Putting Neuroscience to Work: The Case for Executive Functions and Early Education
Recent advances in neuroscience provide valuable information about executive functions, the complex thinking skills that are important for learning in school and for controlling behavior and emotions. These advances indicate that brain areas that underlie executive functions are highly interconnected with brain areas associated with emotional reactivity and the physiological response to stress. As such, neuroscience research highlights the role that children’s early social and emotional development plays in executive function development and indicates ways in which adverse early experiences negatively impact children’s development in part through effects on executive functions. A growing body of educational research, however, indicates that executive functions are changeable within typical school environments and provides support for innovative early and elementary education programs designed to promote children’s positive development and life outcomes.
