Producer: And welcome back to Full PreFrontal where we are exposing the mysteries of executive functions. I am here with our host, Sucheta Kamath.
Good morning, my friend, so gosh, you and I are friends outside of the show and you know that I’ve been doing an awful lot of travel recently. A lot for business but also some tricky personal family issues that I had been having to deal with the last several months. I got to tell you, travel is just stressful no matter what you do, no matter how you look at it, and I understand it.
Today, we’re going to talk about the difference between chronic stress and short-lasting stress and kind of how that all relates to executive functions, yes?
Sucheta Kamath: Absolutely, Todd. Good morning to you as well, and you know this about me that I travel a lot, and guess what? I think short-term stress is really, really helpful in developing adaptive ability in executive function. You in your travels and I in my travel have encountered many unsavory things. For example, you might have a bad hotel where the room is facing the noises far in the street or your neighbors are fighting all night and they wouldn’t let you go to sleep, or you have to go through a shady part of town to get to the hotel. All these things make that trip a bit stressful and getting back home, you feel completely relieved and your stress goes away, but this is not the case for many people who have chronic stress. For example, people living in poverty do not have a break from poverty, so for example, the substandard living conditions, frequent threat to be starving, overcrowding, constant exposure to noise and chaos, and social stressors like family turmoil, violence in the family, or family separation, all of that amounts to a condition called Chronic Stress Condition and the research shows that all these factors determine the relationship between brain’s capacity to activate the prefrontal system during emotional regulation, and that can be really very telling for the topic we’re going to talk about. With advances in Neuroscience, we know that the amygdala which is responsible for processing fear and other negative emotions, and the prefrontal cortex dysfunction are associated with more disorders including depression, impulsive aggression, substance abuse, anxiety and such.
I read a paper recently where the researchers from the University of Illinois in Chicago, Cornell University, University of Michigan, and University of Denver, they had collaborated and they took a look at adults who have had lower family income at age 9 and they saw that their brains exhibited more activity in the emotional center that I just described called amygdala, and what that’s telling us, one of the senior authors of the study, Dr. Yuan Fan, he’s a professor of Psychiatry, explained it this way that: “Our findings suggest that the stress burden of growing up poor may be an underlying mechanism that could account for the relationship between poverty as a child and how well your brain works as an adult.” So I’m quoting this from Science Daily article but this is something really important to the conversation we are going to have today. There’s a stark difference between acute, short-lasting, and just a very specific stress versus poverty and chronic social instability. This can take a toll in learning and development of the whole child. American public schools are full of children who come from families where either victims of hard times or systematic social in injustices, and that can have a significant and critical impact on the next generation of Americans we are raising, so today’s podcast is an appeal to educators and parents to show sensitivity to the needs of poor students.
My guest has dedicated his professional career to investigating this matter at length, so who is my guess, you ask? It’s professor of Cognitive Psychology in the Department of Applied psychology at the Steinhardt School of Culture and Education. His name is Dr. Clancy Blair. He has been conducting research on the development of self-regulation in early childhood for over two decades. An important focus of his research is on the ways in which experience gets under the skin to influence the development of executive function through the stress response. He is currently completing a trial of parenting program designed to foster self-regulation, including executive function and parents and children, participating in early head start programs, and is, in the beginning stages of the study, designed to examine prenatal and early postnatal influences on the development of executive function. He has been funded by grants from many federal agencies such as the National Institute of Child Health, The Institute of Education and Science, the US Administration for Children & Families, and the National Science Foundation. He serves as a consultant on numerous research projects and in addition to serving as a scientific advisor to the Urban Child Institute, he serves on the advisory board of several initiatives focused on early childhood education and child well-being.
Producer: Yes, I know. This promises to be a very important episode with Dr. Blair, Sucheta. I’m looking forward to it. Naturally, you’ve got me thinking about stress. I feel a lot of stress, I feel stressed that I don’t handle stress very well, and I think most of us don’t understand the distinction between chronic stress and short-lasting stress, and I think I should have know that there was a tie-in here to executive functions and probably, we have some ability to handle stress better. It should be fascinating.
Alright, let’s get to it. This is Sucheta’s conversation with Dr. Clancy Blair.
Sucheta: Welcome to the podcast exposing the mysteries of executive function, Clancy. Thank you for agreeing to take this interview. I’ll start by asking a question regarding self-regulation. We talk a lot about self-regulation and executive functions. Do you mind explaining to our listeners, what is self-regulation and is executive function same as self-regulation?
Clancy Blair: No, they’re not the same. Executive function is the sort of cognitive aspect of self-regulation. It’s the intentional, volitional, when we’re using our attention or holding information in mind in order to regulate our behavior, but there are many, many ways that we regulate our behavior that have nothing to do with our intentional control of behavior that relate to our emotional experiences – our physiological experiences, our sort of personality tendencies, and so on and so forth, and of course, when I’m studying young children, temperament is really highly relevant to self-regulation. So self-regulation has been studied in Developmental Psychology through a variety of approaches, either temperament-based or emotion-based, or cognitive-based in terms of executive functions, so really, what I’ve done in my research is sort of established this sort of structure for self-regulation in which executive function is one part.
Sucheta: So for our listeners who are not familiar with the research aspect of it, can you give us an example of what would the personality aspects look like and what would the emotional aspects look like, and what would the cognitive aspects of self-regulation look like?
Blair: Right. Well, I’ll start with the cognitive aspects. Executive function is sort of the ability to take the mind off automatic, right, to hold information, to be intentional, to sort of inhibit an automatic or sort of prepotent responsive call that’s built up over time and highly learned when we need to stop ourselves from doing that, or we did a whole multiple steps in mind, or we need to shift sort of the focus of our attention from one way of thinking or seeing, or experiencing something, and focus on another aspect of it. So all of that is very volitional and intentional, but when we’re thinking about temperament or personality, there is a general mood, there would sort of be a tendency to enjoy being contemplative or to be more reactive, and it’s not that one is privileged over the other. It’s the importance of sort of responding to context in a way that’s appropriate, so be more outgoing in certain situations and more withdrawn and reflective in other situations, right? Sort of a kid going from a math lesson in the classroom to the playground, that sort of switch in behavior there. It’s more personality-based and sort of ingrained and more automatic, and of course, with emotion, we can use the attempt to shift our attention, our influence on strategy to try to regulate an emotional response to a situation but we usually experience withdrawing emotion and figure out sort of after-the-fact what happened and what we did in terms of our ability to handle that situation, and of course, they are all interrelated in terms of the personality, of the emotional responses, and intentional cognitive responses, and it’s really switching flexibly among those different aspects of behavior that really compose self-regulation.
Sucheta: So let me see if I can summarize. So if I’m a child in kindergarten and the teacher gives me a chance to do free play and I’m playing with Play-Doh, and then time is up and I need to move on to some type of language activity. For me to stop requires me to kind of shift mentally to a new activity, and me being not satisfied with the way I am with Play-Doh, requires emotionally to not lose it, then having a very calm and very non-reactionary kind of attitude or tendencies in my personality, so that child is more successful. He’s going to transition from one place to another while somebody else might completely lose it, right?
Blair: Right, for some kids, exactly. They might begin to sort of automatically think, “Oh, I get to do reading center next,” or “I get to go to the block center next,” or listening center, or whatever, and they’re sort of motivated by that and it’s not a big deal for them to stop one activity and go on to the next, and they’re not even really thinking about it that much, right? But for some kid, who Play-Doh is the thing and really enjoy that, they might really need to engage in an effortful strategy in executive function. Call on executive function, say, “Alright, now I know I’m going to be able to come back and play with this Play-Doh tomorrow,” or “I’ll be able to finish this if I put it over here later,” kind of thing, that sort of intentional strategy, so it’s sort of flexibly, depending on the person, depending on the context, the extent to which different aspects of self-regulation are called on and used, if that makes sense.
Sucheta: Got it. Yes, beautiful. So you run a successful neuroscience and educational lab that focuses on the development of self-regulation among infants, toddlers, children, and adults. Can you share with our audience, what is the implication of self-regulation for individual’s success in education as well as work setting, or well, the spectrum of life?
Blair: Yes, well, what we did starting about 20 years ago was a sort of look at research on executive function. It was really from a neuropsychological tradition. People were studying it a little bit in young children but not so much with the idea that executive functions don’t really come online until kids are quite older, and my research contribution was to say, “Well, wait a second. These skills really seem to be highly relevant to what it is that we’re talking about when kids are ready ‘to start school,’ that kids need to be able to intentionally regulate emotion, they need to be able to flexibly regulate their behavior, they need to engage with new information in important ways,” and I thought, “Well, what do we know about executive function in children and what do we know about school readiness and let’s get those things together,” and that sort of led to this a large program of research in terms of the different components of executive function and self-regulation and how they are related to the different demands of school and schooling, especially the kindergarten through the first three grades and really, pre-kindergarten as well, and then this other aspect of the research is, well, what are the early roots, the rudiments of executive function, self-regulation that we can begin to measure in infancy or on the toddler period? That became very interesting in terms of understanding of the neurobiology of self-regulation and the extent to which the current research landscaped an infant and toddlers really mapped onto some of the things that we were interested in terms of the development of attention or the development of temperament, or the development of emotion regulation in infancy and in the toddler period, so that all worked out really well.
I think my expertise really runs up through about middle childhood now. I’m not super familiar with the role of executive function in adult functioning but I’m increasingly getting up to speed with that literature because of the children and families in my longitudinal sample are about to turn 13. The kids are about to turn 13 that we’ve been following since they were born and we’re all Pennsylvania and we are all North Carolina, and so I’m very, very interested in what we’re going to find out about executive function in adolescence and early adulthood.
Sucheta: So tell us then, why is it so important to study self-regulation and executive function in early development? How does that impact or create roadblocks in successful academic, as well as non-academic learning?
Blair: Well, it’s interesting because I think one of the most interesting things about self-regulation from my point of view is, as a developmental psychologist sort of looking at the history of Developmental Psychology, is psychology has largely been focused on more trait-based aspects of individuals, say like intelligence or trying to determine if personality, if it’s fixed and unchangeable, that sort of stuff. So psychology traditionally has been focused on more trait-based aspects of people. Self-regulation is not really. I mean it has trait-like aspects but it’s also very state-like. It’s dependent on what we are doing in the context in which we are doing it and so on and so forth, and it can vary within a person from day-to-day to week-to-week, to month to month, to year to year, and my research is really been trying to get a handle on the trait-based aspect and the more state-based aspects of executive functions. So the extent to what might be experiences that are occurring in infancy or in the toddler. That are more state-based, right, and terms of feedback we’re getting from our primary caregiver, our mom or dad or the experiences that we’re having in preschool with other kids, those sorts of things, how those were state-based experiences might morph into more trait-like aspects of executive function ability, so on and so forth, right? And the extent in which – that’s an interesting sort of process, and I think it speaks to a lot of people in terms of the relevance of what it is that executive function and self-regulation are about in one’s personal life and the sort of challenges we face, and we know we have some good days and we know we have some bad days, and how that might play out from a research standpoint has been very interesting.
Sucheta: Got it, and so just to kind of summarize what you just said, I think what I’m hearing you describe is a movement. I mean, a movement shifting from those behaviors, theories, and then moving into this brain plasticity once we have come to understand. The psychological research also has shifted from trait-like functions, studying them, to going more state-like, and so when you refer to state-like, you are really talking about the interplay of core abilities and functions, and how they get influenced by the environment where you are operating or the influences that are outside you and still lead to some outcome that may be completely different than Thursday of last week versus October of this year, so that variation is nothing to do with personality but it’s an influence of this complex dynamic play that happens in human living, right?
Blair: Absolutely. Yes, and exhibit A of that is our understanding of genes and genetics, right? We used to think we crack the genome and we’re going to find out all this stuff about people, but the sequins really didn’t prove to be that relevant, right? It doesn’t matter, so the A’s, the C’s, the T’s, and the G’s, it’s how experience is turning on and off those genes that’s most relevant to our understanding of behavior. I mean, that’s still arguable but from my standpoint, I would say it’s very, very clear that experience is playing a very large role in understanding the relation of the genome to human behavior- to all behavior, to animal behavior. I mean, that’s been I think one of the major sort of scientific findings of the past 10 years, has been the role of epigenomics or epigenetics and understanding behavior.
Sucheta: This is so interesting and fascinating because I think the reason I see executive functions have becomes relevant in the way we manage them now and people ask me all the time that, what did people do 50 years ago? And I don’t think 50 years ago, we had an interest in people changing their ways, or if they did, they just fell into a category of not ever going to be successful or something.
Blair: Yes, it’s interesting. I mean, in terms of the history of executive function research, it has a fascinating history. It’s really a history that grew out of neuropsychology and with brain trauma. Around the Second World War when army medicine became good enough to save individuals with traumatic head injury, people realized, neuropsychologists realized, that individuals coming back from the second war, with them, it’s prefrontal cortex has pronounced difficulties, huge difficulties in their lives, and their personal lives, and their personalities and in making decisions and coming to conclusions about things. All sort of executive function-based, but seemingly impact intelligence and vocabulary and language skills and other things, and it sort of really gave her eyes to this idea of, well, what is the prefrontal cortex doing, right? What’s going on with these people? And trying to understand that, and really, executive function grew out of that. It’s always been sort of a difficult construct to grasp because it plays this orchestrating role in behavior, an orchestrating role in the brain in terms of sort of organizing the things that the other brain areas are doing but in the absence of that organizing role, it’s very difficult to lead one’s life in a meaningful purposeful way, so that’s sort of the interesting sort of five-second history about executive function.
Sucheta: So in laboratory setting, how do you study self-regulation? How do you measure development of these skills and abilities?
Blair: We have specific executive function measures that we use when kids are about three years old. We could start to do those specific function measures, but before that, we are looking at kids’ abilities to handle emotional arousal, so we induce the emotion in babies and toddlers, by putting on scary masks and by frustrating them – giving them nice toys to play with and then taking the toys away – and coding those behaviors and then coding regulation strategies using attention, using behavioral strategies to regulate emotion, and we are also measuring aspects of stress physiology that have proven to be highly relevant to the development of executive functions, because one of the things that’s influencing the executive function development is the stress response, and of course, we use executive functions to handle stress and to respond to stressful situations, so it’s sort of the top-down and bottom-up sort of process. Of course, in infants and toddlers, the executive functions are not really there yet; they’re just developing, that sort of emotional responses to stimulation and the amount of stress, and the stress response have a lot of implications for executive function development.
Sucheta: So what you just explained, that experiment with masks, so to induce this sense of fear and then see how children calm themselves down knowing that it’s just a mask and not really permanent scary situation, is that what you mean?
Blair: Exactly, so what we do, it’s just a simple, very simple procedure of just putting on a mask- of the experimenter puts on a mask, says the child’s name, and then moves slowly back and forth while saying the child’s name. That’s for 10-second mask presentations like that. It almost never fails to get a strong response from a 15-month old. It’s really inducing a novel, very strange situation.
Sucheta: Yes, so that they are forced to adapt and address this novelty?
Blair: Right, you’ve got to respond to that novelty, yes.
Sucheta: Got it, got it. So does this correlate with the marshmallow kind of delaying gratification or recognizing, or kind of creating some type of self introspective thought about whether this is not going to affect me, I’m okay, like self-calming strategies, do they all relate to each other?
Blair: That’s a very interesting question. I don’t know of any specific research that has looked at that, but of course, yes, the hypothesis would be that they would be highly related. The kids who show a strong emotional response to the mask but then are able to calm down from that response, we’ve shown that that is definitely related to later executive function ability. We measured the masks at 15 months and followed the kids until they were age 5 and found that the early response, a strong emotional response that’s regulated by the child at 15 months is related to later executive function ability, so it should definitely be related to something like the marshmallow test. I don’t use those sorts of tests in my research because they’re not geared toward my protocol. I think the original marshmallow test, those kids were waiting for 30 minutes, so there’s not a whole lot you can do with kids then, so.
Sucheta: Got it, and so when you study executive functions in the laboratory, how do you understand, or can you explain your understanding of executive function components?
Blair: Yes, yes, we are really focusing on this sort of three divisions of executive function the three sort of components, the related components: working memory, the ability to hold information in mind and update it while operating on it, so think of holding multiple pieces of a math problem in mind, and then putting them all together sort of thing, that would be a sort of classic working memory updating problem, inhibitory control, the ability to sort of establish a pattern of responding and then inhibit that pattern of responding, and then this sort of flexibility or being able to shift cognitive status, the sort of technical term for it, to be able to see something in one way, like focus in on one dimension of the way in which two things are related to each other or three things are related to each other, and then focus on a different dimension of their relationship, right? So shifting from the sort of the dimension of size to say, the dimension of color or something like that. It’s the way we assess the sort of mental flexibility, cognitive set shifting ability.
Sucheta: Got it, so you might use a truck and a car that’s yellow and red and a small truck and a small car that may be green and blue, so they can be connected, all the trucks can be put together but all the red objects can be put together, or a large objects can be put together. That kind of thinking?
Blair: Exactly, that’s a sort of classic executive function task, sort of sort these by shape, and then sort them by color. You have red and blue trucks and red and blue balls, right? So the balls go to the balls and the trucks go with the trucks when you’re sorting by shape. And then when you’re sorting color, the blue ones go with the blue and the red ones go with the red, so that sort of ability. It’s sort of a classic executive function. We have other sort of stalwart measure of executive function abilities, this test that was developed by Alexander Loria working with the veterans coming back from the second world war in the Soviet Union which is the peg-tapping task and it’s when I tap one time, you tap two times, and when I tap two times, you tap one time, and we go through 16 or 20, or 40 trials of that one tap, two tap thing sequence and it’s very interesting that sort of a four-year-old will understand the rules, will say, “Yes, got it. I tap one time, you tap two times. Yes, I tap two times, you tap one time? Good to go.” They will start with the first few trials doing the one tap, two tap sequence, but then it’s sort of like the rule just evaporate and they just start mimicking the behavior of the experimenter. So it’s fascinating to see, it really is. That’s sort of executive function in action, it’s sort of holding that rule in mind and inhibiting an automatic response, right, to sort of mimic the tapping sound.
Sucheta: And particularly sounds like as time passes, holding on to that rule in working memory disappears and so they switch back to the original pattern which is one to one, two is to two. When I do my presentations to parents or teachers, one of the things I do, start off my presentation is the head, shoulder, knees, and toes task which is, of course, half the population kind of struggles with it which is also kind of changing the rule that whatever you have taken for granted is no longer true kind of understanding.
So it sounds like if I’m understanding you correctly, with the kind of framework you described and my own experience with executive function as well, that we can use executive process, the thinking process to control our emotional, as well as even personality aspects so that we can adjust and adapt to challenging and new circumstances. Is that what you have found the reason to study these and the reason to understand this more deeply, these state-based behavior?
Blair: Yes, yes, absolutely, and that’s what sort of where I began in my research 20 years ago, was thinking about school readiness and kids adapting to the challenges of school which is really sort of a uniform context for kids. There’s sort of a standard set of rules that applies to most classrooms and most learning situations. There’s some variation among it and I think some important and meaningful variation and support for kids in terms of early schooling and early school readiness, but by and large, that’s a big transition for all kids in the western world, so to speak, and throughout the world really, to be able to have enough executive function to begin to engage in formal learning environments, so given the sort of priorities and pressure on kids to succeed in those environments, we better understand the executive function pretty well in order to support kids who are struggling with that and really to provide the best sort of experience for all kids in terms of as they transition to that. We used to just think of it as intelligence or just personality, or things like that. Either you got it or you don’t, but we don’t think about it in that way at all anymore, and in terms of the extent to which we really need to understand executive function if we’re going to understand kids ready for school and the ability to support kids in the ways that they deserve to be supported in terms of their early learning efforts.
Sucheta: Thank you so much, Clancy, for this very interesting and detailed explanation regarding very important topics and particularly, I think the way you have conceptualized and helped us understand self-regulation and executive function in relationship to that is going to really help out. Once again, I’m very grateful for you to be on the show and before I end, if people want to reach you or find out more about your research, what is the best way they can get in touch with you?
Blair: Probably to email me directly or email my assistant at nyu.edu. My assistant’s name is Meria De Joseph, that’s meriadejoseph@nyu.edu, Meria De Joseph, and my email address is my first name.last name@ nyu.edu, so clancy.blair@nyu.edu, then we have a website for the neuroscience and education lab, and we’ve got several doc students and post docs and other things that are wealth of information.
Sucheta: Great, and I will attach all your pertinent information on our website as well.
Thank you so much for your time and have a great day.
Blair: You’re welcome, thank you.
Producer: Alright, wow, Sucheta. Once again, another really critically important conversation. This is with Dr. Clancy Blair. Lots to think about here. One of the things that Dr. Blair talked about was how executive function and self-regulation bring balance to our lives, so share some thoughts on that, please.
Sucheta: Yes, that’s right, Todd. Everyone concerned with educating children should be interested in executive function and self-regulation because that’s what helps us perform mental juggling act of not letting it tip the scale one way more so than the other. These skills and abilities enable children to be effervescent, active, and playful, and yet, they also help you stay focused on tasks, stay vigilant about the surroundings and not fall apart with the roadblocks or interruptions as they are trying to move forward. It is the self-regulation skills that allows children to be resourceful and take advantage, or take initiative to reach goals, and yet, also to cooperate and comply during social interactions, so not to act selfishly or in a self-indulgent way, and that’s another balancing act. Finally, it is the well-developed executive function that allows children to be open and emotionally demonstrative, and yet, also learn to temper their frustrations and tone down their disappointment and not let it out in public anytime and anywhere.
So the pathways in the brain’s prefrontal cortex play the role of an organizer. What are they organizing? It’s organizing responses, reactions, and input from the rest of the brain. Professor Blair’s work brings a unique perspective in understanding the relationship between this freedom to do whatever and yet keeping checks and balances based on the context and timing, and when we incorporate these ideas into our curriculum, we will graduate more mature and self-aware children.
Producer: Gosh, before I go to the next question, just listening to you there and then thinking back to your conversation with Dr. Blair, this idea of self-regulation, I just think back to my childhood and I don’t obviously judge my parents. It was a different time. We knew different things then than we know now and we didn’t have folks like you to go to help, but I just think about how different my upbringing would have been had there been this intense focus on helping me strengthen my self-regulation skills. I mean, this would have been an entirely different way to go through my childhood and into my young adulthood. It’s just fascinating to think about.
So alright, so moving on, so walk me through how do self-directing emotions and our thoughts influence learning and thinking for a student?
Sucheta: Well, the research has described self-regulation as self-generated thoughts, feelings, and action for attaining personal and academic goals. So it refers to a proactive effort that children are putting towards being resourceful, persistent, and while fulfilling a sense of responsibility towards their own goals. The whole human nature is formed and informed by the interplay between its parts, and they include cognition which is the way of thinking, emotions which is feeling, and connotation which is doing. With executive function skills, one is able to switch mental set or emotional state intentionally. This ability to take mind off of something means walking away with intentionality, stopping yourself from doing something in an autopilot format and this prevents being reactive to the context. Of course, as you can imagine, this is an emergent skill so children certainly are not as proficient as adults might be but it’s worth teaching these abilities and skills. The way one’s mood changes based on circumstances may be related to their temperament but one can intentionally switch that mood, so to speak, and enjoy the given situation in spite of the stress or the worry, or disappointment in that situation, so for example, this happens in my clinic, when we finish a program at the end, we have a graduation celebration, so I bring in cupcakes and there’s a chocolate and vanilla, and there’s always one kid who does not like either, and the entire celebration is a loss on him because he or she cannot enjoy the cupcake, and so this intentionality of changing your mood and remembering the bigger picture is a skill and ability, so this attempt in shifting mood, shifting perspective, shifting energy is something that causes a big change in the way you adjust and adapt to challenges and kind of tap into your own resilience, and Dr. Clancy was very poignant in pointing out that this is not an accessible avenue for many who endure poverty, simply because of the chronic nature of not having adequate time to recoil or bounce back into that original place of equilibrium.
Producer: Important stuff and hearing the example of the vanilla and the chocolate cupcake, I realize it’s not just children – I realized that I need to continue to develop that skill because I can find and think about myself in similar situations where I didn’t handle it well, so it’s a skill I think we all need to be continuing to focus on. Fascinating stuff.
Alright, well, that’s it for today. I’m very much looking forward to your next conversation with Dr. Clancy Blair. So on behalf of our host, Sucheta Kamath and all of us at Cerebral Matters, thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to seeing you next week on Full PreFrontal.