Associations between inhibition and precursors of literacy and mathematics in kindergarten children

Abstract

This study analyzes the relationship between different components of inhibition (interference control, response inhibition) and pre-academic skills in a sample of 105 5- and 6-year-old German and Austrian kindergarten children. Interference control is a form of cognitive inhibition that fosters focused attention on task-relevant information and the exclusion of task-irrelevant stimuli, while response inhibition refers to the behavioral inhibition of predominant reactions. We hypothesized that interference control would explain more variance in pre-academic skills than response inhibition because of the importance of focused attention for the acquisition of (pre-)academic skills. A structural equation model with two latent factors for the two assumed inhibition components did not fit the data, but a model with a single latent inhibition factor fit well. Inhibition substantially predicted pre-academic skills over and above chronological age. Results indicate that inhibitory processes are domain-general predictors of early academic achievement, but the factorial structure of inhibition in kindergarten age requires further clarification.