Self-regulation and frontal EEG alpha activity during infancy and early childhood: A multilevel meta-analysis.

Integrating behavioral and neurophysiological measures has created new and advanced ways to understand the development of self-regulation. Electroencephalography (EEG) has been used to examine how self-regulatory processes are related to frontal alpha power during infancy and early childhood. However, findings across previous studies have been inconsistent.

The effects of reward on children's Stroop performance: Interactions with temperament.

The effects of rewards on executive function (EF) reflect bidirectional interactions among motivational and executive systems that vary with age and temperament. However, methodological limitations hinder understanding of the precise influences of incentives on early EF, including the role of reward sensitivity. In this within-subjects study, ninety-three 3.

Memory binding and theta EEG during middle childhood.

The ability to bind together the contextual details associated with an event undergoes dramatic improvement during childhood. However, few studies have examined the neural correlates of memory binding encoding and retrieval during middle childhood. We examined age-related encoding and retrieval differences using continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) measures in a sample of 6- and 8-year-olds.

Effects of active and observational experience on EEG activity during early childhood.

While it is accepted that action experience facilitates action understanding, it is debated whether first-hand motor and visual experience differentially influence this ability. Action understanding relies on relatively broad cortical activity, including that of the neural mirroring and visual attention systems. Infant and adult research has demonstrated that prior motor and visual experience have distinct effects on cortical activity during action perception, though this has yet to be investigated in young children.

Ontogenesis of learning and memory: Biopsychosocial and dynamical systems perspectives.

In this article, we review recent empirical and theoretical work on infant memory development, highlighting future directions for the field. We consider the state of the field since Carolyn Rovee-Collier's call for developmental scientists to "shift the focus from what to why," emphasizing the function of infant behavior and the value of integrating fractionized, highly specialized subfields. We discuss functional approaches of early learning and memory, including ecological models of memory development and relevant empirical work in human and non-human organisms.

A Longitudinal Investigation of Conflict and Delay Inhibitory Control in Toddlers and Preschoolers.

Research Findings: Eighty-one children participated in a longitudinal investigation of inhibitory control (IC) from 2 to 4 years of age. Child IC was measured via maternal report and laboratory measures under conditions of conflict and delay. Performance on delay IC tasks at 3 years was related to performance on these same tasks at 2 and 4 years, but performance on conflict IC tasks was not related over time.

Transitions in the temporal parameters of sensory preconditioning during infancy.

Sensory preconditioning (SPC) is a form of latent learning in which preexposure to co-occurring neutral stimuli (S -S ) permits subsequent learning to be transferred from one stimulus (S ) to the other (S ). We examined whether human infants exhibit developmental transitions in the temporal parameters of SPC by manipulating the preexposure regimen. Infants received simultaneous or sequential preexposure to puppets S and S (Days 1-2); saw target actions modeled on S (Day 3); and were tested for deferred imitation with S (Day 4).

To Stroop or not to Stroop: Sex-related differences in brain-behavior associations during early childhood.

Executive functions (EFs) are linked with optimal cognitive and social-emotional development. Despite behavioral evidence of sex differences in early childhood EF, little is known about potential sex differences in corresponding brain-behavior associations. The present study examined changes in 4-year-olds' 6-9 Hz EEG power in response to increased executive processing demands (i.

A dissociation between recognition and reactivation: The renewal effect at 3 months of age.

Extinction allows organisms to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Despite its theoretical and applied significance, extinction has never been systematically studied with human infants. Using the operant mobile task, we examined whether 3-month-olds would exhibit evidence of original learning following extinction.

Episodic memory and future thinking during early childhood: Linking the past and future.

Despite extensive examination of episodic memory and future thinking development, little is known about the concurrent emergence of these capacities during early childhood. In Experiment 1, 3-year-olds participated in an episodic memory hiding task ("what, when, where" [WWW] components) with an episodic future thinking component. In Experiment 2, a group of 4-year-olds (including children from Experiment 1) participated in the same task (different objects and locations), providing the first longitudinal investigation of episodic memory and future thinking.

Deconstructing the reactivation of imitation in young infants.

Reactivation is an automatic, perceptual process in which exposure to components of a forgotten event alleviates forgetting. Most research on infant memory reactivation has used conditioning paradigms. We used the puppet imitation task to systematically examine which stimuli could retrieve 6-month-olds' forgotten memory of the modeled actions.

A longitudinal intergenerational analysis of executive functions during early childhood.

Despite the importance of executive function (EF) in both clinical and educational contexts, the aetiology of individual differences in early childhood EF remains poorly understood. This study provides the first longitudinal intergenerational analysis of mother-child EF associations during early childhood. A group of children and their mothers (n = 62) completed age-appropriate EF tasks.

The Contribution of Executive Function to Source Memory Development in Early Childhood.

Age-related differences in episodic memory judgments assessing recall of fact information and the source of this information were examined. The role of executive function in supporting early episodic memory ability was also explored. Four- and 6-year-old children were taught 10 novel facts from two different sources (experimenter or puppet) and memory for both fact and source information was later tested.

The Infant EEG Mu Rhythm: Methodological Considerations and Best Practices.

The EEG mu rhythm, recorded from scalp regions overlying the sensorimotor cortex, appears to exhibit mirroring properties: It is reactive when performing an action and when observing another perform the same action. Recently, there has been an exponential increase in developmental mu rhythm research, partially due to the mu rhythm's potential role in our understanding of others' actions as well as a variety of other social and cognitive processes (e.g.

What's mom got to do with it? Contributions of maternal executive function and caregiving to the development of executive function across early childhood.

Executive functions (EFs; e.g. working memory, inhibitory control) are mediated by the prefrontal cortex and associated with optimal cognitive and socio-emotional development.

Infant attention and early childhood executive function.

Individual differences in infant attention are theorized to reflect the speed of information processing and are related to later cognitive abilities (i.e., memory, language, and intelligence).

Using EEG to Study Cognitive Development: Issues and Practices.

Developmental research is enhanced by use of multiple methodologies for examining psychological processes. The electroencephalogram (EEG) is an efficient and relatively inexpensive method for the study of developmental changes in brain-behavior relations. In this review, we highlight some of the challenges for using EEG in cognitive development research.

Early Childhood Predictors of Post-Kindergarten Executive Function: Behavior, Parent-Report, and Psychophysiology.

RESEARCH FINDINGS: This study examined whether children's executive functions before kindergarten would predict variance in executive functions after kindergarten. We obtained behavioral (working memory task performance), parental-reported (temperament-based inhibitory control), and psychophysiological (working memory-related changes in heart rate and brain electrical activity) measures of executive functions from a group of preschool-aged children. After children finished kindergarten, approximately 2 years later, parents were asked to complete an assessment of children's executive function skills.

Measures of frontal functioning and the emergence of inhibitory control processes at 10 months of age.

During the first year, infants begin to exhibit initial evidence of working memory and inhibitory control in conjunction with substantial maturation of the frontal cortex and corresponding neural circuitry. Currently, relatively little is known about the neural and autonomic resources that are recruited in response to increased executive demands during the first year of development. To this end, we recorded electroencephalogram (EEG; 6-9 Hz) and electrocardiogram from 10-month-olds during a working memory and inhibitory control task (looking A-not-B).

Electroencephalogram and heart rate measures of working memory at 5 and 10 months of age.

We recorded electroencephalogram (EEG; 6-9 Hz) and heart rate (HR) from infants at 5 and 10 months of age during baseline and performance on the looking A-not-B task of infant working memory (WM). Longitudinal baseline-to-task comparisons revealed WM-related increases in EEG power (all electrodes) and EEG coherence (medial frontal-occipital electrode pairs) at both ages. WM-related decreases in HR were only present at 5 months, and WM-related increases in EEG coherence became more localized by 10 months.

A frequency band analysis of two-year-olds' memory processes.

Research on the functional meaning of EEG frequency bands during memory processing has only examined two developmental periods: infancy and from late childhood to adulthood. The purpose of this study was to examine changes in EEG power for three toddler EEG frequency bands (3-5Hz, 6-9Hz, 10-12Hz) during a verbal recall task. To this end, we asked three questions: (a) Which frequency band(s) discriminate baseline from memory processing?; (b) Which frequency band(s) differentiate between memory encoding and retrieval processes?; (c) Which frequency band(s) distinguish toddlers with high and low verbal recall performance? Analysis of 2-year-olds' (n=79) power values revealed that all three frequency bands differentiated the retrieval and encoding phases from the baseline phase; however, the particular regions that exhibited this dissociation varied.

Functional connectivity and infant spatial working memory: a frequency band analysis.

The limited research on the functional meaning of infant EEG frequency bands has used measures of EEG power. The purpose of this study was to examine task-related changes in frontal EEG coherence measures for three infant EEG frequency bands (2-5 Hz, 6-9 Hz, 10-13 Hz) during a spatial working memory task. Eight-month-olds exhibited baseline-to-task changes in frontal EEG coherence for all infant frequency bands.

EEG and ECG from 5 to 10 months of age: developmental changes in baseline activation and cognitive processing during a working memory task.

We recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) from 20 infants monthly between 5 and 10 months of age during baseline and during performance on the looking A-not-B task of infant working memory. Analyses of baseline data showed age-related increases in EEG power (medial frontal, central, temporal, medial parietal, lateral parietal, and occipital electrode sites) and coherence (frontal pole-medial frontal, medial frontal-lateral frontal, medial frontal-medial parietal, and medial frontal-occipital electrode pairs), and decreases in heart rate (HR). Patterns of age-related change were similar for EEG power, EEG coherence, and HR.