Objective: 

The development of executive function (EF) in infants and toddlers has received increased interest by clinicians and researchers. Higher rates of deficits in EF have been reported in at-risk groups of infants such as those born extremely preterm. These deficits play an important role in the etiology of early neurodevelopmental problems and are predictive of subsequent nonoptimal educational outcomes. In this study, the Bayley-4 is used to follow the developmental course of EF and to determine whether EF is a unitary concept or can be parsed into discrete components over the first 42 months.

Method: 

All 81 cognitive items from the Bayley-4 normative sample of 1700 infants and toddlers were classified a priori into 6 EFs, and then, 5 age groups derived from Bayley-4 start points were factor analyzed to determine at what age EFs emerge and to address the controversy of whether the factor structure of the cognitive items for each of 5 age groups reflect a single factor or multiple factors.

Results: 

Bayley-4 items form 1 to 5 EF factors for each age group, accounting for 59% to 74% of the variance. There is a developmental progression in EF as well. The results indicate EF constructs can be identified early.

Conclusion: 

Executive function tasks in infants and toddlers are interrelated with task content either remaining the same or changing with advancing age (i.e., content that is homotypic or heterotypic, respectively). EFs measured by Bayley-4 items are useful clinically and become more complex with increasing age, corresponding to more advanced brain development and integration. The findings have the potential of providing additional information in the assessment of infants at risk such as those born preterm.

中文翻译：

---

婴幼儿执行功能评估：Bayley-4 的潜在作用

客观的： 

婴幼儿执行功能（EF）的发展越来越受到临床医生和研究人员的关注。据报道，高危婴儿群体（例如极早产婴儿）的 EF 缺陷率较高。这些缺陷在早期神经发育问题的病因学中发挥着重要作用，并预示着随后的非最佳教育结果。在本研究中，Bayley-4 用于跟踪 EF 的发展过程，并确定 EF 是一个单一概念还是可以在前 42 个月内解析为离散组件。

方法： 

来自 1700 名婴幼儿的 Bayley-4 标准样本中的所有 81 个认知项目被先验分为 6 个 EF，然后，对源自 Bayley-4 起点的 5 个年龄组进行因子分析，以确定 EF 在什么年龄出现并解决5个年龄段各认知项目的因素结构是反映单因素还是多因素的争论。

结果： 

Bayley-4 项目为每个年龄组形成 1 至 5 个 EF 因素，占方差的 59% 至 74%。EF 也有一个发展过程。结果表明 EF 构建体可以被早期识别。

结论： 

婴儿和幼儿的执行功能任务与任务内容相关，任务内容要么保持不变，要么随着年龄的增长而变化（即，分别是同型或异型的内容）。Bayley-4项目测量的EF在临床上很有用，并且随着年龄的增长而变得更加复杂，对应于更先进的大脑发育和整合。这些发现有可能为评估早产儿等高危婴儿提供更多信息。