Early Academic Achievement and Intervention Response: Role of Executive Function

Recent reports (NAEP, 2022, 2024) reveal that over 60% of 4th graders are performing at or below the basic level in reading and math; however, successful interventions for struggling upper elementary school learners thus far have proven elusive. Given the importance of these academic skills, understanding more about the mechanisms underlying academic success/failure, and how to ameliorate them, is a key public health issue. It is well established that early reading and math growth are each associated with distinct cognitive skills (phonological awareness for reading and symbolic magnitude processing for math), but also substantially overlap, as seen by: (1) the co morbidity between reading and math difficulties; (2) overlap in genetic variance for reading and math; and (3) the fact that several similar cognitive processes, including executive functions (EFs), are important cognitive correlates of reading and math. Neurobiological evidence also reveals that while fMRI tasks elicit skill-specific areas [reading: left occipito-temporal; math: intraparietal sulcus], both reading and math activate EF regions. Despite these relations, there is little understanding of the neural mechanisms by which EF-academic linkages develop, and how EF-supported neural networks may relate to intervention response, especially in upper elementary learners. Current work suggests that while domain general EF supports initial academic growth, as children develop, domain specific EFs emerge within the context of learning new skills. The fundamental theoretical premise is that while domain general EF may initially facilitate learning; to continue to capitalize on EF for positive academic outcomes, EF must become specialized for the task at hand. As such, we posit that specialization of EF systems (i.e., reading specific EF and math specific EF) must emerge to support positive academic growth in upper elementary school learners. The overarching goal of this MERIT Extension is to examine the neurocognitive correlates of the specialization of the EF system and examine its relationship to academic outcomes in upper elementary school. Aim 1 tests the hypothesis that EF specialization (i.e., reading specific EF and math specific EF) in 2"d/3'd grades mediates the relationship between early domain general EF (kindergarten/1 st grade) and later academic outcomes (4th/5th grade). Aim 2 examines how neural systems engage in the context of an intervention, providing a granular probing of neurocognitive changes as they occur. Aim 2's highly novel approach uses fNIRS (a portable neuroimaging method that captures brain activity similar to fMRI), which allows for a window into brain changes that are occurring during instruction. Capturing neural changes during intervention enables more precise tracking of linkages between EF and reading networks. Overall, understanding domain general EF and domain specific EF across two timescales - year-by- year, kindergarten through 5th grade, as well as moment-by-moment, during instruction, will provide key mechanistic insights as to how EF impacts academics. Understanding these processes may allow for greater specificity of interventional targets to be developed for struggling learners. Project Number: 4R37HD095519-06 | Fiscal Year: 2025 | NIH Institute/Center: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) | Principal Investigator: Laurie Cutting | Institution: VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, Nashville, TN | Award Amount: $1,058,625 | Activity Code: R37 | Study Section: NSS View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/4R37HD09551906