Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 May;23(3):e12924.
doi: 10.1111/desc.12924. Epub 2019 Dec 4.

The social foundation of executive function

Carin Marciszko  1 , Linda Forssman  1 , Ben Kenward  2 , Marcus Lindskog  1 , Mari Fransson  1 , Gustaf Gredebäck  1
Affiliations

The social foundation of executive function

Carin Marciszko et al. Dev Sci. 2020 May.

Abstract

In this study, we propose that infant social cognition may 'bootstrap' the successive development of domain-general cognition in line with the cultural intelligence hypothesis. Using a longitudinal design, 6-month-old infants (N = 118) were assessed on two basic social cognitive tasks targeting the abilities to share attention with others and understanding other peoples' actions. At 10 months, we measured the quality of the child's social learning environment, indexed by parent's abilities to provide scaffolding behaviors during a problem-solving task. Eight months later, the children were followed up with a cognitive test-battery, including tasks of inhibitory control and working memory. Our results showed that better infant social action understanding interacted with better parental scaffolding skills in predicting simple inhibitory control in toddlerhood. This suggests that infants' who are better at understanding other's actions are also better equipped to make the most of existing social learning opportunities, which in turn may benefit future non-social cognitive outcomes.

Keywords: executive function; infants; scaffolding; social-cognition.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Aschersleben, G., Hofer, T., & Jovanovic, B. (2008). The link between infant attention to goal-directed action and later theory of mind abilities. Developmental Science, 11(6), 862-868. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00736.x
    1. Astor, K., Lindskog, M., Forssman, L., Kenward, B., Fransson, M., Skalkidou, A., … Gredebäck, G. (2019). Social and emotional contexts predicts the development of gaze following in early infancy: A social-first account. Manuscript under review.
    1. Baraldi, A. N., & Enders, C. K. (2010). An introduction to modern missing data analyses. Journal of School Psychology, 48(1), 5-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2009.10.001
    1. Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), 57, 289-300. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2517-6161.1995.tb02031.x
    1. Bernier, A., Carlson, S. M., & Whipple, N. (2010). From external regulation to self-regulation: Early parenting precursors of young children's executive functioning. Child Development, 81(1), 326-339. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01397.x

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources