Tashauna L. Blankenship

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Massachusetts Boston

Flexibly using memories to guide planning behavior is critical for typical functioning, yet little is known of how this ability emerges and the mechanisms supporting performance. The current study examined children’s ability to generalize during memory-guided planning in a sample of 76 preschoolers (24 2-year-olds, M = 32.21 months, SD = 2.21, 12 g...

The ability to use knowledge to guide the completion of goals is a critical cognitive skill, but 3-year-olds struggle to complete goals that require multiple steps. This study asked whether 3-year-olds could benefit from "plan chunking" to complete multistep goals. Thirty-two U.S. children (range = 35.75-46.59 months; 18 girls; 9 white, 3 mixed rac...

The ability to use knowledge to guide the completion of goals is a critical cognitive skill, but 3-year-olds struggle to complete goals that require multiple steps. The current study asked whether 3-year-olds could benefit from “plan chunking” to complete multi-step goals. Thirty-two US children (range = 35.75-46.59 months; 18 girls; 9 white, 3 mix...

Memory-guided planning involves retrieving relevant memories and applying that information in service of a goal. Previous studies have shown substantial development in this ability from 3 to 4 years of age. We investigated the emergence of memory-guided planning by asking whether 2-year-olds could draw on episodic memories of past experiences to ge...

Item recognition and temporal order memory follow different developmental trajectories during middle childhood, with item recognition performance stabilizing and temporal order memory performance continuing to improve. We investigated the potential unique role of individual executive functions on item recognition and temporal order memory during th...

Memory-guided planning involves retrieving relevant memories and applying that information in service of a goal. Previous studies have shown substantial development in this ability between the ages of 3 and 4 years. We investigated the emergence of memory-guided planning by asking whether 2-year-olds could draw on episodic memories of past experien...

Multifocal attention is the ability to simultaneously attend to multiple objects, and is critical for typical functioning. Although adults are able to use multifocal attention, little is known about the development of this ability. In two experiments, we investigated multifocal attention in 6-8-year-old children and adults using a child-friendly, c...

This study provides the first analyses connecting individual differences in infant attention to reading achievement through the development of executive functioning (EF) in infancy and early childhood. Five‐month‐old infants observed a video, and peak look duration and shift rate were video coded and assessed. At 10 months, as well as 3, 4, and 6 y...

Middle childhood is a transitional period for episodic memory (EM) performance, as a result of improvements in strategies that are used to encode and retrieve memories. EM is also a skill continually assessed for testing in the school setting. The purpose of this study was to examine EM performance during middle childhood and its relation to indivi...

Previous studies provide conflicting results regarding the relation between future thinking and executive functioning during early childhood. Furthermore, little is known of the neural mechanisms involved in future thinking during early childhood. We examined the moderating role of frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) activity on the relation between...

Research findings: We examined the nature of association between toddler negative affectivity (NA) and later academic achievement by testing early childhood executive function (EF) as a mediator that links children's temperament and their performance on standardized math and reading assessments. One hundred eighty-four children (93 boys, 91 girls)...

Associations between working memory and academic achievement (math and reading) are well documented. Surprisingly, little is known of the contributions of episodic memory, segmented into temporal memory (recollection proxy) and item recognition (familiarity proxy), to academic achievement. This is the first study to observe these associations in ty...

The contributions of hemispheric-specific electrophysiology (electroencephalogram or EEG) and independent executive functions (inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility) to episodic memory performance were examined using abstract paintings. Right hemisphere frontotemporal functional connectivity during encoding and retrieval, measur...

Contributions of differential behavioral (executive functions) and electrophysiological (frontal-temporal electroencephalogram or EEG coherence) measures to episodic memory performance were examined during middle childhood. Cognitive flexibility and right frontotemporal functional connectivity during encoding (F4/T8), as well as left frontotemporal...