This one year predoctoral fellowship application is designed to enhance the candidate's skills in cognitive neuroscience and to support her dissertation research. The purpose of the research is to examine the contributions of neuropsychological functioning and social cognitive functioning to social competence in middle childhood. The aspect of neuropsychological functioning to be examined is executive functioning, or the processes involved in the execution of complex problem solving in the service of future goal attainment. The aspect of social cognitive functioning to be examined is social information processing, or the steps involved in interpreting and responding to social information. Variations in executive functioning and social information processing independently predict children's social competence, but the relations between these two aspects of cognition have not been examined. The proposed study will investigate the degree to which children?s executive functioning predicts social competence. Specifically the study will examine a mediational model where executive functioning has both direct effects on social competence and indirect effects that are mediated through key steps in social information processing. The study participants will be 100 5th and 6th graders and their teachers. Measures to assess executive functioning and social information processing will be administered to children. Measures to assess children's social competence will be administered to teachers.
