School changes minds: A meta-analysis shows that schooling modestly improves children's executive functions

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• Formal schooling demands cognitive skills like response inhibition and sustained attention.
• Previous research on schooling's impact on executive functions yielded mixed results.
• The school entry cut-off date has been used as a natural experiment to study schooling effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify the effect of formal schooling on executive functions in young children using meta-analytic methods.
• To provide a robust estimate of the schooling effect on executive functions for the first time.
• To examine the malleability of executive functions during early childhood.

Main Methods:

• A meta-analysis was conducted on 12 studies published between 1995 and 2023.
• Included studies involved approximately 1,611 children aged 4.5 to 9 years.
• A random-effects model was used to combine 14 effect sizes, accounting for dependencies.

Main Results:

• A small but robust positive schooling effect on executive functions was found (g = 0.24).
• The 95% confidence interval for the effect size was [0.13, 0.36].
• This indicates that schooling contributes to the development of executive functions in early childhood.

Conclusions:

• Formal schooling has a measurable positive impact on the development of executive functions in young children.
• The findings provide an important reference point for understanding cognitive development in early education.
• Executive functions are malleable and can be enhanced through early educational experiences.