The relationship between executive functions and intelligence on 11- to 12-yearold children

This study investigated the structure of the executive functions and their roles in intelligence on sixty-one children aged 11- to 12-year-old. Six executive function tasks and one intelligence test were carried out in the study. The confirmatory factor analysis has shown that the executive functions could be separated into three factors: updating, inhibition and shifting. These three factors were moderately correlated with each other, but were clearly separated. The present results were in line with previous findings from adults. There were significant correlations between measures of updating, inhibition and shifting, and intelligence. However, only the correlation between updating and intelligence remained significant when the correlations among executive functions were controlled. The study gave some theoretical support to the effect of executive functions training on intelligence and self-regulated learning.