Seeing conflict and engaging control: Experience with contrastive language benefits executive function in preschoolers.

ABSTRACT: Engaging executive function often requires overriding a prepotent response in favor of a conflicting but adaptive one. Language may play a key role in this ability by supporting integrated representations of conflicting rules. We tested whether experience with contrastive language that could support such representations benefits executive function in 3-year-old children. Children who received brief experience with language highlighting contrast between objects, attributes, and actions showed greater executive function on two of three 'conflict' executive function tasks than children who received experience with contrasting stimuli only and children who read storybooks with the experimenter, controlling for baseline executive function. Experience with contrasting stimuli did not benefit exe

SUBMITTER: Doebel S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5143180 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature