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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Do Schools Promote Executive Functions? Differential Working Memory Growth Across School-Year And Summer Months, Jenna E. Finch
Do Schools Promote Executive Functions? Differential Working Memory Growth Across School-Year And Summer Months, Jenna E. Finch
Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications
Children’s working memory (WM) skills, which support both academic and social success, continue to improve significantly through the school years. This study leverages the first nationally representative data set with direct assessments of elementary school students’ WM skills to examine whether WM grows more during the school year or summer months and whether WM growth rates differ by household income. Results demonstrate that WM skills grow more during the school-year months compared to the summer months, suggesting that school environments provide children with unique opportunities to improve and practice their WM skills. Further, lower-income children have significantly faster WM growth …
Peers Matter: Links Between Classmates’ And Individual Students’ Executive Functions In Elementary School, Jenna E. Finch, Elisa B. Garcia, Michael J. Sulik, Jelena Obradović
Peers Matter: Links Between Classmates’ And Individual Students’ Executive Functions In Elementary School, Jenna E. Finch, Elisa B. Garcia, Michael J. Sulik, Jelena Obradović
Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications
Students’ executive functions (EFs) are linked to school success. Although school-age children spend much of their time interacting with peers, few studies have explored how children’s classmates may promote EF development in elementary school. In this study, we test whether mean levels and variability in classmates’ EF skills are associated with growth in individual students’ accuracy and speed on EF tasks among third, fourth, and fifth graders (N = 806). We find that classmates’ speed, but not accuracy, on EF tasks is linked to significant improvements in individual students’ EFs over the school year. Classmates’ average EFs, as indexed by …