Executive Control as a Core Mechanism of Learning: Implications In and Out of the Classroom

Executive Control as a Core Mechanism of Learning: Implications In and Out of the Classroom
 

Professor Grégoire Borst
Professor of Developmental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience of Education
Department of Psychology
University of Paris, France
 

October 29, 2024 (Tuesday)
16:45 – 18:00
Room 703-704, Meng Wah Complex, HKU
Chair: Professor Shelley Tong

Abstract:
Executive control is a set of processes supporting flexible, adaptive responses and complex goal-directed thought. It is related to a wide range of real-life outcomes from school achievement, to mental and physical health. Executive control and its development with age is under a number of influences ranging from environmental (e.g., socio-economic status), brain (e.g., cortical folding) and genetic (e.g., SNP). Because of the importance of executive control in academic outcome, a number of cognitive training programs have tested the possibility to improve Executive Control. We will present a set of studies from our laboratory that (a) provide evidence for the role of executive control in a number of academic learning, (b) the effect of different interventions targeting executive control at different age on academic achievement and the reduction of educational inequalities, and (c) the different factors that modulate the receptivity of executive interventions at different age.

About the speaker: 
Grégoire Borst is a full Professor of developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience of education at the University of Paris. He is the director of the Laboratory for the study of Child Development and Education (CNRS) at La Sorbonne and a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He obtained his PhD in 2005 in Paris Sud University and was then a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University from 2006 to 2010. His work focuses on the role of cognitive and emotional control on the cognitive and socio-emotional development of children and adolescents and on learning at school and in everyday life. He has published more than 70 scientific articles and 6 books including two for children to explain the basics of the brain and the mind. He works in close collaboration with the educational community and is a senior member of the International Bureau of Education (IBE) at UNESCO & a junior fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF).
 

~ All are welcome ~
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