Peer-reviewed article
Bidirectional association between irritability and executive function in youth from late childhood to early adolescence: Between- and within-person effects.
Ma Y, Zhang D, Xing X ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This peer-reviewed study examines the relationship between irritability and executive function (inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility) in children aged 9-11 years followed over nine months. Using longitudinal data from 491 participants, the researchers found that inhibitory control predicted later irritability, while irritability predicted working memory difficulties. The study suggests that improving executive function skills may reduce irritability in youth.
Key points
- Inhibitory control consistently predicted later irritability across all measurement waves
- A bidirectional relationship emerged between inhibitory control and irritability by early adolescence
- Irritability consistently predicted later working memory difficulties
- Cognitive flexibility predicted irritability but showed no reverse effect
- Sex differences were minimal, appearing only for cognitive flexibility effects
Limitations
The study does not report the country or cultural context where the research was conducted, limiting generalizability. The document focuses on psychological constructs rather than concrete child well-being outcomes like health, education access, or safety, and does not evaluate a specific intervention program.
Abstract
Irritability and executive function, which continue to develop from late childhood to early adolescence, predict important functional impairments. Although correlated, longitudinal research has often focused only on how executive function affects irritability, overlooking the reverse pathway. This study proposes that irritability may also contribute to later executive function difficulties and investigates their bidirectional associations across three components, including inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, as well as whether these associations vary by sex. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models were applied to data drawn from four waves of a longitudinal study involving 491 participants (Mage = 9.84 years, SD = 0.71; 48.1% boys), collected in June 2021, December 2021, June 2022, and March 2023. Results showed that inhibitory control consistently predicted later irritability across waves, with a reciprocal effect emerging in early adolescence. For working memory, a bidirectional relationship appeared earlier, with irritability consistently predicting later working memory. For cognitive flexibility, only a unidirectional effect was found, where earlier cognitive flexibility predicted later irritability, with no reverse effect. Sex moderated only the effect of cognitive flexibility at T3 on irritability at T4. These within-person findings regarding irritability-executive function dynamics suggest that improving inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility may reduce irritability, while lowering irritability could benefit working memory, with no need for sex-differentiated approaches.