Examining an Executive Function Battery for Use with Preschool Children with Disabilities.
A new tablet EF game works the same for preschoolers with and without disabilities, so you can add it to early assessments without fear of bias.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers built a new computer game to test executive function in preschoolers. They gave it to kids with disabilities and kids who were developing on track. Both groups played the same tasks on a tablet. The team watched if the kids could finish the games and if the scores made sense.
They wanted to know if the tool worked the same for children with autism, Down syndrome, or other delays. No one was pulled out for extra teaching. The kids just played the games like any other app.
What they found
Kids with disabilities finished the games just as often as their peers. Their scores were just as steady. There was no big gap in how well the tool ran for either group.
In short, the new battery did not punish children for having a disability. It gave clean data from both sides.
How this fits with other research
Pellicano (2013) showed that early EF scores predict later social and repetitive behavior in autism. That study told us EF matters in preschool. Taylor et al. (2017) now give us a kid-friendly way to measure it.
Heald et al. (2020) used parent checklists in older kids and linked EF to real-life communication. The new computer battery adds a direct, play-based option for the younger crowd. It extends the toolkit downward in age.
Petrolo et al. (2025) reviewed the field and say early EF problems lead to poorer social skills. Their paper pulls in the 2017 battery, showing the tool is already part of the evidence base practitioners trust.
Why it matters
You now have a tablet game that preschoolers with disabilities can play without extra help. Use it during intake to spot EF strengths and gaps early. Clean data means you can write goals that fit the child, not the test limits.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Performance-based assessments of EF for use with young children who have or are at risk for disabilities are lacking. The current study investigates the use of a computerized battery for children with subclinical behaviors (N = 846) across a variety of developmental disabilities and evaluates practical information about feasibility of task administration. Results reveal that children with disabilities performed similarly to their typically developing peers across a variety of metrics for evaluating the battery, ranging from percent correct scores to administrator quality ratings. Thus, the battery may be considered an easy-to-administer, performance-based assessment tool in which children with disabilities do not perform systemically worse than typically developing peers.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2017 · doi:10.1007/s10803-017-3177-2