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Adolescent cognitive and behavioral regulation is influenced by multidimensional and multidirectional processes within and across biological and contextual systems that shift throughout development. Key among these influences are distal processes such as early life socioeconomic position (SEP), and proximal processes such as pubertal development, but questions remain concerning how links between SEP, pubertal development, and cognitive and behavioral regulation accumulate and unfold over adolescence. In the current study, and in line with Dr. John Schulenberg's foundational work, direct associations between SEP, puberty, and adolescent cognitive and behavioral regulation were examined; then pubertal timing and tempo were considered as moderators and mediators of links between SEP and adolescent cognitive and behavioral regulation. Data were drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a longitudinal study of 970 youth (52% male; 80% White, 13% Black, and 7% another race/ethnicity). Cognitive and behavioral regulation was measured using direct assessments of working memory, planning, risky decision‐making, and impulse control at age 15. SEP included maternal education and family income‐to‐needs and was averaged from birth to 54 months old; estimates of pubertal timing and tempo were derived using logistic growth curve models from age 9 to age 15. SEP was directly associated with cognitive and behavioral regulation. Pubertal development tended to moderate those links, but rarely mediated them. Specifically, socioeconomic disadvantage along with earlier timing or faster tempo tended to be associated with worse cognitive and behavioral regulation. Overall, findings suggest that pubertal timing and tempo may exacerbate existing environmental constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years awareness of the importance of executive function (EF) skills for students' academic growth has increased. Research suggests that experience in school promotes EF development; however, recommendations regarding evidence‐based practices that educators can use to support EF in their classrooms are limited. Here we outline two main reasons that this may be the case. First, there are significant challenges in the measurement of EF, which have implications for our understanding of how children use EF skills in support of learning in the moment and in real‐world settings like the classroom. Second, there is limited direct research on the types of classroom experiences that promote EF. In describing both, we highlight emerging evidence and new methods that are helping us better understand the development of EF and the ways in which school experiences shape this growth, which will ultimately inform the development of school‐based strategies to promote these skills. Educators are increasingly aware of the importance of executive function skills and the role they play in supporting student's academic growth. However, the best way to support these skills in the classroom is not always clear based on research. Here we describe current research that contributes to our understanding of the development of EF, and the ways in which school experiences shape this growth, which are both essential first steps in developing school‐based strategies to promote these skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored whether and how cognitive measures of executive function (EF) can be used to help classify academic performance in Kindergarten and first grade using nonparametric cluster analysis. We found that EF measures were useful in classifying low-reading performance in both grades, but mathematics performance could be grouped into low, average, and high groups without the use of EF tasks. Membership in the high-performing groups was more stable through first grade than membership in the low or average groups, and certain Kindergarten EF tasks differentially predicted first-grade reading and mathematics cluster membership. Our results suggest a stronger link between EF deficits and low performance than between EF strengths and high performance. We highlight the importance of simultaneously using academic and cognitive skills to classify achievement, particularly since existing classification schemes have been largely based on arbitrary cutoffs using limited academic measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This three-wave longitudinal study of 173 Latino adolescents ( M = 16.16 years, SD = 0.65) is designed to understand the role of discrimination-related stress in mental health trajectories during middle to late adolescence with attention to differences due to immigration status. The results of the growth curve analysis showed that anxious-depressed, withdrawn-depressed, and somatic complaints significantly decreased over time. Furthermore, although discrimination-related stress was found to be significantly related to the trajectories of three types of mental health symptoms, the results revealed that immigration status moderated these relations such that discrimination-related stress was significantly related to these outcomes for Latino youth whose parents were born in the United States, while this relation was not significant for Latino children of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]