Cognition and action: a latent variable approach to study contributions of executive functions to motor control in older adults.
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SUBMITTER: Seer C
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8266336 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:PurposeWe aimed to outline the latent variables approach for measuring nonverbal executive function (EF) skills in school-age children, and to examine the relationship between nonverbal EF skills and language performance in this age group.MethodSeventy-one typically developing children, ages 8 through 11, participated in the study. Three EF components, inhibition, updating, and task-shifting, were each indexed using 2 nonverbal tasks. A latent variables approach was used to extract latent scores that represented each EF construct. Children were also administered common standardized language measures. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between EF and language skills.ResultsNonverbal updating was associated with the Receptive Language Index on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition (CELF-4). When composites denoting lexical-semantic and syntactic abilities were derived, nonverbal inhibition (but not shifting or updating) was found to predict children's syntactic abilities. These relationships held when the effects of age, IQ, and socioeconomic status were controlled.ConclusionsThe study makes a methodological contribution by explicating a method by which researchers can use the latent variables approach when measuring EF performance in school-age children. The study makes a theoretical and a clinical contribution by suggesting that language performance may be related to domain-general EFs.
| S-EPMC5548084 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) has been frequently applied to executive function measurement since first used to identify a three-factor model of inhibition, updating, and shifting; however, subsequent CFAs have supported inconsistent models across the life span, ranging from unidimensional to nested-factor models (i.e., bifactor without inhibition). This systematic review summarized CFAs on performance-based tests of executive functions and reanalyzed summary data to identify best-fitting models. Eligible CFAs involved 46 samples (N = 9,756). The most frequently accepted models varied by age (i.e., preschool = one/two-factor; school-age = three-factor; adolescent/adult = three/nested-factor; older adult = two/three-factor), and most often included updating/working memory, inhibition, and shifting factors. A bootstrap reanalysis simulated 5,000 samples from 21 correlation matrices (11 child/adolescent; 10 adult) from studies including the three most common factors, fitting seven competing models. Model results were summarized as the mean percent accepted (i.e., average rate at which models converged and met fit thresholds: CFI ? .90/RMSEA ? .08) and mean percent selected (i.e., average rate at which a model showed superior fit to other models: ?CFI ? .005/.010/?RMSEA ? -.010/-.015). No model consistently converged and met fit criteria in all samples. Among adult samples, the nested-factor was accepted (41-42%) and selected (8-30%) most often. Among child/adolescent samples, the unidimensional model was accepted (32-36%) and selected (21-53%) most often, with some support for two-factor models without a differentiated shifting factor. Results show some evidence for greater unidimensionality of executive function among child/adolescent samples and both unity and diversity among adult samples. However, low rates of model acceptance/selection suggest possible bias toward the publication of well-fitting but potentially nonreplicable models with underpowered samples. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
| S-EPMC6197939 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Several nonlanguage factors influence literacy development, and motor skills are among those most studied. Despite the publication of several studies that have supported the existence of this relationship, the type of influence and underlying mechanisms have been little explored. Herein, we propose modeling the relationship between motor skills and literacy through structural equation modeling, testing the contribution of executive functions and handwriting skills as the possible mediators of this relationship. In a study of 278 third-grade children, we used a wide range of measures related to written language (reading, spelling, reading comprehension, and written production), fine motor skills (dominant hand, nondominant hand, and bimanual dexterity), executive functions (verbal and visuospatial working memory, inhibition, and shifting), and handwriting. Structural equation modeling of the relationship between these different variables indicated that in the third grade, the influence of fine motor skills on literacy is fully mediated by both executive functions and handwriting skills. These motor skills effects are observed for both low levels of processing (reading, spelling) and high levels of processing (reading comprehension, written production). The results are discussed in terms of the potential mechanisms underlying different literacy skills and their implications for pedagogical programs.
| S-EPMC8629244 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In the present study, we opted for a longitudinal design and examined rapid automatized naming (RAN) performance from two perspectives. In a first step, we examined the structure of RAN performance from a general cognitive perspective. We investigated whether rapid naming measures (e.g., digit RAN and color RAN) reflect a mainly domain-general factor or domain-specific factors. In a second step, we examined how the best fitting RAN model was related to reading and arithmetic outcomes, assessed several months later. Finally in a third step we took a clinical perspective and investigated specific contributions of RAN measures to reading and arithmetic outcomes. While RAN has emerged as a promising predictor of reading, the relationship between RAN and arithmetic has been less examined in the past. Hundred and twenty-two first graders completed seven RAN tasks, each comprising visually familiar stimuli such as digits, vowels, consonants, dice, finger-numeral configurations, objects, and colors. Four months later the same children completed a range of reading and arithmetic tasks. From a general descriptive perspective, structural equation modeling supports a one-dimensional RAN factor in 6- to -7-year-old children. However, from a clinical perspective, our findings emphasize the specific contributions of RANs. Interestingly, alphanumeric RANs (i.e., vowel RAN) were most promising when predicting reading skills and number-specific RANs (i.e., finger-numeral configuration RAN) were most promising when predicting arithmetic fluency. The implications for clinical and educational practices will be discussed.
| S-EPMC5635811 | biostudies-literature
Project description:There is growing evidence indicating positive, causal effects of acute physical activity on cognitive performance of school children, adolescents, and adults. However, only a few studies examined these effects in kindergartners, even though correlational studies suggest moderate relationships between motor and cognitive functions in this age group. One aim of the present study was to examine the correlational relationships between motor and executive functions among 5- to 6-year-olds. Another aim was to test whether an acute coordinative intervention, which was adapted to the individual motor functions of the children, causally affected different executive functions (i.e., motor inhibition, cognitive inhibition, and shifting). Kindergartners (N = 102) were randomly assigned either to a coordinative intervention (20 min) or to a control condition (20 min). The coordination group performed five bimanual exercises (e.g., throwing/kicking balls onto targets with the right and left hand/foot), whereas the control group took part in five simple activities that hardly involved coordination skills (e.g., stamping). Children's motor functions were assessed with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2 (Petermann, 2009) in a pre-test (T1), 1 week before the intervention took place. Motor inhibition was assessed with the Simon says task (Carlson and Wang, 2007), inhibition and shifting were assessed with the Hearts and Flowers task (Davidson et al., 2006) in the pre-test and again in a post-test (T2) immediately after the interventions. Results revealed significant correlations between motor functions and executive functions (especially shifting) at T1. There was no overall effect of the intervention. However, explorative analyses indicated a three-way interaction, with the intervention leading to accuracy gains only in the motor inhibition task and only if it was tested directly after the intervention. As an unexpected effect, this result needs to be treated with caution but may indicate that the effect of acute coordinative exercise is temporally limited and emerges only for motor inhibition, but not for cognitive inhibition or shifting. More generally, in contrast to other studies including older participants and endurance exercises, no general effect of an acute coordinative intervention on executive functions was revealed for kindergartners.
| S-EPMC5447760 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Multiple outcomes are often collected in applications where the quantity of interest cannot be measured directly or is difficult or expensive to measure. In a head and neck cancer study conducted at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the investigators wanted to determine the effect of clinical and treatment factors on unobservable dysphagia through collected multiple outcomes of mixed types. Latent variable models are commonly adopted in this setting. These models stipulate that multiple collected outcomes are conditionally independent given the latent factor. Mixed types of outcomes (e.g., continuous vs. ordinal) and censored outcomes present statistical challenges, however, as a natural analog of the multivariate normal distribution does not exist for mixed data. Recently, Lin et al. proposed a semiparametric latent variable transformation model for mixed outcome data; however, it may not readily accommodate event time outcomes where censoring is present. In this paper, we extend the work of Lin et al. by proposing both semiparametric and parametric latent variable models that allow for the estimation of the latent factor in the presence of measurable outcomes of mixed types, including censored outcomes. Both approaches allow for a direct estimate of the treatment (or other covariate) effect on the unobserved latent variable, greatly enhancing the interpretability of the models. The semiparametric approach has the added advantage of allowing the relationship between the measurable outcomes and latent variables to be unspecified, rendering more robust inference. The parametric and semiparametric models can also be used together, providing a comprehensive modeling strategy for complicated latent variable problems.
| S-EPMC7263574 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In assessing causal mediation effects in randomized studies, a challenge is that the direct and indirect effects can vary across participants due to different measured and unmeasured characteristics. In that case, the population effect estimated from standard approaches implicitly averages over and does not estimate the heterogeneous direct and indirect effects. We propose a Bayesian semiparametric method to estimate heterogeneous direct and indirect effects via clusters, where the clusters are formed by both individual covariate profiles and individual effects due to unmeasured characteristics. These cluster-specific direct and indirect effects can be estimated through a set of regression models where specific coefficients are clustered by a stick-breaking prior. To let clustering be appropriately informed by individual direct and indirect effects, we specify a data-dependent prior. We conduct simulation studies to assess performance of the proposed method compared to other methods. We use this approach to estimate heterogeneous causal direct and indirect effects of an expressive writing intervention for patients with renal cell carcinoma.
| S-EPMC5837944 | biostudies-literature
Project description:INTRODUCTION:Using factor analysis, several studies reported that higher-order cognitive control involves separable executive functions. However, the number and definition of the purported functions differed between studies. One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that executive functions don't exhibit a clear factorial structure, i.e., there is no clear dichotomy between executive function tests which are well-correlated (representing a common factor) and those which are poorly correlated (representing distinct factors). We scrutinize this explanation separately in data from young and from older persons. METHODS & RESULTS:Young and older volunteers completed cognitive tests of the purported executive functions shifting, updating, inhibition and dual-tasking (two tests per function). Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses yielded, for either age group, factorial structures that were within the range reported in literature. More importantly, when correlations between tests were sorted in ascending order, and were then fitted them by piecewise linear regression with a breakpoint, there was no evidence for a distinct breakpoint between low and high correlations in either age group. Correlations between tests were significantly higher in older compared to young participants, and the pattern of test pairs with high and with low correlations differed between age groups. DISCUSSION:The absence of a breakpoint indicates that executive function tests don't segregate into well-correlated and poorly correlated pairs, and therefore are not well suited for factor analyses. We suggest that executive functions are better described as a partly overlapping rather than a factorial structure. The increase of correlations in older participants supports the existence of age-related dedifferentiation, and the dissimilarity of correlations in the two age groups supports the existence of age-related reorganization.
| S-EPMC6508866 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Are mathematical learning difficulties caused by impairment of the abilities that underlie mathematical talent? Or are mathematical difficulties and talent qualitatively different? The main goal of this study was to determine whether mathematical learning difficulties are explained by the same executive functions as mathematical talent. We screened a pool of 2,682 first-year high school students and selected 48 for evaluation, dividing them into three groups: those with mathematical learning difficulties (n = 16), those with typical performance (n = 16), and those with mathematical talent (n = 16). Adolescents from the learning difficulties and talented groups had age, reading skills, and verbal and non-verbal intelligence that were similar to those of the typical performance group. Participants were administered a suite of tasks to evaluate verbal and visual short-term memory and executive functions of inhibition, shifting, and updating. Different executive functions showed different contributions at the two ends of the math ability continuum: lower levels of performance in updating visual information were related to mathematical learning difficulties, while greater shifting abilities were related to mathematical talent. Effect sizes for the differences in performance between groups were large (Hedges' g > 0.8). These results suggest that different executive functions are associated with mathematical learning difficulties and mathematical talent. We discuss how these differences in executive functions could be related to the different types of mathematical abilities that distinguish the three groups.
| S-EPMC6292664 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In the study of adolescent health, it is useful to derive indices of social dynamics from sociometric data, and to use these indices as predictors of health risk behaviors. In this manuscript, we introduce a flexible latent variable model as a novel way of obtaining estimates of social integration and social status from school-based sociometric data. Such scores provide the flexibility of a regression-based approach while accounting for measurement error in sociometric indicators. We demonstrate the utility of these factor scores in testing complex hypotheses through a combination of structural equation modeling and survival models, showing that deviance mediates the relationship between social status and smoking onset hazard at the transition to high school.
| S-EPMC6584065 | biostudies-literature