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Cortisol Reactivity Is Positively Related to Executive Function in Preschool Children Attending Head Start
Author(s) -
Blair Clancy,
Granger Douglas,
Peters Razza Rachel
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2005.00863.x
Subject(s) - psychology , reactivity (psychology) , developmental psychology , cognition , head start , executive functions , association (psychology) , clinical psychology , medicine , psychiatry , alternative medicine , pathology , psychotherapist
This study examined relations among cortisol reactivity and measures of cognitive function and social behavior in 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children ( N =169) attending Head Start. Saliva samples for the assay of cortisol were collected at the beginning, middle, and end of an approximately 45‐min testing session. Moderate increase in cortisol followed by down‐regulation of this increase was positively associated with measures of executive function, self‐regulation, and letter knowledge but not with measures of receptive vocabulary, emotion knowledge, or false belief understanding. Regression analysis indicates that executive function accounted for the association between cortisol reactivity and self‐regulation and letter knowledge.