On the Longitudinal Development of Executive Function: Evidence from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study
Executive function (EF) encompasses the attention-regulation skills of working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. EF skills, even in adolescence, predict a range of health, employment, and other outcomes in adult life. However, modeling the longitudinal development of executive function is challenging due to studies lacking truly longitudinal cohorts, large enough sample sizes, or enough EF measures. The newest Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study data release now includes 4, 5, and 6-year follow-up neurocognition data. This provided a rich set of data to model the longitudinal development of executive function. We utilized longitudinal growth curve modeling and parallel process growth curve modeling to summarize individual trajectories across five EF measures.
Controlling for participant sex, income, and age, we show that while baseline performance on these measures is correlated. Rates of change in performance were largely independent of one another, with the exception of two pairs of tasks. These analyses leveraged a robust dataset to better characterize the longitudinal development of executive function.