Cognitive control and developmental difficulties

Carrying out daily goals, such as getting ready for school, require a complex orchestration of attention, self-regulation, and task-specific actions facilitated by higher-order cognitive processes we term cognitive control. Cognitive control matures throughout childhood and adolescence, and impaired cognitive control is thought to be a transdiagnostic feature of groups with developmental difficulties, such as learning difficulties or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The work in this dissertation builds towards understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of variability in cognitive control in children with developmental difficulties. The first study tests for overlapping relationships between ADHD symptom burden and brain activity across three control demanding tasks. We found brain activity in motor and default mode network regions related to ADHD symptom burden, but these relations did not overlap across tasks. We also observed distinct patterns for inattention and hyperactivity symptoms, suggesting diverse impacts of ADHD burden on executive functions. For studies two and three we focus on groups of students with diverse learning difficulties. Study Two examined whether before reading intervention, there were distinct neurobiological profiles of struggling readers in 4th grade who would go on to gain in their reading skills post-remediation compared to those who do not. We found that before intervention, brain activity in reading, cognitive control and default mode network regions predicted who would see gains in their reading skill after intervention. While pre-intervention brain activity separated responders from non-responders, there were no behavioral or demographic variables that separated the groups. The third study focused on another group with learning challenges, Hispanic middle schoolers with limited English proficiency. Here we tested whether individual differences in functional connectivity of brain systems underlying reading, math and cognitive control were related to academic skills. Using a novel method of localizing functional brain regions at the individual level, we found that measures of functional connectivity of these three systems were related to multiple measures of reading skills in this group with unique learning circumstances. Together, these three studies interrogate the complex role of cognitive control in development and characterize brain and behavioral heterogeneity in groups with developmental difficulties.Psycholog