Dr Holmboe’s research focuses on the development of executive functions during infancy and early childhood. Executive functions (EFs) are a set of cognitive abilities that allow us to guide our behaviour and make adaptive decisions in everyday life. They provide us with the ability to control our thoughts and actions, solve problems, and multi-task. Without EFs we would be largely controlled by immediate circumstances and habitual responses.
EFs are particularly challenged in young children, who struggle to maintain and manipulate information in working memory, inhibit strong response tendencies and shift between different perspectives and actions. They are also compromised in children with developmental disorders and those with academic and social difficulties. Between 3 and 5 years of age EF skills improve rapidly. However, relatively little is known about EFs before this age.
To address this issue, Dr Holmboe is running a large-scale longitudinal project (following the same children over time) aimed at investigating the earliest development of executive functioning across infancy and toddlerhood (200 children to be assessed at 10, 16, 24 and 30 months of age). The study’s task battery includes a combination of eye-tracking tasks, touchscreen games and object play, alongside neuroimaging and physiological measures.
There is scope for several research areas within this large-scale study, focussing on specific cognitive domains, such as inhibitory control or working memory, or on the neural substrate underlying these skills. There is also the potential to investigate associations between infant EF abilities and later outcomes. Please get in touch with Dr Holmboe if you are interested in doing a PhD on early EF development and would like to discuss potential research topics with the scope of the PhD.
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