ABSTRACT
Executive functions (EFs) are the skills that enable us to engage in purposeful activity, to maintain focus despite distractions, to remember and make use of instructions and information. When fully developed, EFs enable us to plan and to solve problems, switching strategies as appropriate. EFs are important in both cognitive and social-emotional domains.
EFs are important throughout the life span but there is a particular spurt in their development when children are aged 3–5 years. This corresponds with changes in the frontal cortex of the brain. EFs are the manifestation of increasing interaction of lower and higher (cortical) brain areas.
Researchers usually conceptualise EFs as three sets of closely interlinking strands: working memory, inhibition and attention shifting (cognitive flexibility). As these skills develop, young children change from immediately reacting to stimuli to being able to screen out distractions and concentrate. In other words, they acquire the skills required in due course for formal learning.
A body of robust evidence indicates that EF skills are generally much less well-developed in children from low-income families than in those from advantaged backgrounds. However, and very importantly, disadvantaged children show the most positive change in response to interventions to boost EFs.
This chapter examines interventions that have successfully targeted EFs to close the gap. They are varied and include action games, make-believe play and mindfulness. Targeting EFs is not about introducing another aspect of the curriculum. Development is holistic and EFs develop naturally through the range of activities that children are innately motivated to engage in when they enjoy responsive, stimulating environments. Targeting EFs to close the gap is about understanding EFs, recognising the EFs involved in everyday activities and means of scaffolding children’s experience. Children develop their EFs through practice. This chapter will help practitioners to adapt activities to enable children to perform at their highest level of EF functioning and to keep raising the level of challenge, doing so through activities that are fun and developmentally appropriate.
