Normative Models of Adolescent Executive Function Development Across Assessments and Datasets

COEX 

Theories of human neurobehavioral development suggest goal-directed cognition (executive function) matures from childhood through adolescence, underlying adolescent risk-taking and the emergence of psychopathology. The development and ultimate maturational timing of such executive functions is often used to demarcate the boundaries of adolescence in clinical practice, research, and policy. Investigations with relatively small datasets or narrow subsets of measures have identified general executive function development, but the specific maturational timing and independence of potential executive function subcomponents remain unknown. Multi-assessment and multi-dataset investigations of normative non-linear trajectories of executive function development afford an opportunity to better resolve these issues. This talk and interactive demonstration will highlight opportunities to construct and compare normative developmental trajectories of executive function across assessments and multiple independent datasets, highlighting methodological opportunities to examine independent and aggregate inferences. Using standard packages from the R programming language I will also highlight techniques to identify significant periods of local change and relative periods of stability in nonlinear trajectories that can be leveraged to inform questions regarding demarcating lifespan periods. Finally, I will highlight new avenues to explore person-level variability and deviations from normative trajectories.

Stats:
(Duration: 40 min; Presenter: Brenden Tervo-Clemmens; Format: Talk and Live Demonstration in RMarkdown in follow-along format; Programming language: R Language; Libraries and Toolboxes: various statistical R libraries; Degree of interactivity: 60%)

Relevant papers:
Tervo-Clemmens, B., Calabro, F. J., Parr, A. C., Fedor, J., Foran, W., & Luna, B. (2023). A canonical trajectory of executive function maturation from adolescence to adulthood. Nature communications, 14(1), 6922.