Recently, an article titled “The malleability of executive function in early childhood: effects of schooling and targeted training” from Dr. Zhang’s team has been accepted by Developmental Science, a top academic journal in the area of developmental psychology.

In the past decade, whether or not executive function is malleable has become a topic of intense interest. Both education and targeted training were proved to be able to enhance executive function. However, no study yet has investigated whether targeted training might be comparable with regular schooling in improving executive function and fluid intelligence till now. In this study, Dr. Zhang and her team use a school cutoff design to address this question. They revealed that kindergartners who received targeted training were ultimately able to catch up with their first-grade peers with regards to their executive function and fluid reasoning performance. This finding has important implications for educational practice.

Reference：

Qiong Zhang, Cuiping Wang, Qianwen Zhao, Ling Yang, Martin Buschkuehl, Susanne M. Jaeggi (accepted). The malleability of executive function in early childhood: effects of schooling and targeted training. Developmental Science. doi.org/10.1111/desc.12748