Schedule

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A distinguished member of the research community will set the tone with a brief overview of the conference's themes, objectives, and a warm welcome to all participants.

Abstract: Educational neuroscience and developmental science have long emphasized the role of executive function, particularly working memory, in shaping children’s academic achievement, in mathematics outcomes. Much of this work has treated cognitive performance as a relatively stable reflection of children’s internal capacities. In this talk, I argue for a broader perspective: cognitive performance emerges through interactions between children, tasks, social relationships, and educational environments. Drawing on research examining working memory and mathematics learning, I first review evidence demonstrating that working memory is strongly associated with children’s mathematical development, in part through its relation to fluency, automaticity, and cognitive load reduction. I then show how educational environments and external supports, including manipulatives, drawing, and other forms of cognitive offloading, can redistribute cognitive demands and shape children’s performance. Building from this work, I discuss emerging research demonstrating that executive function performance also varies across contexts, including differences associated with the testing environment and experimenter identity. Together, these findings suggest that variability in cognitive performance is not merely measurement error, but may instead reflect meaningful interactions between children and contexts. I conclude by considering implications for classroom design assessment practices, and educational opportunity, arguing that the field can move toward understanding how learning environments shape the expression and support of children’s thinking.