Growing evidence indicates that executive function (EF) plays a vital role in enhancing children’s learning, and EFs are responsive to intervention. A recent study by Lau and colleagues investigated the effects of the Parent-Child Brain Camp (The Camp), a video-based intervention program designed to enhance EF skills in children aged 5 to 6. The Camp incorporates play-based and age-appropriate interactive activities to three targeted core EF components: working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, the program was conducted online in the home environment in spring 2022. It consisted of 12 video Zoom sessions, each lasting about 20 minutes, with parental involvement to support children’s motivation and engagement.
Participants were Chinese middle-class families from Hong Kong, recruited from 6 kindergartens and social media. Eligible families were randomly assigned to either the treatment group or control group. The treatment group received 3 video interventions weekly for 4 weeks. The analytic sample comprised 79 children in the treatment group and 74 in the control group, with a mean age of 68.9 months. Pre-test and post-test scores were collected via Zoom for four EF assessment tasks. Results revealed that the treatment group showed significantly higher improvement in composite EF scores. Specifically, they had significantly higher increment on the Mr. Cucumber task compared to control group.
The study demonstrated a brief period of video-based intervention program could enhance young children’s EFs. While parents’ engagement may be an important factor in these improvement, its specific effect could not be isolated. Moreover, the long-term effects require further investigation, as does the reliability and validity of online EF assessments.
Source (Open Access): Lau, E. Y. H., Wu, X., Siu, C. T. S., Williams, K. E., & Bautista, A. (2025). Examining the effectiveness of a video-based parent–child program on executive functions for children 5 to 6 years old: A randomized controlled trial. Child Development, 96(2), 781–796. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14208