Please cite this article in press as: Montoya, M. F., et al. Executive function in Chilean preschool children: Do short-term memory, working memory, and response inhibition contribute differentially to early academic skills? Early Childhood Research Quarterly (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.02.009 ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model EARCHI-1001; No. of Pages 14 Early Childhood Research Quarterly xxx (2018) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Early Childhood Research Quarterly Executive function in Chilean preschool children: Do short-term memory, working memory, and response inhibition contribute differentially to early academic skills?  Maria Fernanda Montoya a,* , Maria Ines Susperreguy a , Lelys Dinarte a , Frederick J. Morrison b , Ernesto San Martín a , Cristian A. Rojas-Barahona a , Carla E. Förster a a Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile b University of Michigan, United States a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 31 May 2017 Received in revised form 22 January 2018 Accepted 20 February 2018 Available online xxx Keywords: Executive functions Preschoolers Working memory Response inhibition Early numeracy Early literacy a b s t r a c t A large body of literature demonstrates that different cognitive components related to executive function (EF), such as short-term memory, working memory, and response inhibition, are linked to early aca- demic skills in preschool children. Nevertheless, few studies have focused on the unique contributions of these components to distinctive early numeracy and literacy skills in preschool children. Moreover, most studies have not considered the covariance between these early academic skills in preschool-aged children. The present study examined whether there are differential contributions of visual–spatial and verbal short-term memory, working memory, and response inhibition to specific early numeracy and literacy skills in preschool-aged children, taking into account the covariance among these outcomes. Several seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) analyses were conducted with 419 Chilean preschool- aged children (M = 53.9 months; SD = 4.22). The results show that both response inhibition and verbal short-term memory uniquely predicted all academic outcomes; working memory predicted all early aca- demic skills (with the exception of verbal counting); and visual–spatial short-term memory predicted all numeracy skills and receptive vocabulary. When comparing the marginal effects of the EFs on the out- comes, response inhibition more strongly predicted applied problems than did working memory. Both visual–spatial short-term memory and response inhibition had a greater effect on explaining applied problems, compared to early decoding skills. Implications for teachers and interventions are discussed. © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The main goal of this study is to examine whether there are differential contributions of verbal and visual–spatial short-term memory, working memory, and response inhibition to distinct components of early numeracy and literacy skills, taking into account the shared variance among these early academic skills. In  An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2017 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development (SRCD), Austin, Texas. Support for this research was provided by the Chilean National Fund of Scientific and Technology Development (Fondecyt) through Grants Nos. 11140899 and 1151262. The authors are grateful to the schools and children who participated in the study, as well as to the research assistants who contributed to data collection. * Corresponding author at: Faculty of Education, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Avenida Vicu ˜ na Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago, Chile. E-mail address: mfmontoya@uc.cl (M.F. Montoya). recent years, there has been an increasing focus on understanding young children’s executive function (EF). EF is an important devel- opmental and cognitive construct that is associated with other developmental outcomes and academic achievement in young children. Research shows that better executive function skills in preschool provide children with the building blocks for numeracy and early literacy skills, resulting in more advanced academic skills early in development (Blair & Razza, 2007; Bull, Espy, & Wiebe, 2008). This academic advantage is maintained not only throughout the first years of formal schooling (Bull et al., 2008), but also until adolescence (Watts, Duncan, Siegler, & Davis-Kean, 2014). Despite the value of these findings, most studies conducted with preschool-aged children consider only one aspect of executive function (Fei-Yin, Tamis-LeMonda, Yoshikawa, & Sze, 2015; Fuhs & McNeil, 2013) or use a composite score without distinguishing among the specific contributions of each (Blair, Ursache, Greenberg, Vernon-Feagans, & Family, 2015; Weiland, Barata, & Yoshikawa, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.02.009 0885-2006/© 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.