Emotion is essential for learning, but brain evidence shows how not all emotional engagement is equivalent. New research by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and the research team at the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning, and Education finds that adolescents' dispositions toward emotionally engaged "transcendent…

The pervasive nature of media multitasking in the last fifteen years has sparked extensive research, revealing a nuanced but predominantly negative association with executive function. Given the cognitive demands and technological landscape of the modern battlefield, there is a critical interest in understanding how these findings may or may not…

This study addressed potential differential effects of EF training as a function of language background. Training monolingual children with EF-fostering challenges and feedback may support them more than multilinguals, who face comparable challenges when switching languages. We assessed monolingual (n = 110) and multilingual (n = 91) 6-year-olds…

This study evaluates the effectiveness of the "Parent-child Brain Camp," a 4-week video-based executive functions (EFs) training program for children ages 5-6, through a randomized controlled trial with a pre- and post-test design with 173 Hong Kong children (intervention "ni" = 79, 48.7% girls, M[subscript age] = 69.16 months;…

This study explored how caregiver-reported executive functioning domains, assessed by the BRIEF2 at baseline, predicted behavioral challenges reported by caregivers using the CBCL six months later. The sample included 94 youth with Down syndrome, aged 6 to 18 years. Results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, after controlling for…

This study investigated the associations between infant frontal EEG power (5 month), infant visual attention (10 month), and toddler executive functioning (EF; 24 month), extending previous research predominantly conducted with school-aged children. Data were collected from 410 typically developing children (51% female; 78% White, non-Hispanic)…

This systematic review synthesized current literature regarding the effect of physical activity (PA) interventions on brain structure (BS) and brain function (BF) in healthy children. This review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews protocols and used the Rayyan web for data extraction. Eleven experimental studies were…

The beneficial effects of nature and natural environments have been extensively researched and the findings generally support that nature and natural environments can reduce stress and improve cognitive function. To evaluate if self-reported stress levels are reduced, or if cognitive functions are enhanced among adult learners in the presence of a…

Previous studies have confirmed that money scarcity can impede individuals' cognitive control; however, it remains unclear how this effect occurs. This study created a virtual shopping game that can vividly simulate individuals' shopping-related thought processes in daily life to systematically investigate how money scarcity influences cognitive…

This exploratory study examines the relationship between executive functioning (EF) skills and the development of first (L1) and second language (L2) skills of preschool students. The participants of this study are enrolled in a French immersion program offered at an inclusion school combining students with disabilities (special needs) and those…

The present study explored whether poor executive functions (EF) underlying the difficulties of individuals with ADHD in reading comprehension (RC) are general or specific to the textual content they regulate. To address this question, adolescents with and without ADHD answered questions following the reading of texts and completed a series of…

Sentences that have more than one possible meaning are said to be syntactically ambiguous (SA). Because the correct interpretation of these sentences can be unclear, resolving SA sentences can be cognitively demanding for children, particularly with regards to inhibitory control (IC). In this study we provide three lines of evidence supporting the…

This longitudinal study modeled children's complex executive function (EF) development using the Groton Maze Learning Task (GMLT). Using a cohort-sequential design, 147 children (61 males, 5.5-11 years) were recruited from six multicultural primary schools in Melbourne and Perth, Australia. Race/ethnicity data were not available. Children were…

Despite previous studies showing that children's development of executive function (EF) skills is associated with the differing contexts in which children live, evidence about the independent and synergistic effects of families and neighborhoods is limited. Using a sample from a two-cohort longitudinal study of preschoolers from low-income…

Preverbal infants spontaneously represent the number of objects in collections. Is this 'sense of number' (also referred to as Approximate Number System, ANS) part of the cognitive foundations of mathematical skills? Multiple studies reported a correlation between the ANS and mathematical achievement in children. However, some have suggested that…