Het Verband tussen Inhibitiecontrole en Werkgeheugen en Sociaal Probleemgedrag in de Kleuterklas

Abstract

Neurocognitive skills, such as inhibition and working memory, are thought to have a profound effect on the social world of children. The current research aimed to assess the relation between the neurocognitive skills (i.e. working memory and inhibition) and the social world at school between peers, ages four to six. It was hypothesized that both inhibition and working memory would have a negative relation with social problems at school. Moreover, working memory was expected to have a stronger relationship with social problems than inhibition would have. 217 children from a convenience sample of Dutch schools were assessed on their neurocognitive and social skills. The neurocognitive skills were tested using the ‘Silly-Sounds Stroop’ task and the ‘Odd-one-out’ task. The social skills were assessed by the teacher. Relations between the variables were assessed using the Spearman’s ρ method and then the influence of the neurocognitive skills was compared using a multiple regression analysis. The analysis showed a mild relation between both neurocognitive skills and the social skills, working memory being the larger influence. These results implicate the possibility of improving children’s social world with interventions aiming to improve the neurocognitive skills. Furthermore it is of greater importance to influence children’s working memory skills as they are of a bigger influence on the social world than inhibition.