The relationship between executive function in preschool children and parenting
DOI: 10.4992/pacjpa.79.0_1ev-130
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Summary
This study investigates the relationship between executive function (EF) in preschool children and parenting factors, specifically parenting style and parenting stress. The research is motivated by established evidence that EF development is crucial for children’s social competence and that parenting practices influence this development. While previous studies have linked parenting to EF, the specific relationships between distinct parenting styles, parenting stress, and EF components remained unclear. The authors aimed to clarify these associations to better understand the environmental precursors of EF development. The study included 47 preschool children (aged 3–5 years) and their parents. Data were collected using standardized assessments. Children’s EF was measured using five tasks: the Dimensional Change Card Sort, the Day-Night Task, the Spatial Working Memory Task, the Inhibition Task, and the Delay of Gratification Task. These scores were aggregated into a composite EF index. Parenting style was assessed using the Japanese version of the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire, categorizing parents into authoritative, permissive, or authoritarian styles. Parenting stress was measured using the Parenting Stress Index, focusing on two subscales: stress related to the child’s difficult behavior and stress related to parental distress. The results indicated significant correlations between parenting factors and children’s EF. Specifically, authoritative parenting was positively correlated with EF ($r = .27, p < .1$). Conversely, parenting stress related to parental distress was negatively correlated with EF ($r = -.26, p < .1$). The study also confirmed that children’s age and inhibitory control were positively correlated with overall EF ($r = .45, p < .01$ and $r = .46, p < .01$, respectively). These findings suggest that supportive, authoritative parenting practices are associated with better executive functioning, while higher levels of parental distress are associated with lower EF performance. The significance of this study lies in its contribution to understanding the environmental factors that support or hinder the development of executive functions in early childhood. By identifying authoritative parenting as a positive predictor and parental distress as a negative predictor, the findings highlight the importance of supporting parents to reduce stress and promote authoritative parenting practices. This has implications for early childhood interventions and policies aimed at fostering cognitive and social development in preschoolers. The study underscores the need for further research to explore the mechanisms through which parenting influences EF and to develop targeted support systems for families.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-19 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| extract | success | pdftotext | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| enrich | success | semantic_scholar | — | — | 4 | 2026-06-26 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-19 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-26 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.
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