The purpose of this study was to implement and assess the efficacy of a novel social skills intervention (First Friends; Graham, 2000, 2006) on improving social cognitive skills, social behaviours, and executive functions in an early childhood population of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. Early school years are a critical developmental period to intervene to facilitate social competency and reduce problem behaviours. Children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds are at-risk as many suffer from behavioural problems and begin school without the social maturity and behavioural regulation skills needed to succeed in an academic environment. First Friends is an 8-week preventive intervention designed to promote critical areas of social-emotional development including problem solving, conflict resolution, planning, identification of emotions, empathy, assertiveness, anger management, verbal communication, creativity and cooperation. In addition to examining intervention effects, another goal for this study was to examine the mediational role of improvements in different latent EF components (i.e., working memory, inhibition, set-shifting/mental flexibility) on intervention outcomes. Executive functions (EF) have been linked to social-emotional competence. The First Friends program teaches social skills that are suggested to require EF to learn, as well as implement, during social interactions. The social skills taught and practiced also utilize overlapping brain pathways. Therefore, the First Friends intervention was hypothesized to impact both social-emotional functions and EF, given that 1) EF appears to be required in learning and developing several social and emotional skills, and 2) brain pathways utilized in carrying out these functions overlap. Eighty-seven kindergarten children (41 controls, M = 5.42 years; 46 intervention, M = 5.40 years) from socio-economically disadvantaged areas of the Greater Victoria region in B.C. participated in this study. Children's EF and social-emotional and social-cognitive skills were assessed and their social skills and behaviours were rated by parents, teachers, and observers before and after the intervention. Results provided support for the efficacy of the intervention with children who participated in the intervention demonstrating significantly stronger socio-emotional and social cognitive abilities, more prosocial behaviours, and less negative behaviours compared to a control group. Parent and teacher reports did not reveal significant changes. In addition, significant intervention effects on working memory and set-shifting/mental flexibility were found. Contrary to hypotheses, intervention effects were not revealed for inhibition. In addition, none of the EF latent constructs were found to mediate intervention outcomes. Overall, the First Friends program shows promise with regard to improving both social and executive functioning skills, and continued research and implementation with this program is warranted. These findings highlight the importance of not only assessing for social outcomes, but also examining the development of other cognitive processes that appear to be involved in social development. The results of this study can facilitate understanding of the scope of social intervention outcomes on cognitive processes and guide the selection and implementation of effective prevention programs with early childhood populations in the future. / Graduate

Recent neuropsychological research has stressed the sensitivity of the Prefrontal Cortex, mostly the Dorsolateral region, in relation to aging (Darowski et al., 2008). Prefrontal Cortex functions, such as Inhibitory Control (IC), are thought to wane steadily after the ages of 60-65 (Craik & Bialystok, 2006). Little is known about what changes occur between the stages of prefrontal optimal performance (i.e., ages 20-25), and the later periods of functional decline. The present study aimed to investigate performance differences between younger (ages 30-40; n=9), middle-aged (ages 50-60; n=10), and older adults (ages 70 and up; n=13), on five tasks of Executive Functions (EFs); specifically, assessing the abilities of problem representation, shifting, updating working memory, inhibition, and integrating valence and rewards into pursuing a goal. It was hypothesized that (a) quantitative age trends differentiating the three groups on the tasks would be found, (b) IC would be particularly targeted by the hypothesized age trends, and (c) the devolution of IC across the adult lifespan would be linear. MANOVA tests with all tasks of EFs representing the Dependent Variables and age serving as the Independent Variable revealed no significant main effect. Follow-up separate ANOVA tests however, suggested a statistically significant difference between the means of Groups 2 and 3 for the Updating Working Memory task, F(2,29)=5.374, p=.010, Scheffe (p=.012) and Bonferroni (p=.010). The contributions of interactions among EFs to the present results, recruitment challenges, and potential age effects are discussed. / Graduate / 0622 / emiliecq@uvic.ca

Contact sport athletes can experience thousands of repetitive head impacts (RHI) in their career. Retired NFL players have been found to be suffering from depression, mood/behavior changes, and cognition deficits that are linked to underlying neurological impairment from RHIs, including the neurodegenerative disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine received funding from the National Institutes of Health to create the DETECT study to examine methods of diagnosing CTE during life and to examine the possible risk factors for CTE and other long-term consequences of RHI. This study examined the association between change in body mass index (BMI) and cognitive impairment in retired NFL players. The cohort was 95 retired NFL players between the ages of 40-69 who have a minimal 12 years of football experience and minimal 2 years in the NFL. The participants underwent a 2-3 hour neuropsychological battery. Change in BMI was from the time of retirement (height and weight available on the NFL website archive of historical players) and from time of the DETECT study visit (height and weight recorded by nurses on digital scales). The results found significance between greater change in BMI and decline in psychomotor speed/executive functioning (p=0.038). There was also significance between WAIS Digit symbol coding test and BMI change (p=0.043). The results show that greater positive change in BMI have negative consequences on retired NFL player’s cognitive functioning.

Maternal smoking during pregnancy has often been associated with numerous adverse outcomes for the offspring. However, its long-term effects are not well established. Given the high prevalence of maternal smoking during pregnancy, an understanding of these effects is essential. Therefore, the aim of the present dissertation was to shed light on the long-term neurophysiological effects of prenatal nicotine exposure on three different executive functioning processes by assessing participants in young adulthood, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants imaged were members of the Ottawa Prenatal Prospective Study, a longitudinal study that collected a unique body of information on participants from infancy to young adulthood, which allowed for the measurement of an unprecedented number of potentially confounding drug exposure variables. The dissertation consists of three separate original manuscripts. In manuscript 1, participants completed a response inhibition task, in manuscript 2 participants completed a verbal working memory task and in manuscript 3 participants completed a visuospatial working memory task. Taken together, results from all three manuscripts showed that prenatal nicotine exposure leads to altered neural functioning during executive functioning processing that continues into young adulthood. These significant results highlight the need for education about the repercussions of women smoking during pregnancy.

This prospective longitudinal study evaluated the effect of prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) on executive functioning in 5- and 7-year-old children. In total, 154 pregnant cocaine users, identified by urine toxicology and structured interviews, were matched to 154 nonusers. Children were assessed by certified masked evaluators, and caregivers were interviewed by experienced staff during home visits. In approximately 90% of the surviving sample tested at ages 5 and 7 years, structural equation modeling demonstrated that an increased head circumference at birth (adjusted for gestation) significantly predicted better performance on executive functioning, and that PCE was indirectly related to executive functioning through its significant negative effect on head circumference at birth. At age 5 years, quality of environment also predicted executive functioning, and the R2 for the total model was 0.24. At 7 years, caregiver functioning predicted quality of environment, which in turn was positively related to executive functioning, and girls had better executive functioning. The total model at age 7 years accounted for 30% of the variance in executive functioning.

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Extensive work has examined the relationship between rumination and executive functioning (EF) mainly in adult samples, lending support for theory that rumination is characterized by poorer shifting, inhibition, and/or working memory updating abilities. However, literature on the relationship between rumination and EF in youth is more equivocal. Further, the directionality of this relationship is somewhat unclear, and may differ as a function of EF type. The present study conducted a longitudinal, bidirectional examination of the relationship between rumination on both negative and positive affect and several types of EF in a sample of 175 youth (aged 9-13) at baseline, 9-month, and 18-month follow-up assessments. Although rumination was not associated with shifting, inhibition, and/or working memory, support generally emerged for significant concurrent relationships between rumination and greater problems with inhibition, planning/organization, and monitoring. There was minimal support for significant longitudinal relationships between rumination and EF, and no evidence emerged for relationships between rumination on positive affect and EF. The present study provides some support for a “common cause” model of the relationship between rumination and EF (e.g., depressive symptoms; shared neurobiological dysfunction), although more research is needed to examine longitudinal relationships between these constructs. / Psychology

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