Development and Pilot Testing of a Novel Preschool Executive Function Curriculum

Overview

Executive function (EF) skills are a set of essential cognitive abilities that enable individuals to demonstrate their knowledge and talents, effectively complete tasks and navigate social interactions through flexible regulation of their thinking, behavior and emotions. EF is strongly linked to academic readiness and long-term educational outcomes. Children's EF is impacted by poverty-related experiences and is also impaired in the increasing number of children with developmental and emotional disabilities. Interventions targeting EF skills hold particular promise for improving children's educational trajectories by leveraging brain plasticity in the preschool period. We will directly target EF skills in preschoolers with poor EF. This project will address a key source of the achievement gap by meeting the needs of children at the highest risk, those who: 1) show early signs of EF impairment; 2) live in low-income communities and 3) are at risk for developmental and emotional disabilities (DD/ED). The intervention is a downward extension of Unstuck and On Target for elementary school (UOT; Cannon, Kenworthy, Alexander, Werner, \& Anthony, 2018), an EF intervention shown to be effective at increasing children's learning behaviors, as delivered by school staff. The research team will partner with key stakeholders to revise and iteratively refine UOT-P through a development trial, utilizing participant, teacher and parent feedback. The results of this trial will be leveraged to enable the team to apply for future federal funding for a randomized comparative effectiveness trial (NIH, Institute of Educational Sciences, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute).