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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Developmental Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1484424

The impact of early life experiences on Inhibitory Control and working memory

Provisionally accepted
Eva Dydenkova Eva Dydenkova 1,2*Francis McGlone Francis McGlone 3Larisa Mayorova Larisa Mayorova 1,4,5Elena Nikolaeva Elena Nikolaeva 6
  • 1 Pushkin State Russian language Institute, Moscow, Russia
  • 2 Kozma Minin Nizhny Novgorod State Pedagogical University, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
  • 3 Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, North West England, United Kingdom
  • 4 Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology (RAS), Moscow, Moscow Oblast, Russia
  • 5 Federal Research and Clinical Center, Federal Medical-Biological Agency, Moscow, Moscow Oblast, Russia
  • 6 Herzen University, Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Russia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a general term for a large group of nonequivalent situations that have the potential to traumatise a child. This risk factor is caused by a sensitive period of brain development, which is based on myelination, creation of synaptic connections and pruning. Dramatic environmental events during this period, such as history of institutionalisation, can disrupt optimal developmental pathways, leaving biological scars for life. The focus of this study was to investigate the impact of institutionalisation on the development of inhibitory control and working memory in three groups of children matched for age (n=130; 7.1±2.0 years): 1) early institutionalised (n=35; age of placement: 6.9±10.6 months; duration of placement: 14.6±10.4 months); 2) late institutionalised (n=29; age of placement: 49.3±30.6 months; the duration of placement: 16.0±19.4 months); 3) never institutionalised (n=66). Results showed that the early institutionalised group had the lowest scores on tests of inhibitory control (p=0.03), working memory (p=0.03) and retrieval-based learning (p=0.04), while the results of the group of late institutionalised children do not differ significantly from never institutionalised. The existence of a sensitive period during the first 18 months of a child's life is discussed, which determines the formation of the retrieval-based learning mechanism and of inhibiting ineffective experience, for which executive functions are responsible.

    Keywords: working memory, Inhibitory Control, Retrieval-based learning, early institutionalisation, Children

    Received: 23 Aug 2024; Accepted: 18 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Dydenkova, McGlone, Mayorova and Nikolaeva. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Eva Dydenkova, Pushkin State Russian language Institute, Moscow, Russia

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