.