Study 3:

Sangawi, H., Adams, J., & Reissland, N. (2018). Individual Differences in Executive Function: The Role of Parental Monitoring as a Moderator. Journal of attention disorders, 1087054718797420.

Abstract

Parenting style is considered to be a factor which is associated with the development of executive functioning in children. It is proposed that parental monitoring of their child as well as hyperactivity expressed by the child has an effect on specific components of executive functions, namely verbal and non-verbal inhibition, reaction time, accuracy, processing speed and task persistence. One hundred and twelve sixth-grade children (mean age, 11 years 5 months range11.2 - 12.7 years) participated in the study. Children were matched on gender and level of hyperactivity (i.e. high or low level). Parental monitoring assessment (PMA) was used to measure Parental monitoring and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was used to assess the levels of hyperactivity. Executive function was tested with the Stop-Signal task to examine non-verbal inhibition and reaction time, Modified Opposite Worlds to investigate verbal inhibition and processing speed; and a challenging star puzzle to assess task persistence. PROCESS analysis was also used to perform the moderation analysis. Results indicated that children characterised by poor parental monitoring had deficits in inhibitory control and had significantly slower processing speeds and made significantly more errors than their matched dyad. Furthermore, children with high levels of hyperactivity had difficulties in inhibitory control, accuracy, processing speed and task persistence compared with the control group. Contrary to our prediction, despite there being slower reaction times on the trials among hyperactive children, no significant differences were found in reaction times compared to the control group. PROCESS analysis showed significant moderating role of parental monitoring in the association between each of accuracy, verbal inhibition and task persistence with hyperactivity, suggesting that the direction of the relationship between certain executive function components and hyperactivity expressed by the children can be changed based on the level of parental monitoring. Implications for practical interventions are discussed.

 Keywords: Executive functions, hyperactivity, parental monitoring, moderation