Is Executive Function Similarly Related to Behavioral Outcomes in Typically Developing and Neurodiverse Children? A Meta-Analysis.

Executive functions (EFs) are a set of neurocognitive processes that support goal-directed thought and action. EFs are essential to child development, especially in its concurrent and longitudinal relation to both academic achievement (Allan et al., 2014; Blair et al., 2015; Spiegel et al., 2021) and school readiness (Blair & Razza, 2007). Research suggests that children diagnosed with neurodevelopmental conditions show greater impairment in EF compared to their neurotypical peers (All, et al., 2024). The project investigated the relation between EF in young children and behavioral outcomes by conducting a mixed-effects meta-analysis. It explored whether the relation between child EF and behavioral outcomes varies depending on whether children are typically developing or have clinical, learning, or behavioral diagnoses. Detailed inclusion criteria were established and we conducted a systematic literature search across four academic databases. Abstract screening was performed to identify papers that meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the study. All eligible studies were identified, and the data was coded and analyzed with the help of MetaReviewer. For statistical analysis, we used CHE modeling through the metafor and clubSandwich packages on R-Studio. Results indicated no significant association between executive function and internalizing or externalizing symptoms, but a small significant trend linking better EF to fewer hyperactivity and inattention behaviors. No significant differences were found between neurodiverse and neurotypical children. However, better EF was significantly related to fewer externalizing problems in children with ADHD, and younger age was associated with a stronger EF–behavior relationship. These findings suggest that EF may be a modest intervention target for early behavioral difficulties, with future research needed to explore diagnostic-specific patterns and increase study representation for neurodivergent populations.

Hello everyone, my name is Armita Dadvar and this presentation is on my Honors Psychology Thesis titled “Is Executive Function Similarly Related to Behavioral Outcomes in Typically Developing and Neurodiverse Children?” which I completed with my advisor Dr. Sabine Doebel. Have you ever heard of the term executive function? Executive functions are the set of neurocognitive processes that help us engage control over our thoughts and actions, manage and retain the information in our brains, preventing undesirable thoughts and behaviors while prioritizing ideas and actions that are aligned with personal objectives. You might be thinking, why is executive function important to study in childhood? It is important because research has shown that executive function rapidly develops through childhood and essential to child development. It even has concurrent and longitudinal relation to academic achievement and school readiness. It also may be a key path through which socioeconomic status influences academic outcomes. Lastly, It is even believed to be more malleable than IQ and other general cognitive capacities and thus a good target for interventions. Over many years, numerous tests have been conducted by researchers to carefully evaluate EFs as they arise through childhood. Although we understand that EF is is related to many behavioral outcomes in typical developing children, we do not know if these relations are similar for children who are neurodiverse or have learning, behavioral, or clinical diagnoses that implicate brain areas supporting EF. The current project investigated, via a meta-analysis, the relation between EF in young children and behavioral outcomes, and whether the relation between child EF and outcomes varies depending on if children are typically developing or neurodiverse. Our research question is: Does the relation between child EF and behavioral outcomes vary depending on the population under consideration? We hypothesized that there will be stronger, more consistent executive function/outcome relations in neurodiverse vs neurotypical samples. For this meta-analysis, we were specifically interested in early childhood, executive function and related moderators, key moderators of population, socioeconomic status, age and gender and lastly three main behavior outcomes or externalizing, internalizing, and inattention/hyperactivity. in terms of methods, we first finalized the inclusion and exclusion criteria, then we conducted searches across 4 different bases. After collecting results from those searches, we screened a smaller percentage of abstracts and determined which do or do not meet the inclusion criteria. All eligible abstracts moved on to full text coding through Metareviewer. For statistical analysis, we used CHE modeling to account for dependency among effect sizes. We ran the models with the rma.mv() function from the metafor package in R and calculated robust test statistics using the coef_test() function from the clubSandwich package. This approach gives more accurate variance estimates and properly handles the fact that some studies contributed multiple effect sizes. We found no significant relationship between executive function and internalizing and externalizing symptoms. However, there was a small-to-moderate significant trend suggesting better EF might be linked to fewer hyperactivity and inattention symptoms.In terms of our hypothesis, we did not find meaningful group differences between neurodiverse and neurotypical children in these relationships.When exploring moderators, we found better EF was significantly related to fewer externalizing symptoms in children with ADHD. However, no strong associations were found for hyperactivity/inattention in ADHD or for group differences between ADHD and typical samples. We also found that the EF-behavior relationship became weaker as children got older. No effects were found for the sex moderator and SES could not be analyzed due to too much missing data. Our results suggest that better executive function may be modestly linked to fewer hyperactivity and inattention symptoms in young children, consistent with previous research. Future research should expand the number of studies, especially for neurodivergent children, examine specific diagnoses separately, and evaluate potential publication bias to strengthen conclusions. Thank you so much to my advisor, Dr. Sabine Doebel, the Developing Minds Lab, and my committee members Dr. Jennifer Brielmaier and Dr. James Maddux for their expertise and guidance throughout this project. Thank you to OSCAR for the funding of this project through the URSP. Lastly, here are my references and thank you all for listening.