Investigating neural correlates of attention in relation to the development of executive functions in early childhood

Most previous studies investigating early neural predictors of Executive Function (EF) abilities focused on resting-state brain activity in infancy, with mixed findings. Here, we investigated early neural predictors of later-emerging EF abilities by measuring task-related changes in brain activity, which we argue to be more sensitive to detecting individual differences in EF skills. Sixty-six 9-month-old infants participated in an action observation and execution task, while their brain activity was recorded. Two conditions were used, which required different levels of cognitive control and social engagement: one group of infants saw an experimenter performing actions in consecutive trials and then performed similar actions themselves (the Blocked condition), while the other group performed the actions, taking turns with the experimenter (the Interleaved condition). At age five, 45 of the original infants returned for follow-up assessments and completed a battery of well-established EF tasks. Of these 45 participants, 35 infants provided usable neural data at 9 months and behavioral EF data at age 5 and were included in the final analysis. Results revealed a close link between infants' neural activity and their EF abilities that were specific to frontal theta oscillations, a neural component associated with high-order cognition, and to the Interleaved condition, which was the condition that required greater attentional control and social engagement from infants. The results highlight the importance of selecting appropriate tasks and neural measures to detect longitudinal brain-behavior relations.