Predictors of early growth in academic achievement: the head-toes-knees-shoulders task

Children's behavioral self-regulation and executive function(EF; including attentional or cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control) are strong predictors of academic achievement. The present study examined the psychometric properties of a measure of behavioral self-regulation called the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders(TKS) by assessing construct validity, including relations to EF measures, and predictive validity to academic achievement growth between pre kinder garten and kindergarten. In the fall and spring of pre kindergarten and kindergarten, 208 children(51% enrolled in Head Start) were assessed on the HTKS, measures of cognitive flexibility, working memory(WM), andinhibitorycontrol, and measures of emergentliteracy, mathematics, andvocabulary. Forconstructvalidity, the HTKS was significantly related to cognitive flexibility, working memory, andinhibitory controlin prekindergarten and kindergarten. For predictive validity in prekindergarten, arandom effects model indicated hatthe HTKS significantly predicted growth inmathematics, whereas acognitive flexibility task significantly predicted growth in mathematics and vocabulary. Inkindergarten, the HTKS was the only measure to significantly predict growth in all academic outcomes. Analternative conserv ative analytical approach, a fixed effects analysis( FEA) model, also indicated that growth in both the HTKS and measures of significantly predicted growth in mathematics over four time points between pre kindergarten and kindergarten. Results demonstrate that the HTKS involves cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control, and issubstantively implicatedi nearly achievement, with the strong estrelations found for growth in achievement during kindergarten and associations with emergent mathematics.