Abstract:
Executive function involves important aspects of the early learning and development of children that is correlated with social and academic achievement.The objectives
of this research were 1) to develop integrated theories of the social-cognitive motivation program for enhancing executive function in early childhood, 2) to develop an executive function task for early childhood for investigating the brain waves, and 3) to examine the programs effects in terms of behavioral and electroencephalogram aspects. Seventy-five children aged between 5-6 years old participated, with simple random assignment employed to place them in experimental, active control, and control groups of equal size. The principal research instrument was the executive function task for early childhood with the Emotiv EPOC+ Neuroheadset used to measure signals. One-way RM-MANOVA and dependent t-tests were used to analyze the collected data. The research findings showed that 1) the social-cognitive-motivation program consisted of eight activities able to adequately increase executive function in early childhood; 2) the developed task had a content validity of S-CVI/Ave = 0.95, and concurrent validity when compared with the standard executive function task (PBCST-64), as well as a reliability (KR-20) of 0.72.; and 3) executive function scores of the experimental group were significantly higher than
their pre-training scores and also higher than scores in the active control and control groups; 3) executive function scores of the experimental group were retained at a two-weeks follow up; and 4) EEG analysis of the post-training results indicated that the experimental group exhibited an absolute power for theta, alpha, and beta waves which were significantly lower than pre-training and the control groups. In conclusion, the developed program was found to effectively result in increased executive function in early childhood.