Tags / 13 quotes from 2 sources
#executive-function
Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina)
Five ingredients of the intelligence stew
Many ingredients make up the human intelligence stew, and I’d like to describe five that I think you would do well to consider as you contemplate your child’s intellectual gifts. They are: • The desire to explore • Self-control • Creativity • Verbal communication • Interpreting…
Executive function predicts success better than IQ
Welcome to the interesting world of impulse control. It is part of a suite of behaviors under the collective term “executive function.” Executive function controls planning, foresight, problem solving, and goal setting. It engages many parts of the brain, including a short-term…
The play that builds impulse control
the type of play that gives all the cognitive benefits is a type that focuses on impulse control and self-regulation—those executive-function behaviors discussed in the previous chapter as ingredients of intelligence, revealed by the cookie experiment. The data are so clear…
Mature dramatic play and Tools of the Mind
The type of play is called mature dramatic play, or MDP. To get the benefits in those bullet points, MDP has to be engaged in many hours a day. This has been codified into a school program called Tools of the Mind, one of the few programs of its type that has been studied in…
Vygotsky: imaginative play teaches self-control
Vygotsky was one of the few researchers of his era to study dramatic play in children. He predicted that the ability of the under-5 crowd to engage in imaginative activities was going to be a better gauge of academic success than any other activity—including quantitative and…
Inside a Tools of the Mind classroom
Most Tools of the Mind classrooms look like the equivalent of a late-Christmas-morning living room. Legos are scattered everywhere. Sandboxes are sprinkled around the room. There are jigsaw puzzles to figure out. Blocks with which to build entire new worlds. Clothes for…
Emotional regulation predicts cognitive performance
These data flatly state that emotional regulation—reining in impulses—predicts better cognitive performance. That’s a bombshell of an idea. It directly ties intellectual horsepower to emotional processing. I am not dismissing rote drills, as a memorized database is an extremely…
Effort separates high from low performers
What separates high performers from low performers is not some divine spark. It is, the most recent findings suggest, a much more boring—but ultimately more controllable—factor. All other things being equal, it is effort. Good old-fashioned neural elbow grease. Deliberate…
Exercise boosts executive function
This rise in pediatric obesity is painful to hear in the brain science community, especially because we know so much about the relationship between physical activity and mental acuity. Exercise—especially aerobic exercise—is fantastic for the brain, increasing executive…
Conscience and internalized rules
Turns out it’s surprisingly difficult to explain proactive moral behavior, like voluntarily helping someone cross the street. Even enlightened self-interest does not fully explain certain types of human altruism. The road between moral reasoning and moral behavior is quite…
Theories of Childhood, Second Edition (Carol Garhart Mooney)
Self-regulation beats early academics
There is growing evidence today that suggests that a preschool-age child’s ability to apply cognitive control, also called executive function, is a better predictor of later school success than any academic learning acquired during the preschool years. Executive function…
Scaffolding self-regulation in young children
In addition, research shows that children develop the foundational skills for self-regulation in the first five years of life. These findings have many implications for early childhood education and highlight the important role teachers play in helping young children develop…
Make-believe play builds self-regulation
While much is known about the positive effects of make-believe play on children’s social, early literacy, and early mathematical development, research has shown that make-believe play also has positive effects on the development of self-regulation skills in young children…