Conclusiones y recomendaciones

Summary

Learning to read is one of the key goals of education, but there are large individual developmental differences from an early age. Executive functions are crucial facilitators for a prospective literacy development. These cognitive capacities regulate the complex information processing while reading, and enable engaged learning behavior during literacy education. However, longitudinal contributions from the emergence of preliteracy skills have hardly been investigated, and even fewer embedded intervention studies exist. Such insights are necessary to enhance young children’s literacy learning and provide them with more profound literacy foundations to build upon during formal literacy instruction. The present dissertation therefore aimed to shed greater light on the role of executive functions for early literacy learning. To examine the concept of learning, the focus was on longitudinal effects as well as on learning behaviors and on inter- ventions. The research questions were thus threefold:

1. How do executive functions contribute to early literacy development? 2. How do executive functions contribute to learning behavior?

3. What are the effects of embedded executive function-supporting activities in preliteracy interventions?

Executive functions for early literacy development

To examine the first research question, executive functions and literacy were assessed in the same children from kindergarten to second grade. The role of executive functions was examined on two levels: on the level of information processing and on the level of behavior (i.e., attentional and action control). Both levels were related to phonological awareness in kindergarten, and to decoding and reading comprehension in the first years of primary school. In Chapter 2, it was explored whether the known relation of executive functions for literacy development in first grade, when formal literacy education starts, could originate in their contributions to preliteracy in kindergarten. The results confirmed this gradual role. Both levels of executive functions had such an impact on the development of phonological awareness in kindergarten that this relation fully intervened in the contributions of kindergarten executive functions to first grade decoding. Furthermore, the initial influences of attentional control to decoding were stronger than those of action control. Chapter 3 further elaborated on this mediation effect. The same children were again assessed in second grade, when the development emerges of the complex

skills for reading comprehension, such as building a mental model of a tekst. Moreover, the unique and simultaneous role of attentional and action control was now examined over the three years. Again, initial relations of concurrent executive functions with all literacy skills in first and second grade disappeared when their role to kindergarten phonological awareness was included in the analyses. This result indicates that executive functions have such a strong influence on phonological awareness in kindergarten, that it sets the stage for their influence to literacy development up to two years later.

Executive functions for early learning behavior

To examine the second research question, children were observed while working with an open and self-controlled learning environment. Their observed behaviors were related to their attentional and action control. The children played a serious game that targeted problem-solving and vocabulary. They played the game twice, to enable the comparison between learning behavior during initial challenges and during more familiar tasks. The results show that attentional control empowered children’s independent learning and problem-solving during the initial game, and their use of prior task experiences during repeated gameplay. Children with higher levels of attentional control also showed more verbal responsiveness during both games. Action control was necessary to overcome distractions when the initial game challenge was reduced. This type of control enabled engaged and goal-directed learning during the second game.

Executive functions for early literacy interventions

Chapters 5 and 6 examined how to support executive functions during adaptive and autonomous preliteracy interventions in kindergarten. In chapter 5, a stop-and-think procedure was elicited while working with software to stimulate phonological awareness and letter knowledge. This intervention group was contrasted in a randomized controlled trial design against an intervention control group that worked with the same software without the embedded activities, and a control group that worked with other software. Although both intervention groups showed stronger progress over time, more efficient learning behaviors were shown by the children that used the activities to support their executive functions; they played more games in the same amount of time and showed better independent problem-solving behavior. Furthermore, they showed stronger long-term learning effects on preliteracy skills. These results were established for the children with lower executive functions.

Contrary to the more automatic activation in chapter 5, chapter 6 examined the effectiveness of proactive and conscious support of executive functions. Peers played with phonological awareness- and letter games. While playing, they helped each other to scaffold their learning strategies and task-focused behavior, through role-play that involved visual mediators and questioning routines. Effects of this intervention were tested in a similar design as in chapter 5. No effects were found for phonological awareness, but the experimental group showed higher progress in letter knowledge. For this intervention, the effects were driven by the children with higher levels of executive functions.