Abstract

Understanding the factors contributing to early school success is an important way we can help foster children’s development. Although several social and cognitive factors contribute to children’s success at school, this dissertation focused on two cognitive skills: executive functions (i.e., the ability to plan and execute tasks) and metacognition (i.e., knowing our thoughts). These skills have been consistently linked to academic achievement in different capacities, but have rarely been directly compared. To this end, the two studies included in this dissertation present data from the same cohort of children, first in kindergarten and then in first grade, whose academic abilities, as well as executive function and metacognition, were measured. The first study looked at the cross-sectional relation between the variables. The second study focused on the cross-sectional results at time 2 and the longitudinal relationships between the variables. Based on the available literature, we expected both cognitive skills to be related to academic abilities, with metacognition emerging as the stronger predictor.
Both studies measured executive functions with tasks measuring inhibition and shifting abilities. Metacognition was measured by asking children to rate their confidence levels after answering questions, inquiring whether they wanted help answering, and recording the time it took them to provide an answer.
The first study measured school readiness using the Lollipop task, which assessed children’s basic literacy and numeracy skills. Results suggested a significant relation between verbal metacognition measures (confidence and request for help) and school readiness. The second study measured academic achievement using the reading and mathematics scales from the Weschler Individualized Achievement Test (WIAT-III, WIAT-II-FR). Concurrent results suggested a strong link between executive functions and academic achievement. Longitudinal results identified school readiness as a powerful predictor of academic achievement, as well as an indirect link between executive function scores at time 1 and academic achievement results at time 2, through executive function scores at time 2, suggesting cognitive abilities in the kindergarten year can partially predict academic performance one year later. Taken together, these results indicate that the relations between cognitive and academic skills are complex and changing in the early school years.