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Selective Auditory Attention Associated With Language Skills but Not With Executive Functions in Swedish Preschoolers - PubMed

  • ️Fri Jan 01 2021

Selective Auditory Attention Associated With Language Skills but Not With Executive Functions in Swedish Preschoolers

Signe Tonér et al. Front Psychol. 2021.

Abstract

Associations between language and executive functions (EFs) are well-established but previous work has often focused more on EFs than on language. To further clarify the language-EF relationship, we assessed several aspects of language and EFs in 431 Swedish children aged 4-6, including selective auditory attention which was measured in an event-related potential paradigm. We also investigated potential associations to age, socioeconomic status (SES), bi-/multilingualism, sex and aspects of preschool attendance and quality. Language and EFs correlated weakly to moderately, indicating that relying on measures of vocabulary alone may overestimate the strength of the language-EF relationship. Contrary to predictions, we found no correlations between selective attention and EFs. There were however correlations between morphosyntactic accuracy and selective auditory attention which is in line with previous work and suggests a specific link between morphosyntax and the ability to suppress irrelevant stimuli. In Sweden, socioeconomic differences are rather small and preschool is universally available, but nevertheless, aspects of parental SES predicted children's performance on all measures. Bi-/multilingual children performed lower on language also when controlling for SES, highlighting the need for interventions to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes already in preschool. A female advantage was found for both language and EFs, whereas preschool attendance and quality were not significantly related to outcome measures. Future work should include longitudinal studies of language and EF development, include children from diverse SES backgrounds and contribute toward a theoretical framework that further clarifies the language-EF relationship.

Keywords: bilingualism; early childhood; event-related potentials; executive functions; language; selective attention; socioeconomic status.

Copyright © 2021 Tonér, Kallioinen and Lacerda.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1

Experimental setup of Swedish AudAt.

FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2

Grand average ERP responses to probes in the attended and unattended channel and electrode placement in Swedish AudAt. Topographic maps show differences in amplitude between attended and unattended in the early and the late time window respectively.

FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3

Residuals versus fitted plots of receptive vocabulary regression models. The full model for receptive vocabulary included all predictors and explained 41% of PPVT score variance, whereas the preferred model included only significant predictors, explaining 40% of PPVT variance.

FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4

Residuals versus fitted plots of EF regression models. The full model for EF included all predictors and accounted for 26% of EF score variance, whereas the preferred model included age, sex, parental education, and age at preschool enrollment, and explained 29% of EF score variance.

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