Carlson 2013

Executive Function
Oxford Handbooks Online

Executive Function
Stephanie M. Carlson, Philip David Zelazo, and Susan Faja
The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology, Vol. 1: Body and Mind
Edited by Philip David Zelazo
Print Publication Date: Mar 2013 Subject: Psychology, Developmental Psychology

Online Publication Date: Dec 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199958450.013.0025
Abstract and Keywords
Executive function (EF) refers to the set of neurocognitive skills involved in goal-directed
problem solving, including working memory, inhibitory control, and set shifting/flexibility.
EF depends importantly upon neural networks involving prefrontal cortex, and continues
to improve into early adulthood, although major advances in EF occur during the
preschool period. Individual differences in EF are increasingly recognized as a key
predictor of long-term cognitive and social developmental outcomes. Research suggests
that EF is influenced by both distal and proximal factors in development (e.g.,
socioeconomic status, culture, language, caregiving, gene–environment interactions, and
sleep). Importantly, EF can be trained, with corresponding changes to brain structure and
function. In this chapter, we review the structure of EF, including “hot EF” (EF in
motivationally significant contexts), age-related changes, atypical development,
measurement issues, theories of underlying mechanisms, outcomes associated with EF,
influences on EF development, and the recent emergence of training studies.
Keywords: executive function, cognitive control, prefrontal cortex, working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive
flexibility, interventions
Key Points
1. EF emerges early, develops rapidly during the preschool years, and continues to
develop into the third decade of life.
2. EF can be thought of as a unitary construct that becomes increasingly
differentiated with development and experience.
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Executive Function
3. EF, and prefrontal cortical function, is influenced by bottom-up processes such as

stress, motivation, and arousal.
4. The neural systems supporting EF vary as a function of motivational significance—
with the top-down influences that operate in motivationally and emotionally
significant situations considered “hot EF,” and the top-down influences that operate
in more affectively neutral contexts considered “cool EF.”
5. Age-related changes in EF from infancy through middle childhood are
characterized by increases in working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive
flexibility that allow for greater cognitive control along with increasing automaticity
and efficiency.
6. Atypical developmental populations such as those with attention-deficit/
hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder often show comorbid deficits or
delays in EF.
7. Measurement of EF in early childhood has improved and new psychometric
approaches are promising.
8. There are relatively stable individual differences in EF that persist at least from
childhood into middle age, and also predict important development outcomes.
(p. 707) 9. Socioeconomic status, gender, language, symbolism, culture, parenting,
genes, sleep, and motor development have all been shown to have an impact on EF
in childhood.
10. EF can be trained, with corresponding changes to brain structure and function.
Introduction
Executive function (EF) refers to an interrelated set of neurocognitive skills that are
critical for adaptive function. EF is most closely associated with neural networks
involving prefrontal cortex (PFC) and is exhibited when individuals engage in conscious,
goal-directed thought and action under novel or unfamiliar circumstances, where
previously established routines for responding are nonexistent or, as is often the case,
directly interfere with the desired response. EF in childhood has received increasing
attention, as reflected by a threefold increase in the number of publications on this topic
in the past decade (Fig. 25.1). One reason for this explosion of interest is that executive
dysfunction has been implicated in a number of childhood disorders (e.g., attention-
deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], autism, and conduct disorder; see Casey,
Tottenham, & Fosella, 2002) and is associated with a variety of negative adjustment
outcomes (e.g., Blair & Razza, 2007; Hughes & Ensor, 2011; Ozonoff & Jensen, 1999;
Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990). For example, poor EF in childhood predicts criminal
behavior, alcohol and drug abuse, lower socioeconomic status (SES), and other problems
in adulthood (Moffitt, Arseneault, Belsky, Dickson, Hancox, et al., 2011).
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Components of Executive Function

Interest in EF has a long history in neuropsychology (Stuss & Benson, 1986), where
lesions to PFC have been observed to result in problems maintaining attention (Rylander,
1939), withholding responses (Drewe, 1975), searching strategically (Karpov, Luria, &
Yarbuss, 1968), and following rules (Milner, 1964), among other important skills. In an
influential neuropsychological characterization of EF, Luria (1966, 1969, 1973) suggested
a hierarchical framework that highlighted the self-regulatory role of language in top-
down control. Subsequent empirical work has since supported Luria’s hierarchical
conceptualization of frontal function, and expanded it to include a characterization of
hierarchical structure within PFC. According to several complementary accounts, higher
levels in the hierarchy operate on the products of lower levels, permitting top-down
control via more abstract representations or more complex rules (Badre & D’Esposito,
2007; Botvinick, 2008; Bunge & Zelazo, 2006; Christoff & Gabrieli, 2000; Goldberg &
Bilder, 1987; Koechlin et al., 1999).
Despite the longstanding

interest in EF, however,
and the considerable
empirical, clinical, and
theoretical attention it has
received, consensus about
how best to define EF has
remained elusive until
Click to view larger
recently. Historically, the
Figure 25.1 . Number of publications regarding
executive function in children across five decades.
various ways (p. 708) of
(Sources: PsycInfo, PsychLit, and Google Scholar.) parsing EF led to debate
about whether EF is a
unitary construct or consists of interrelated, but distinct, components—referred to as the
“unity versus diversity” issue (e.g., Barkley, Edwards, Laneri, Fletcher, & Metevia, 2001;
Brocki & Bohlin, 2004; Isquith, Gioia, & Espy, 2004; Miyake et al., 2000). In a seminal
study with young adults, Miyake and colleagues (2000) used confirmatory factor analysis
to examine performance on a number of relatively specific EF tests that purportedly tap
conceptually distinct components of EF and compared them to performance on complex
problem-solving measures thought to require multiple EFs (e.g., Wisconsin Card Sorting
Test, Tower of Hanoi). Miyake and colleagues extracted three correlated latent variables
from the specific EF tests, and characterized these variables as inhibitory control,
working memory (WM), and shifting. It was found that these variables contributed
differentially to performance on the complex EF tasks, a result that suggests both unity
and diversity.
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In developmental studies of this kind, the tripartite structure of EF identified by Miyake

and colleagues (2000) appears to be in place by middle childhood (Lehto, Juujärvi,
Kooistra, & Pulkkinen, 2003; McAuley & White, 2011; Visu-Petra, Benga, & Miclea, 2007).
Huizinga, Dolan, and van der Molen (2006) employed confirmatory factor analysis with 7-,
11-, 15-, and 21-year-olds and found partial support for the Miyake model, as only the
WM and shifting measures (and not the inhibition measures) loaded onto latent variables.
Miyake’s group subsequently also found evidence for this more parsimonious two-factor
model consisting of WM and shifting, with the inhibition measures being distributed
across them (Miyake & Friedman, 2012).
In contrast to research with older children and adults, most research of this kind with
preschoolers finds a one-factor solution to be most parsimonious (Wiebe, Espy, &
Charack, 2008; Wiebe, Sheffield, Nelson et al., 2011; but see Hughes, 1998a; Miller,
Geisbrecht, Müller, McInerney, & Kerns, 2012). Wiebe and colleagues (2008) used a
battery of preschool EF measures, including three tasks considered a priori to demand
working memory and seven tasks that putatively require inhibitory control. Seven models
were tested, and for reasons of goodness of fit and parsimony, the unitary EF model was
preferred. Together, the evidence for a unitary EF factor in preschool and at least two
distinct components (WM and shifting) in later childhood appears to be consistent with a
general process of increasing functional specialization of neural systems that are initially
relatively undifferentiated but that become more specialized (or modularized) as part of a
developmental process of adaptation (e.g., Johnson & Munakata, 2005; see also Durston
et al., 2006). Evidence consistent with the increasing differentiation of EF from other
cognitive functions has also been found, and will be discussed later (Zelazo et al., in
press).
Although the factors emerging from a factor analysis are constrained by the initial choice
of tasks, as well as any shared method variance among tasks loading on a factor, this
approach represents a valuable starting point in generating hypotheses about EF that can
be tested experimentally. In this chapter, we adopt a “unity and diversity” approach, and
consider EF both as a class of cognitive processes (WM, inhibition, shifting) and as an
overarching coordination of these processes in achieving a certain goal (i.e., a functional
characterization of EF), although of course no class can be a member of itself (“Russell’s
paradox;” Whitehead & Russell, 1927).
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Development of Prefrontal Cortex in Childhood

Neuroanatomical connections within PFC, and reciprocal connections linking PFC directly
or indirectly to most other cortical and subcortical structures, are consistent with a
hierarchical model of EF that includes multiple regulatory processes but is also highly
integrated (e.g., Luria, 1966; Stuss & Benson, 1984). Within PFC, three broad divisions
may be recognized, based on cytoarchitecture, connectivity, and function: lateral PFC,
orbitofrontal PFC, and medial frontal cortex (Fig. 25.2). Within lateral PFC are
ventrolateral, dorsolateral, and rostrolateral regions, and the inferior frontal junction (VL-
PFC, DL-PFC, RL-PFC, and IFJ, respectively). Lateral PFC is thought to be involved in
more purely cognitive functions, including monitoring visual input about spatial locations
and objects, mediation of attention, and WM (Bachevalier & Loveland, 2006; Casey et al.,
1995; Nelson & Luciana, 2001; Powell & Voeller, 2004).
Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)

lies on the ventral surface
of the frontal lobe and
contains medial, ventral,
and lateral regions. Brain
regions involved in
emotion processing, such
as the amygdala and
temporopolar area,
connect with OFC. OFC
Figure 25.2 . Prefrontal cortex and related also receives processed
structures. (Reprinted with permission from Powell & sensory information from
Voeller, 2004.)
visual, somatosensory,
visceral, olfactory, and
gustatory areas and associative memory information from the thalamic nuclei. OFC is
involved with motivation and reward, particularly in anticipation of (p. 709) reward and
adjustment of action when the reward value changes (e.g., Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, &
Anderson, 1994; Holland & Gallagher, 2004), but less so in the identification of reward.
Finally, a key region within the medial frontal cortex is the anterior cingulate cortex
(ACC). The ACC is part of a circuit that connects OFC and parts of the limbic system
involved in learning and effortful activities (Powell & Voeller, 2004). Thus, PFC is
connected to limbic areas of the brain in two ways, via the OFC and via the anterior
cingulate (Tucker, Luu, & Pribram, 1995). These ventromedial pathways are thought to
have relatively greater involvement than DL-PFC in social and emotional aspects of
cognition as well as behavioral regulation.
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The growth of PFC beyond infancy has been documented using a variety of measures, and
a number of consistent patterns have been noted. First, myelination within PFC (and
connecting PFC to other regions) increases monotonically over the course of childhood
and into adulthood, and likely contributes to increased efficiency, processing speed, and
integration of information (Giedd et al., 1996; Huttenlocher & Dabholkar, 1997;
Klingberg, Vaidya, Gabrieli, Moseley, & Hedehus, 1999; Yakovlev & Lecours, 1967).
Second, in contrast to these age-related increases in white matter, gray matter (measured
as gray matter volume, synaptic density, or cortical thickness) in PFC shows a pattern of
early increases followed by gradual decreases that start in late childhood and continue
into adulthood (e.g., Gogtay et al., 2004; Huttenlocher, 1990; O’Donnell et al., 2005; Fig.
25.3). This inverted-U–shaped pattern of growth may reflect the overproduction and
subsequent pruning of synapses—a process that would allow the brain to be shaped by
experience (e.g., Casey, Giedd, & Thomas, 2000; Durston et al., 2001). In addition to these
structural changes, several researchers have noted a shift from more diffuse to more
focal activation of PFC during performance on measures of EF—more activation in areas
related to EF in adults, and less activation in areas unrelated to EF (e.g., Bunge, Dudovic,
Thomason, Vaidya, & Gabrieli, 2002; Durston et al., 2006; Luna et al., 2001). For example,
Durston and colleagues (2006) used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to
examine neural activation in children and adults as they performed a Go/No-Go task, and
observed an age-related decrease in activation in brain regions unimportant for task
performance. The only increase occurred in an area of VL-PFC, and this increase was
associated with improved task performance. This focalization as a function of age and EF
suggests that the functional development of PFC may be associated with more specialized
and efficient processing.
Hot (Socioaffective) Executive Function
Click to view larger

Figure 25.3 . Right lateral and top views of the
human brain, showing age-related declines in gray
matter volume. (Reprinted with permission from
Gogtay, N., Giedd, J. N., Lusk, L., Hayashi, K. M.,
Greenstein, D., Vaituzis, A. C., et al. (2004). Dynamic
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Executive Function
mapping of human cortical development during Traditionally, EF has been

childhood through early adulthood. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences USA, 101, 8174– examined using abstract,
8179.) decontextualized tasks
that lack a significant
affective or motivational component. More (p. 710) recent characterizations have
suggested that EF varies as a function of motivational significance—with the top-down
influences that operate in motivationally and emotionally significant situations described
as “hot EF” and the top-down influences that operate in more affectively neutral contexts
described as “cool EF” (Zelazo & Müller, 2002). This distinction is supported by
neuropsychological research with adult patients that suggests that (a) hot and cool EF
are fully dissociable—impairments in hot EF can occur in the absence of impairments of
cool EF, and vice versa (e.g., Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Anderson, 1998)—and that (b)
whereas cool EF is more associated with lateral prefrontal cortex, hot EF depends more
heavily on OFC and paralimbic structures. Considering the development of EF in more
affectively relevant, hot situations extends the construct of EF to everyday decision
making, which is rarely conducted in the absence of motivational and emotional
influences. In most cases, however, the distinct pathways underlying hot and cool EF
work in combination as part of a single prefrontal system (Zelazo & Müller, 2002). The
distinction between hot and cool EF is similar in some respects to the “hot/cool”
distinction made by Metcalfe and Mischel (1999), although it is crucially different: in the
Metcalfe and Mischel (1999) framework, hot processes are not EF processes at all, but
rather bottom-up emotional influences on behavior (e.g., associated with the amygdala).
Taking a developmental approach, Zelazo and Cunningham (2007) proposed a framework

that integrates hot and cool aspects of EF. According to this model, information is
processed hierarchically, with relatively quick, evaluative reactions followed by the
generation of approach/avoidance-oriented responses (see Fig. 25.4). These fairly simple
responses may suffice; if not, information is reprocessed via neural circuits involving
hierarchically arranged regions of PFC, with affective elements feeding into more
abstract cognitive representations. OFC, for example, conditions emotional reactions by
simple stimulus–reward representation, and is involved in learning to reverse these
associations. Information inconsistent with simple stimulus–reward rules activates the
ACC, which in turn triggers subsequent processing by lateral prefrontal cortex.
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Executive Function
Figure 25.4 . Top-down and bottom-up influences on Over the course of

self-regulation interact dynamically through the development, the capacity
iterative reprocessing of information in hierarchically
arranged regions of prefrontal cortex. (Based on for more complex
Cunningham & Zelazo, 2007.) representations comes
online, leading to greater
sophistication in problem-solving and decision-making behavior (Cunningham & Zelazo,
2007). On the other hand, beyond the simple reward processing (and reversal learning)
that takes place early in development, optimal performance on relatively complex hot EF
tasks appears to lag behind cool EF in development, possibly due to the additional
demands of managing emotional arousal (Qu & Zelazo, 2007). For example, Prencipe,
Kesek, Cohen, and Zelazo (2011) tested children ages 8 to 14 and reported that adultlike
levels of performance (p. 711) were reached on a battery of hot EF measures at an older
age than was the case for a battery of cool EF measures. There is also reason to believe
that individual differences in hot EF may be more prevalent and persistent across the
lifespan than cool EF, to the extent that hot EF performance is often more a matter of
motivation (and values) than it is of the capacity for cognitive control (Carlson & Zelazo,
2011).
A variety of hot EF tasks are suitable for use with preschoolers, including the Less is
More Task (Carlson, Davis, & Leach, 2005), the Children’s Gambling Task (Kerr & Zelazo,
2004), the Delay of Gratification Task (Mischel & Ebbesen, 1970), and the Delay Choice
Paradigm (Beck, Schaefer, Pang, & Carlson, 2011; Prencipe & Zelazo, 2005; Thompson,
Baressi, & Moore, 1997). These measures generally show age-related declines in
impulsive responding, as well as individual differences that are correlated with
performance on relatively cool EF measures and, at least in the case of Delay of
Gratification, remain fairly stable over time (for a summary see Mischel, Ayduk, Berman,
Casey, Gotlib, et al., 2010).
Age-Related Changes in Executive Function

As any parent or kindergarten teacher will attest, young children are often impulsive,
stimulus-bound, and inattentive and have difficulty holding important information in
mind; in short, their behavior is often the opposite of the purposeful, planned, goal-
directed behavior typically associated with adult EF. In keeping with what was known
about PFC development, it was sometimes assumed that children lacked EF until late in
development (e.g., Golden, 1981). However, development of EF has been investigated in
progressively younger children in recent years as a result of improvements in
measurement, an interest in better understanding disorders such as autism and ADHD in
which EF difficulties are often observed beginning in early childhood, and a growing
interest in examining the close relation between EF and social cognition (e.g., theory of
mind [ToM]; see below).
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Until recently, the absence

of common measures of EF
that are suitable for
participants across a wide
range of ages has made it
difficult to characterize the
lifespan development of EF
—for example, to
determine whether the
development of EF occurs
more rapidly during the
Figure 25.5 . Performance on the NIH Toolbox DCCS
preschool years or during
Test across age groups. Pediatric data from a cross-
sectional validation study of 476 individuals ages 3 to the transition to
85 years. Error bars are +/- 2 standard errors. adolescence. This problem
(Reproduced with permission from Zelazo, P. D.,
Anderson, J. E., Richler, J., Wallner-Allen, K., has recently been
Beaumont, J. L., & Weintraub, S. [in press]. NIH addressed by the creation
Toolbox Cognition Battery (CB): Measuring executive
of the Cognition Battery of
function and attention. Monographs of the Society
for Research in Child Development.) the NIH Toolbox for the
Assessment of
Neurological and Behavioral Function, which includes computer-administered measures
of EF (p. 712) that are reliable, validated, brief (less than 5 minutes each), suitable for
participants aged 3 to 85 years, available in Spanish and English, and relatively immune
to practice effects. As shown in Figure 25.5, performance on the Toolbox measures of EF,
developmentally appropriate computerized versions of the Eriksen flanker task (Rueda,
Fan, Halparin, Gruber, Lercari, McCandliss, & Posner, 2004) and the Dimensional Change
Card Sort task (Zelazo, 2006), improved dramatically during the preschool period but
continued to develop during adolescence (Zelazo, Anderson, Richler, Wallner-Allen,
Beaumont, & Weintraub, in press). Performance on these measures peaks around age 25
years and then declines steadily (for further overviews, see Best & Miller, 2010; Carlson,
2005; Garon, Bryson, & Smith, 2008).
Infancy and toddlerhood. Search for hidden objects is perhaps the earliest emerging
behavior that unambiguously requires EF: infants must keep the location of a desired
object in mind and use this information to govern their behavior. By 7 to 8 months, infants
can retrieve an attractive object when it is hidden in one of two locations and then briefly
obscured for 2 to 3 seconds before infants are allowed to reach for it (Diamond, 1985). By
around 9 to 12 months, they are able to remember the location for longer delays, but they
may perseverate by returning to a previous location after watching the object being
hidden at a new location (the A-not-B error; Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999; Piaget, 1954).
Perseverative behavior of this nature is common in infants and toddlers (Chelune & Baer,
1986; Levin et al., 1991; Welsh et al., 1991) and can be seen in older children as well
(Sophian & Wellman, 1983; Spencer, Smith, & Thelen, 2001; Zelazo, Reznick, &
Spinazolla, 1998). However, the fact that longer delays are required to elicit the A-not-B
error with age suggests that infants have a gradually increasing capacity to shift to a new
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response set, and that this increasing capacity may be tied to working memory (Diamond,
1985; Diamond & Doar, 1989). When adapting to changing circumstances, toddlers also
begin to make use of feedback to guide their own behavior (Overman, Bachevalier,
Schuhmann, & Ryan, 1996) and to evaluate when a goal has been met. For example,
when 18- and 24-month-olds were asked to evaluate the accuracy of towers built by an
adult, they distinguished between correctly and incorrectly built versions, and by 28
months, toddlers correctly assessed their own performance as well (Bullock &
Lütkenhaus, 1988). As the authors noted, however, many toddlers persisted with the
action even after the task had been completed, which is reminiscent of Luria’s (1961)
observation of young children pressing a rubber bulb repeatedly even after the desired
effect (illumination of a light) had occurred.
Preschool period. From age 2 to 5 years of age, children make substantial gains in their
ability to represent problems, plan solutions, hold a plan in mind, execute problem-
solving actions, evaluate the outcomes, and correct errors (Zelazo et al., 1997). During
this period, children also become increasingly accurate and efficient at inhibiting
prepotent behaviors or response tendencies (Carlson & Moses, 2001; Diamond & Taylor,
1996; Espy, 1997). Evidence of improvement in problem representation and flexibility can
be seen, for example, in the ability to use symbolic representations of a problem space in
order to guide behavior in a novel situation (Carlson, Davis, & Leach, 2005; DeLoache,
1987). Children show increases in the complexity of the rules that they can represent and
use to control their behavior (Carlson, Faja, & Beck, in press; Zelazo & Frye, 1998).
These improvements can be observed using measures of rule use, which require holding
one or more rules in mind and flexibly switching between rules. Zelazo and Reznick
(1991; Zelazo et al., 1995), for example, investigated rule use in 2.5- to 3-year-olds using
a card sort in which children were presented with a pair of ad hoc rules (e.g., “If it’s
something (p. 713) found inside the house, then put it here. If it’s something found
outside the house, then put it there”) and then asked them to use these rules to separate
10 test cards. Whereas 3-year-olds performed well, 2.5-year-olds typically failed to use
the rules despite possessing knowledge about the cards: when they erred, it usually
involved putting a card into the box in which they had put a card on the previous trial
(i.e., perseveration errors). With Luria’s tapping test (Luria, 1966), Diamond and Taylor
(1996) demonstrated that children are able to hold two rules in mind for increasing
durations between 3 and 6 years. Similarly, on the Grass/Snow task, children are
instructed to point to a white card when the examiner says “grass” and to point to a green
card when she says “snow.” Performance on this task improves significantly from 3 to 5
years of age (Carlson & Moses, 2001; Passler, Isaac, & Hynd, 1985). Similar
improvements are observed in the conflict condition of the Day/Night Stroop-like task,
especially between age 3.5 and 4.5 years (Gerstadt et al., 1994), and on the switch
condition of the Shape School task (Espy, 1997). Thus, across tasks, it is now clear that
children develop the ability to represent and use a pair of rules during the preschool
period. While perseveration errors continue to be made, the ability to hold rules in mind
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for longer periods, to inhibit more automatically, and to switch more flexibly develops
typically between ages 3 and 6.
A crucial element of EF is the ability to recognize when actions do not have the intended
effect, necessitating further processing. Under these circumstances, children must be
able to detect and correct errors and make use of environmental feedback. Error
detection includes both objective errors and discrepancies between internal intentions or
beliefs and the achieved outcome (Ohlsson, 1996), and there is evidence for both by age
3. During preschool, children become more strategic in their approach to correcting
errors (DeLoache, Sugarman, & Brown, 1985). Nonetheless, 3-year-olds have been shown
to persist with a response pattern even when not reinforced—sometimes showing
remarkable resistance to extinction (e.g., Carlson et al., 2005; Happaney, Zelazo, & Stuss,
2004; Russell, Mauthner, Sharpe, & Tidswell, 1991), although improvements are seen
between 3 and 5 years of age (see also Jeffrey & Cohen, 1965; Stevenson & Weir, 1961).
Similarly, Gladstone (1969) found a more rapid extinction period in 4.5-year-olds than 3.5-
year-olds when a reward was no longer available in a transparent container.
As can be seen in tasks such as the Tower of Hanoi (Piaget, 1976), Tower of London
(Shallice, 1982), Dog-cat-mouse (Klahr, 1985), and Truck Loading (Carlson, Moses, &
Claxton, 2004), all of which involve moving objects to a goal configuration, preschool-age
children also become more proactive in planning their approaches to problems. For
example, 3-year-old children performing the Truck Loading task exhibited planning by
remembering to load all the items into the truck, but not yet demonstrating a means–end
strategy in which they had to load items in reverse order for the stops along the route
(Carlson et al., 2004). Verbally guided tasks, in which the child tells the examiner what to
do, may offer a “purer” measure of planning ability versus execution (Klahr & Robinson,
1981), and such measures have been used to examine the development of goal-focused
thinking on tasks such as the Tower of London (Byrd, Van Der Veen, McNamara, & Berg,
2004).
Two key aspects of performance for many EF tasks, inhibition and WM, improve markedly
during the preschool period, and the isolation of these factors has received considerable
attention in the research literature. Some authors have suggested that increases in WM
reduce the effort required to inhibit an incorrect response, thus leading to improved
performance (Engle, 2002; Roberts & Pennington, 1996). WM may be especially
important in planning and execution of problem solving (Zelazo et al., 1997). Senn, Espy,
and Kaufmann (2004) used path analysis to investigate the relation between WM,
inhibition, and problem solving in children ages 2 to 6 years. They found that both WM
and inhibition predicted problem solving, with inhibition being the strongest predictor in
younger children and WM being the strongest predictor for older children (see also Espy
& Bull, 2005). Thus, inhibition may be a more critical factor early in development,
whereas WM and the ability to represent more complex problems may emerge as critical
factors for EF during preschool and contribute to performance throughout development.
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The Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task (Zelazo, 2006) has been extensively used
over the past two decades to probe the development of cognitive flexibility in early
childhood, in part because it reveals rapid and dramatic changes in children’s EF and
neural functioning in early development, and in part because it lends itself to
experimental manipulation of task parameters and multiple levels of analysis (Buss &
Spencer, 2008; Zelazo, Müller, Frye, & Marcovitch, 2003). In this (p. 714) task, children
are asked to flexibly switch between dimensions such as “shape” and “color” when
sorting cards in the face of conflicting shape and color cues. Thus, this task requires
inhibitory control to prevent responding based on the irrelevant dimension, WM to
maintain representations of the relevant task rules, and task switching to update all of
these processes after the rule switch (Garon et al., 2008). Although 4-year-olds have little
trouble switching rules, 3-year-olds perseverate and continue using the first set of rules
after they are instructed to switch. This perseveration is robust and persists despite
regular reminders that the rules have changed. Indeed, it is commonly found that 3-year-
olds can correctly respond to explicit questions about the current rules but nonetheless
continue to perseverate on the basis of the previous rules, referred to as a knowledge–
action dissociation (Zelazo et al., 1996). Unlike some planning studies, however, 3-year-
old children tend to make the same error whether they do it themselves or evaluate the
performance of others (Jacques, Zelazo, Kirkham, & Semcesen, 1999; see also Moriguchi,
Lee, & Itakura, 2007; Moriguchi, Kanda, Ishiguro, & Itakura, 2010), and research by
Munakata and Yerys (2001) also shows that children err on knowledge questions that
make reference to both dimensions. Together, these findings are consistent with the
suggestion that young children do not represent a higher-order rule that allows them to
select the current rules instead of the previous rules.
Recent neuroimaging research has confirmed the role of lateral PFC in children’s
performance on the DCCS and related tasks (Crone, Donohue, Honomichl, Wendelken, &
Bunge, 2006; Moriguchi & Hiraki, 2009; Morton, Bosma, & Ansari, 2009). In addition,
event-related potential (ERP) analyses comparing preschool-age children who switched
flexibly (passed) to those who perseverated on postswitch trials (failed) found that the
amplitude of the N2 component was smaller (less negative) for children who passed the
DCCS than for children who failed, suggesting that the N2, often associated with conflict
monitoring, may serve as a neural marker of individual differences in executive function.
This finding is consistent with the downregulation of ACC-mediated conflict detection in
children who reflect upon their conflicting rule representations and apprehend the
hierarchical structure of the task. An ERP study of older children using a more difficult
version of the task also implicated the N2 component during conflict trials (Waxer &
Morton, 2011). Thus, recent data suggest that this simple task can provide insight to the
full spectrum of EF and associated neural changes in early childhood.
School-age years. By the time they enter school, children have gradually gained increased
control of their thought and behavior for problem solving across many domains, such as
the ability to control attention to relevant aspects of the environment and inhibit
attention to distraction (Ponitz, McClelland, Matthews, & Morrison, 2009; West &
Abravanel, 1972). Nevertheless, as indicated by the lifespan trajectory of EF, advances
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continue to be made. In general, these advances are characterized by increased control of

attention, efficiency, flexibility, and organization of more complex problems. By middle
childhood, children are able to selectively focus their attention in the face of complex
distracters (Humphrey, 1982). Anderson and colleagues examined monitoring and the
regulation of action in a planning task (the Tower of London) and found that accuracy and
efficiency improved between 7 to 13 years, with bursts in performance at ages 7 to 9 and
11 to 12, following a brief increase in impulsivity around 11 years of age (Anderson et al.,
1996, 2000). Among children aged 7 to 10, increased organization and efficiency of
planning, organization, strategic behavior, and reasoning become apparent with age
(Krikorian & Bartok, 1998; Levin et al., 1991; Waber & Homes, 1985).
The contributions of memory and inhibitory control to EF have also been explored with
school-aged children, with several authors suggesting distinct roles for each (Diamond,
2002; Pennington, 1994, 1998; Welsh, 2002). In one study with groups of 6- and 8-year-
olds, memory and inhibitory load were manipulated independently, and results suggested
independence of these two factors, despite development of both during the age range
investigated (Beveridge, Jarrold, & Pettit, 2002). Similarly, confirmatory factor analysis
with a cross-sectional group of 6- to 13-year-olds revealed three factors—disinhibition,
speed/arousal, and WM/fluency—with different developmental courses of maturation
(Brocki & Bohlin, 2004). The processes that underlie EF are best thought of as functional
categories that have their own complex developmental trajectories. Inhibitory control can
be seen to develop in late infancy, as indexed by the A-not-B task (Marcovitch & Zelazo,
1999; Thelen, Schöner, Scheier, & Smith, 2001), but continues to develop in more
complex contexts that pit internalized rules against prepotent behaviors, such as
multistep multilocation search (Zelazo et al., 1998), the Simon task (Gerardi-Caulton,
2000), the flanker task (p. 715) (Rueda et al., 2004), Stroop-like tasks (Carlson, 2005),
and Go/No-Go tasks (Dowsett & Livesey, 2000), among many others. Similarly, working
memory increases in capacity between 1 and 5 years, as measured in search and change
detection tasks (Diamond, 1985; Hughes & Ensor, 2005; Isaacs & Vargha-Khadem, 1989;
Logie & Pearson, 1997; Simmering, Shutte, & Spencer, 2008), but capacity continues to
increase into childhood (e.g., Cowan, Elliott, Saults, Morey, Mattox, Hismajatullina, &
Conway, 2005; Simmering et al., 2008; Vicari, Bellucci, & Carlesimo, 2003). Finally, task
switching shows severe impairments around 2 years of age: children are able to reliably
engage in one-rule tasks, but perseveratively use only one rule if the task contains more
(Carlson, 2012; Zelazo & Reznick, 1991). Switching from one rule set to another is
possible in some tasks at 3 years of age (e.g., Brace, Morton, & Munakata, 2006; Carlson,
Mandell, & Williams, 2004; Diamond, Carlson, & Beck, 2005; Müller, Dick, Gela, Overton,
& Zelazo, 2006; Zelazo et al., 2003), but as shown with the standard version of the DCCS,
it is not until 4 years of age that children can reliably switch from one rule set to another
using bivalent, integrated, and conflicting stimuli (Müller et al., 2006; Zelazo et al., 2003).
More complex rules (a higher-order rule governing two lower-order rules) make the task
challenging through 6 years of age (Carlson, 2012; Zelazo, 2006). Switch costs (e.g.,
response time delays) are still seen into adolescence and adulthood (Diamond & Kirkham,
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2005; Morton et al., 2009) and show an inverted-U–shaped pattern across the lifespan
(Cepeda et al., 2001; Weintraub et al., in press; Zelazo et al., 2004).
Atypical Development of Executive Function

A number of clinical disorders with childhood onset are associated with impaired EF—
with impulsivity, poor performance monitoring, reduced ability to regulate performance,
impaired planning, reduced reasoning ability, difficulty generating strategies, inflexibility,
inability to use feedback, and reduced working memory. For example, disorders such as
autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and ADHD are associated with significant impairments
in EF at the group level (Lijffijt et al., 2005; Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996; Willcutt et al.,
2005, 2008); indeed, EF has been postulated to be a core impairment of both ADHD and
ASD (Barkley, 1997; Rogers & Pennington, 1991). These impairments are not universal,
however, with estimates of executive dysfunction on the individual level at 50% or less
among children and adolescents with ADHD (Lambek et al., 2010; Loo et al., 2007; Nigg,
Willcutt, Doyle, & Sonuga-Barke, 2005) and 50% to 96% among children with autism in
the absence of significant cognitive delay (Ozonoff, Pennington, & Rogers, 1991;
Pellicano, Maybery, Durkin, & Maley, 2006). Visual WM is also implicated in ADHD
(Martinussen et al., 2005), as is spatial WM in autism (see Kenworthy et al., 2008, for a
review). Direct comparison of these two clinical groups to typically developing controls
provided evidence of impaired spatial WM in 8- to 12-year-olds with both ADHD and
autism, with relatively greater impairment observed in the children with autism
(Goldberg et al., 2005). Similarly, comparison of children with ADHD and ASD using a
battery of EF tasks revealed impaired performance by children with ASD relative to the
ADHD group and typical controls on measures of response inhibition, flexibility, and WM,
while children with ADHD were impaired only relative to typical controls on vigilance,
inhibition, and WM (Corbett, Constantine, Hendren, Rocke, & Ozonoff, 2009).
A number of other childhood disorders also have associated executive impairments. For
instance, several investigations link executive impairments with reading difficulty,
although effect sizes vary depending on the task and criteria for defining reading
difficulties (Alloway, Gathercole, Kirkwood, & Elliott, 2009; Booth, Boyle, & Kelly, 2010).
There is also some evidence that specific language impairment, which has primarily been
linked with poor WM (e.g., Archibald & Gathercole, 2006; Briscoe & Rankin, 2009), may
also include impaired inhibitory control (Spalding, 2010). Tourette syndrome, a
neurodevelopmental disorder involving frontostriatal function (Singer, 2005), is
associated primarily with inhibitory impairments in the executive domain (Eddy, Rizzo, &
Cavanna, 2009). Finally, several other conditions that may affect brain development more
broadly, such as malnutrition or severe environmental deprivation, prematurity, epilepsy,
phenylketonuria, and prenatal exposure to alcohol, also have executive dysfunction
correlates (Anderson & Doyle, 2004; Diamond, Prevor, Callender, & Druin, 1997;
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Lukowski et al., 2010; Luton, Burns, & DeFilippis, 2010; Rasmussen, 2005; Rose,
Feldman, & Jankowski, 2011; Stevens et al., 2008).
Poor EF is also a predictor of aggression, conduct disorder, psychosis, and mood

disorders. During the transition to school, the growth rate of (p. 716) EF is a predictor of
externalizing behaviors as well as hyperactivity and emotional problems (Hughes &
Ensor, 2011). An investigation of violence and theft in males from age 12 to adulthood
found that poor EF and verbal IQ at ages 18 to 24 were associated with a trajectory of
increased physical violence (Barker et al., 2007). Impaired EF is part of the
neurocognitive profile of schizophrenia (Heinrichs & Zakanis, 1998) and bipolar disorder
(Arts, Jabben, Krabbendam, & van Os, 2008) in adults. Early onset of these disorders
during childhood and adolescence, along with neurocognitive factors that may help
predict their onset, is receiving considerable attention in the literature because
individuals may benefit from early detection and intervention. Adolescents screened for
subclinical psychotic symptoms exhibited neurocognitive impairments in EF and speed of
processing, motor skills, and receptive language (Blanchard et al., 2010; Niendam et al.,
2006). EF is more impaired—along with IQ, arithmetic, processing speed, and verbal
memory—among individuals for whom onset of schizophrenia occurs during childhood
versus adulthood (Rajji, Ismail, & Mulsant, 2009). In childhood-onset bipolar disorder,
executive dysfunction also appears be part of the neurocognitive profile, which also
includes poor memory and attention, although this literature is complicated by
inconsistencies in accounting for comorbid ADHD (Joseph, Frazier, Youngstrom, &
Soares, 2008). Direct comparison of pediatric bipolar disorder and ADHD sheds light on
the possibility of unique profiles for each disorder, with interference control, planning,
and set shifting relatively impaired in bipolar disorder, and WM and verbal fluency
relatively impaired in ADHD (Walshaw, Alloy, & Sabb, 2010).
Finally, insults to the development of the frontal lobe prenatally or perinatally or during
childhood are also associated with executive dysfunction. Early focal damage to the
frontal lobe has been investigated, although it is more difficult to study in children than in
adults because of the relative rarity of cases and the protracted development of the
frontal lobes among typically developing children who serve as a comparison. An early
case study by Ackerly and Benton (1948) described a boy (J. P.) with congenital bilateral
prefrontal degeneration due to an abscess. J. P. lacked impulse control and abstraction
beyond what was present in the immediate environment, but his IQ, initiation of action,
and conversational language were within the normal limits. Associated difficulties
included lack of fearfulness, failure to alter his behavior as a result of punishment, and
lack of social understanding, social reciprocity, and empathy, reminiscent of the case of
Phineas Gage (Damasio et al., 1994). Subsequent pediatric case studies describe
executive, social-emotional, and moral deficits as a result of early damage to the
prefrontal region (Eslinger, Flaherty-Craig, & Benton, 2004). Of the cases reviewed, the
most severely affected children had early damage to one or both frontal poles and/or
orbitofrontal and inferior mesial prefrontal cortex.
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Taken together, a number of clinical disorders are associated with executive impairments.
In many cases, this literature divides EF into component processes (shifting, inhibitory
control, WM, planning, fluency) and employs tasks that either broadly measure multiple
components of EF or use a single measure to represent EF within a broad battery of
measures for other domains. To date, few investigations have attempted to parse the high
rates of comorbidity between disorders that share executive dysfunction (e.g., ASD,
ADHD, and obsessive compulsive disorder; Leyfer et al., 2006). Nonetheless, explicit
comparisons provide the opportunity to better understand the unique contribution of
executive dysfunction to the disorder, and to understand overlap between disorders with
respect to potential endophenotypes, and provide a unique perspective by which to
understand the typical development of EF, its correlates, and its constraints.
It is challenging to situate the neurocognitive profile within the broader view of

symptoms and etiology for the disorders in question. Yet, in doing so, the relation with
general theoretical models of EF and their development may be specifically tested along
with models of executive breakdown. For example, direct tests of competing theoretical
explanations of ADHD—executive dysfunction and motivation (e.g., delay aversion)—have
demonstrated that they are separable and that both contribute to correct classification of
children with ADHD (Solanto et al., 2001; Sonuga-Burke et al., 2003). A related goal has
to do with distinguishing the role of EF as a primary or secondary factor in etiology and
pinpointing its course within the developmental timeline of the disorder. For example,
whereas EF impairments may be among the early markers for prodromal schizophrenia
and bipolar disorder, EF does not appear to uniquely distinguish children with ASD from
mental age-matched controls until later in preschool (Joseph et al., 2008; Rajji et al.,
2009; Yerys, 2007). By increasing understanding of EF and its relation to a variety of
disorders, such approaches promise to provide insight into (p. 717) the role of EF in both
typical and atypical brain development.
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Measurement Issues
A major challenge in research on EF has been methodological: the absence of measures
that are equally suitable across a range of ages. Carlson (2005) made a significant
contribution to the understanding of how EF tasks relate to one another and across
different ages by measuring the performance of 600 children ages 2 to 6 years across 24
different measures of EF. An age effect was found for 65% of the tasks administered, and
Carlson (2005) predicted that effects would have been detected with task modifications
for the remaining 35%. This broad investigation of EF during the preschool period
provides useful information for researchers regarding the difficulty level of many
common EF tasks.
Another major methodological advance to the study of EF is the creation of the NIH
Toolbox Cognition Battery (Zelazo & Bauer, in press), described earlier (see Fig. 25.5). In
an initial validation study, these measures were administered to 476 participants between
the ages of 3 and 85 years, and readministered to a subset of participants (approximately
30%) 1 to 3 weeks later. Results of the validation study revealed excellent developmental
sensitivity across the lifespan, excellent reliability, and good convergent validity. In
addition, correlations between EF and age were higher for younger children (3 to 6
years) than for older children (8 to 15 years), suggesting that EF develops more rapidly
during the preschool years than during the transition to adolescence. There was also
evidence of increasing differentiation (with age) of EF from other aspects of cognition,
consistent with the notion that neurocognitive development in general involves the
increasing functional specialization of neural systems that are initially relatively
undifferentiated but that become more specialized (or modularized) as a function of
experience (e.g., Johnson, 2005).
Despite recent interest in the development of EF and increasingly sophisticated methods,

however, examining EF in children requires consideration of several potential challenges.
For instance, the same tasks may tap different skills at different time points during
development. For example, Perner and Lang (2002) varied the nature of task demands in
an attention-shifting task administered to preschoolers. Three-year-olds, but not 4-year-
olds, were affected by the complexity of the task. EF tasks for very young children must
take into consideration limitations in other domains, including language comprehension,
literacy, and fluency, which may emerge later in development. Tasks that assume
processing to be automatic for adults may not be comparable in children, who must still
exert control to perform the basic task components. For example, the Stroop task for
adults assumes word reading of color names to be fluent and automatic. However, the
Day/Night variant, which uses simple pictures, may be processed more easily and
automatically by children (Hughes & Graham, 2002). There may also be individual
variability across participants in the magnitude of experienced task complexity or the
novelty of the tasks presented; thus, the EF demands may differ within same-aged
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children. This presents a particular challenge to those who seek to develop standard or
comparable methods for studying children with rapidly developing abilities or for making
comparisons between typical and atypical development at various ages.
Another methodological concern is that tasks with high internal validity may miss
important aspects of real-world EF (i.e., ecological validity). One approach to this issue is
to collect information about EF and self-regulation in various settings through parent
and/or teacher surveys, such as the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart, Ahadi,
Hershey, & Fisher, 2001) and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function, or
BRIEF (Gioia, Isquith, Guy, & Kenworthy, 2000). Gioia and Isquith (2004) recommended
comparing carefully defined measures of specific process components against
ecologically valid assessments of real-world function (e.g., ADHD symptomatology).
Alternatively, tasks that seek to replicate aspects of real-world EF in the laboratory have
also been developed (e.g., the clean-up task; Kochanska & Aksan, 1995).
Some investigators have attempted to extract developmental sequences from EF task

batteries. In Carlson’s (2005) analysis of multiple EF measures in a large sample of
preschoolers, although the ordering of specific tasks varied from age to age, inhibition
tasks routinely were passed earlier than WM tasks, and the very hardest tasks
consistently involved both inhibition and WM demands (e.g., reverse categorization at
age 2; DCCS at age 3; backward digit span at age 3 and 4; Advanced DCCS at age 5 and
6). Similarly, Anderson (2002) inferred the following sequence of EF components from an
integrative review: attentional control (p. 718) (e.g., inhibition), information processing
(e.g., processing speed), cognitive flexibility (e.g., switching), and goal setting. Romine
and Reynolds (2005) inferred the following sequence from the age at which performance
leveled off, based on a meta-analysis of ages 5 to 22 and average effect sizes of age-
related change in performance: inhibition of perseveration, set maintenance, design
fluency, planning, and verbal fluency.
A particularly useful design for detecting sequences is to give children slightly different
versions of the same task that assess different components of EF or levels of difficulty
(see Wellman & Liu, 2004, for the successful use of this design for assessing the
acquisition sequence for ToM tasks). By examining the mean performance on each
version or the percent of children who pass each version at each age, one can infer the
order in which the aspects of EF are acquired. Also, a scalogram analysis could examine
how many children pass all of the hypothesized easier versions of the task before a
hypothesized more difficult task. That is, if the hypothesized ordering of component tasks
from easiest to hardest is A, B, C, D, then the outcome of interest is how many children
passed A, B, and C, but not D; A and B but not C and D; and A but not B, C, and D. Carlson
(2012) has applied this method to the DCCS by designing a series of seven levels of the
task that gradually increase in difficulty, thus making it developmentally sensitive for
children ages 2 to 6 years. Measures that are built around a core set of identified EF
skills (e.g., WM, inhibitory control, and set shifting), are appropriate across a wide age
range, and yet retain continuity in basic task features will be extremely valuable for
providing age norms and tracking intra- and interindividual changes in EF that occur as a
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result of development, training, or planned interventions. The test–retest intraclass

correlation for level 4 (the standard DCCS task) in Carlson’s research, for example, was
0.94, and there were no significant practice or fatigue effects (Beck et al., 2011).
Similarly, Willoughby and Blair (2011) found good test–retest reliability on their
computerized measures of EF for preschoolers, although individual tasks were less
reliable than the battery as a whole. These promising results suggest that certain EF
measures can be given repeatedly in intervention and longitudinal studies.
Finally, longitudinal studies are ideal to detect sequences, but few exist. Several
longitudinal studies have examined the Tower of Hanoi or Tower of London task, with a
focus on developmental sequences in strategy use (McNamara et al., 2007), as well as the
family, cognitive, school achievement, and social adjustment correlates (Friedman et al.,
2007; Jacobson & Pianta, 2007). On inhibitory tasks, one striking sequence identified is
that performance on a delay of gratification task at age 4 predicts, and thus may be a
developmental precursor for, performance on inhibitory tasks such as the Go/No-Go task
at age 18 (Eigsti et al., 2006) and after age 40 (Casey et al., 2010). In longitudinal studies
from ages 2 to 4 (Carlson, Mandell, & Williams, 2004; Hughes & Ensor, 2005, 2007), and
even from infancy to age 4 (Morasch & Bell, 2011), EF (aggregates of inhibition, WM, and
shifting tasks) showed stable individual differences, indicating the predictive validity of
early EF for later EF, as well as related skills such as ToM. Psychometric research on EF
in early childhood is just beginning and will benefit from further development of age-
appropriate tasks that tap into the core aspects of EF and can be administered in a
variety of settings across the preschool period, to provide age norms and to tell us more
about the early organization and differentiation of EF (Carlson, Faja, & Beck, in press).
Theories and Mechanisms of Development

There are several influential theoretical approaches to EF and its development. One
approach emphasizes the importance of WM, the ability to hold information in mind and
use it to guide responding (e.g., Goldman-Rakic, 1987; Roberts & Pennington, 1996). WM
clearly improves with age during childhood (e.g., Gathercole, 1998; Nelson & Luciana,
2001), and several authors have suggested that increases in WM capacity (i.e., the
number of items one can hold in mind) may underlie increases in EF more generally (e.g.,
Case, 1992; Pascual-Leone, 1970). One influential approach comes from Morton and
Munakata (2002), who distinguish between active memory representations (i.e., WM) and
latent memory traces. Active memory representations take the form of sustained, trial-
specific activity in PFC, whereas latent memory traces are formed in more posterior
cortex. Development of EF is hypothesized to occur as a result of gradual increases in the
strength of active memory representations, which, in turn, allow children to override
prepotent tendencies mediated by latent memory traces. On the DCCS, for example, older
children may be better able to keep the postswitch rules in mind despite a tendency to
keep sorting by the initial dimension. Younger children are more flexible on the DCCS
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when provided with a scaffold such as (p. 719) congruent flankers around the test
stimulus, which purportedly increases the strength of the appropriate rule representation
(Jordan & Morton, 2012).
Another approach to EF and its development is to invoke the maturation of an inhibition

mechanism—either alone or in combination with the development of WM. Following Luria
(e.g., 1961), these accounts hold that children often perform poorly on measures of EF
not because they have difficulty activating or remembering an appropriate rule but rather
because of a weak or inefficient system for inhibiting prepotent tendencies to respond in
a particular way or attend to particular aspects of a stimulus (e.g., Barkley, 1997; Carlson,
Moses, & Hix, 1998; Dempster, 1992; Diamond & Gilbert, 1989; Harnishfeger &
Bjorklund, 1993; Kirkham, Cruess, & Diamond, 2003; White, 1965). In contrast to the WM
accounts just described, these accounts imply that children who fail to switch on the
DCCS, for example, do in fact keep the new hypothesis in mind but simply cannot
suppress the tendency to keep sorting by the initial dimension. Some authors have
emphasized, however, that difficulties with inhibitory control interact with WM demands,
and that it is the joint requirement that one keep information in mind while inhibiting
prepotent tendencies that poses particular problems for children (e.g., Diamond, 2002;
Carlson, Moses, & Breton, 2002; Roberts & Pennington, 1996).
A third approach to the development of EF is to suggest that it depends on conceptual

development—in particular, acquisition of concepts of intention or perspectives. For
example, Kloo and Perner (2003) suggested that children exhibit cognitive inflexibility
because they do not understand that a single stimulus can be seen from two different
perspectives (or “redescribed”). This account has difficulty explaining changes in EF in
later childhood and across the lifespan (because it is implausible that older children lack
the requisite conceptual understanding), but it does address changes in EF during the
preschool period as well as their close link to ToM (Perner & Lang, 1999).
According to a fourth approach, the cognitive complexity and control theory–revised

(CCC-r; Zelazo et al., 2003), age-related changes in EF are the result of increases in the
hierarchical complexity of the rules that children can formulate, maintain in WM, and use
when solving problems. These age-related increases in rule complexity are, in turn, made
possible by age-related increases in the ease with which children can reflect on the rule
systems that they represent—the degree to which they engage in the iterative
reprocessing of information via neural circuits involving lateral PFC (Cunningham &
Zelazo, 2007; Zelazo & Cunningham, 2007). In terms of the DCCS, for example, this
account implies that children have difficulty reflecting on the multidimensional
hierarchical nature of the stimuli and the task, and formulating a relatively abstract rule
such as “If I’m sorting by shape, then the blue trucks go here; but if I’m sorting by color,
then they go there.”
Research in developmental cognitive neuroscience has provided support for aspects of all
four of these approaches, and indeed, it now seems likely that EF involves the
orchestration of a variety of processes, including inhibitory control, WM, and reflection
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and rule complexity. It may also depend in part on conceptual changes (e.g., about how
our minds govern our actions), at least early in development. In general, most of these
theories depict EF development as involving an increasing ability to resolve conflict. They
differ in whether this conflict is between rules that eventually become hierarchically
organized (Zelazo et al., 2003), latent and active representations (e.g., habits vs.
attention/working memory, Munakata, 2001), or the current representation versus
prepotent mental sets or behaviors (Diamond, 2006). Most also emphasize the role of
changes in underlying neural networks. In particular, Posner and Rothbart (2007; see also
Garon et al., 2008) propose that the development of the central attentional system plays
the major role in the resolution of conflict by regulating other brain networks. Posited
developmental change is both qualitative (e.g., changing from simpler to more complex
rule systems, Zelazo; a new way of describing stimuli, Perner) and quantitative (e.g.,
strengthening active representations, Munakata; age-related increases in inhibitory
control and working memory, Diamond).
Individual Differences
Although there are general characteristics of PFC structure and development, such as its
hierarchical formation, that are likely to constrain observed age-related changes in early
childhood, resulting in a typical developmental course, there are also striking individual
differences in EF. Next, we turn to the correlates of individual differences in EF that can
be detected using developmentally sensitive measures. Examining the correlates of EF
helps to contextualize it as a critically important aspect of cognitive and social
development; furthermore, it also has the potential to inform theories of direct (p. 720)
and indirect influences upon EF and the neurocognitive mechanisms involved.
Cognitive and Academic Outcomes

EF is implicated in all manner of conceptual problems, especially novel ones that call for
the inhibition of automatic or established thoughts and responses. Indeed, EF has
pervasive influences on cognition as children learn to regulate their behavior in context-
specific or domain-general ways. For example, measures of EF have been shown to be
robustly predictive of language development (Im-Bolter, Johnson, & Pasual-Leone, 2006;
McEvoy, Rogers, & Pennington, 1993) and mathematical skills (Bull & Scerif, 2001; Clark,
Pritchard, & Woodward, 2010; Mazzocco & Kover, 2007), as well as measures of general
cognitive functioning, including fluid intelligence (Blair & Razza, 2007), school readiness
(Morrison, Ponitz, & McClelland, 2010), grades (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005), high-
school completion (Vitaro et al., 2005), and even college graduation (McClelland,
Piccinin, Acock, & Stallings, submitted).
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An area of cognitive development that has been studied extensively in relation to EF is

ToM. ToM refers to the attribution of mental states to oneself and others, including the
recognition that mental representations (e.g., beliefs) can conflict with reality, change
over time, and differ across individuals (e.g., Astington, 1993; Perner, 1991; Premack &
Woodruff, 1978; Wellman, 1990; see the chapter by Astington & Hughes in this
handbook). In the paradigmatic task for assessing ToM development in early childhood,
the false belief task, young preschoolers tend to claim that a story character will search
for an occluded object where the child himself or herself knows it to be in reality, instead
of where the character had last seen the object; that is, they fail to appreciate that the
character would hold a false belief. By 4 to 5 years of age, children typically overcome
this bias to respond according to their own perspective (Wimmer & Perner, 1983; for a
meta-analysis, see Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Understanding conflicting mental
states is considered a core achievement in ToM, and in cognitive development more
generally, and may be unique to human beings (e.g., Povinelli & O’Neill, 2000; Premack &
Premack, 1996; Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993).
ToM and EF are linked in fundamental ways (Moses & Carlson, 2004). First, imaging
studies indicate that along with temporoparietal cortex, PFC is also implicated in thinking
about mental states (e.g., Amodio & Frith, 2006; Frith & Frith, 2003; Sabbagh & Taylor,
2000; Siegal & Varley, 2002), although recent evidence suggests this might be specific to
relatively affective ToM tasks (see Saxe & Baron-Cohen, 2011). Second, individuals with
autism have deficits in both ToM and EF (e.g., McEvoy, Rogers, & Pennington, 1993;
Pellicano, 2010; Russell, 1997; Zelazo, Jacques, Burack, & Frye, 2002), as do children
with traumatic brain injury (Dennis, Agostino, Roncadin, & Levin, 2009). Third, Moses
and Carlson (2004) posited that EF might influence ToM by placing constraints on both its
expression and its emergence. On the one hand, preschool children might have
rudimentary concepts of mind but have difficulty making effective use of these concepts
because—in the absence of sufficiently developed EF—they cannot flexibly direct their
attention to appropriate aspects of the situation (e.g., set aside what they think and put
themselves in someone else’s shoes). On the other hand, a certain level of EF
development may be critical for the very emergence of mental state concepts (Russell,
1996). Children would need to have some ability to disengage attention from salient
stimuli in order to entertain the existence of abstract mental representations. In contrast,
however, Perner and Lang (1999; Perner, Lang, & Kloo, 2002) explained the correlation
between EF and ToM differently; they proposed that ToM (or more specifically a concept
of one’s own intention) must be acquired before children can reflect on and subsequently
monitor and control their own behavior.
Numerous studies have established a robust association between individual differences in

EF and ToM (measured in childhood) in Western samples (e.g., Carlson & Moses, 2001;
Frye, Zelazo, & Palfai, 1995; Hala, Hug, & Henderson, 2003; Henning, Spinath, &
Aschersleben, 2011; Hughes, 1998a, 1998b; Müller, Zelazo, & Imrisek, 2005; Perner et al.,
2002) and in a Chinese sample (Sabbagh, Xu, Carlson, Moses, & Lee, 2006). Carlson and
colleagues conducted a series of correlational investigations establishing the magnitude
of the relation in 3- and 4-year-olds (e.g., r = 0.66, Carlson & Moses, 2001) and the
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specificity of the relation to conflict EF tasks (Carlson et al., 2002, 2004). They concluded
that acquiring and expressing mental state concepts requires both holding in mind the
relevant perspectives (WM) and suppressing the irrelevant ones (inhibition)—putative DL-
PFC functions. Frye, Zelazo, and colleagues (e.g., Frye et al., 1995; Frye, Zelazo, &
Burack, 1998) emphasized the (p. 721) RL-PFC function of reflecting upon and selecting
among conflicting perspectives. Furthermore, longitudinal studies have shown that the
relation persists over time and that early individual differences in EF predict later-
developing ToM better than the reverse, suggesting that EF is an important influence on
the emergence of at least some aspects of mental state understanding (Carlson, Mandell,
& Williams, 2004; Hughes, 1998b; Hughes & Ensor, 2005, 2007). Recent research
suggesting much earlier understanding of false belief in infancy (see Baillargeon, Scott, &
He, 2010) would appear to obviate the need for EF as a prerequisite, but more
longitudinal studies like the one by Thoermer, Sodian, Vuori, Perst, and Kristen (2012)
showing continuity of implicit and explicit false belief understanding from infancy to
preschool will help inform this debate. Beyond early childhood, the relation between EF
and ToM remains close and is now a topic of considerable research (e.g., Apperly, Warren,
Andrews, Grant, & Todd, 2011; Best & Miller, 2010).
Socioemotional Outcomes
EF is also implicated in the development of compliance, emotion regulation, and social
competence. Effortful control, defined by Rothbart and Bates (1998) as the ability to
voluntarily inhibit a dominant response to activate a subdominant response, is a
dimension of temperament thought to be closely related to EF (e.g., Carlson & Moses,
2001; Kochanska et al., 1996; Rothbart, 2007). The nature of the relation remains unclear,
but it seems likely that effortful control may capture relatively stable individual
differences in EF and related aspects of personality, such as conscientiousness (e.g.,
Duckworth & Carlson, in press; see the chapter by Shiner & DeYoung in this handbook).
Kochanska and colleagues have conducted several studies examining the sociomoral
correlates of effortful control. Both compliance with social demands and moral
conscience (internalization of rules) were related to individual differences in effortful
control during the preschool years, both concurrently and over time (e.g., Kochanska,
Coy, & Murray, 2001; Kochanska, Murray, & Harlan, 2000).
Several studies have also demonstrated a relation between high effortful control and low
negative emotionality using parent report of one or both constructs (e.g., Eisenberg,
Fabes, Shepard, et al., 1997; Kochanska, Coy, Tjebkes, & Husarek, 1998), but surprisingly
little research has examined the overlap between EF and control of emotion expression.
In one exception, Carlson and Wang (2007) found a significant correlation using
behavioral measures of both constructs in preschoolers. This finding is consistent with
the suggestion that aspects of EF are used in the service of controlling not only attention
and action but also emotional expression (e.g., LeDoux, 1996; Zelazo & Cunningham,
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2007). Interestingly, however, the study also uncovered a nonlinear relation between
these constructs, in which both low and high levels of effortful control (which may be
associated with anxiety) were deleterious for the regulation of emotion. In a recent
longitudinal study, effortful control measured in middle childhood predicted conduct
problems and depression in early adolescence, but this was mediated by individual
differences in frustration regulation (Zalewski, Lengua, Wilson, Trancik, & Bazinet,
2011). This research suggests that EF and temperament likely make interactive
contributions to socioemotional development.
Explaining individual differences in emotion regulation that appear in early childhood is

an important undertaking because children who have particular difficulty managing
emotions (e.g., anger) are at considerable risk for developing behavioral disorders (Cole,
Michel, & Teti, 1994; Dodge & Garber, 1991; Hughes, Dunn, & White, 1998); indeed,
deficits in attention and emotion regulation tend to co-occur in certain atypical and at-
risk populations, such as children with ADHD (Barkley, 1997). For these reasons, it is
perhaps not surprising that impairments in EF have been found in several studies of
preschool-aged children with conduct problems (e.g., Hughes, White, Sharpen, & Dunn,
2000; Seguin & Zelazo, 2005; Speltz, Deklyen, Calderon, Greenberg, & Fisher, 1999).
Even within typically developing children, however, there is evidence that individual
differences in EF are correlated with parent report of social competence, and are
predictive of social skills in elementary school (Hughes & Ensor, 2011; Riggs, Blair, &
Greenberg, 2003).
Long-Term Outcomes
Although very few long-term longitudinal studies have been conducted, the stability and
predictive value of at least one aspect of EF, delay of gratification, is particularly
impressive. Mischel and colleagues found that waiting for a larger reward at age 4 years
positively predicted cognitive and social competence, effective coping skills, and
performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (p. 722) in adolescence, independent of
earlier intelligence scores (Mischel, Shoda, & Peake, 1988). Preschool delay of
gratification also predicted more efficient attentional control on a Go/No-Go test at age
18 years (Eigsti et al., 2006), as well as social understanding, goal-setting, and self-
regulatory abilities at age 30 (Ayduk, Mendoza-Denton, Mischel, Downey, Peake, &
Rodriguez, 2000). They also showed better performance on a social (happy faces) version
of Go/No-Go and differentiation of neural correlates of task performance in their mid-40s
(Casey et al., 2011). In contrast, deficiencies in self-control that persist into adulthood
have been associated with criminal behavior, poor physical health, and interpersonal
difficulties, in addition to being a central component of many psychiatric disorders
(Strayhorn, 2002). Indeed, as described earlier, Moffitt and colleagues (2011) found that
self-control between ages 3 and 11 years predicted (as a gradient) physical health,
substance dependence, SES, and the likelihood of a criminal conviction at age 32 years,
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even after controlling for social class of origin and IQ. Together, the evidence suggests
long-term stability of early individual differences in at least some aspects of EF that have
meaningful consequences for a host of real-life outcomes.
Influences on Executive Function

Studies of the correlates of EF not only point to the outcomes of individual differences in
EF, but also help identify potential influences on EF development. These influences, in
turn, provide clues about the potential mechanisms by which environmental inputs
contribute to the growth of PFC and to changes in children’s behavior. SES, gender,
language, symbolism, culture, parenting, genes, sleep, and motor development have all
been shown to have an impact on EF in childhood.
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Socioeconomic Status
One of the most exciting advances in developmental science is the increasing integration
of neuroscience into research on the development of children’s behavior (see, e.g., Stiles,
2009; Zelazo, Chandler, & Crone, 2010). Many have argued that the protracted postnatal
development of PFC and other relevant regions leaves a substantial window of
opportunity for environmental (e.g., SES) influences on the development of PFC systems
(Kolb, Forgie, Gibb, Gorny, & Rowntree, 1998) and related cognitive, social, and
emotional functions (Hackman, Farah, & Meaney, 2010).
Although the longitudinal evidence described earlier has sometimes been taken to
suggest that individual differences in performance on measures of EF reflect stable
personality traits (e.g., Ego-resiliency—Funder, Block, & Block, 1983; Big Five
Conscientiousness—Moffitt et al., 2011), possibly reflecting genetic variation (Friedman,
Miyake, Young, DeFries, Corley, & Hewitt, 2008), it might instead reflect stable
environmental influences. For example, it is now clear that low SES is associated with
deficits in EF, over and above general cognitive deficits (Blair & Razza, 2007; Buckner et
al., 2003; Diamond et al., 2007; Farah et al., 2006, 2008; Masten, 2007; Mezzacappa,
2004; Noble et al., 2005; Obradović, 2010). Noble and colleagues (2005) found that low-
SES children performed relatively poorly on measures of EF, and that parent education
level among low-SES African-American families was related to kindergartners’ EF and
language skills to a greater degree than other major aspects of neurocognitive
development. Masten and colleagues (e.g., Masten, Heistad, Cutuli, Herbers, Obradović,
Chan, Hinz, & Long, 2008; Obradović, 2010) have found that EF in particular appears to
be impaired in homeless and highly mobile children. Additional research suggests that
the relation between EF and social functioning in childhood is moderated by distal
environmental factors, such as neighborhood (e.g., Caspi, Taylor, Moffitt, & Plomin, 2000),
and by associated proximal risk factors such as maternal education, family chaos or
trauma, and child stress (e.g., Ardila, Rosselli, Matute, & Guajardo, 2005; Blair, Granger,
Willoughby et al., 2011; DePrince, Weinzierl, & Combs, 2009; Hughes & Ensor, 2005;
Lengua, 2006; Mezzacappa, 2004). The social policy implications of SES differences in EF
are potentially profound (e.g., Shonkoff, 2011).
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Gender
Gender is also related to performance on some measures of EF in children and
adolescents. Differences often favor females (e.g., Bjorklund & Kipp, 1996; Carlson &
Moses, 2001; Isquith, Gioia, & Espy, 2004; Kalkut, Han, Lansing, Holdnack, & Delis, 2009;
Kochanska et al., 1996; Wiebe, Espy, & Charak, 2008), although girls perform more
poorly than boys on measures of reversal learning and on gambling tasks (Crone et al.,
2005; Overman, 2004; Overman et al., 1996). One possibility is that cool EF (abstract,
decontextualized, strong reliance on verbal ability) is better in girls, whereas hot EF
(flexible representation of the (p. 723) reinforcement value of stimuli) is better in boys.
This would be consistent with research suggesting that OFC function develops more
rapidly in males (e.g., Overman et al., 1996), and is under hormonal control (Clark &
Goldman-Rakic, 1989), whereas language is acquired more rapidly in girls than boys.
Indeed, when verbal ability was held constant in one study with several EF tasks, the sex
difference disappeared (Carlson et al., 2004). Interactions among demographic variables
and EF in predicting child outcomes suggest that complex nature–nurture connections
are at play (e.g., see the chapters by Deater-Deckhard, Lickliter, and Moore in this
handbook).
Language
Consistent with a Vygotskian perspective, in which behavior is controlled via language
and symbolic functioning more generally (Vygotsky, 1978), studies have consistently
shown that vocabulary size is related to and predicts EF development (e.g., Bell et al.,
2007; Carlson et al., 2004; Kray, Eber, & Lindenberger, 2004; Wolfe & Bell, 2004).
Following from the insights of Luria (1959, 1961), one reason for this general association
might be the beneficial effects of self-speech or labeling for EF task performance (for a
review, see Cragg & Nation, 2010). For example, Müller, Zelazo, Leone, and Hood (2004)
examined the effect of labeling on a rule-use task in which children were presented with
colored Smarties candies on large cards whose colors mismatched the colors of the
Smarties (e.g., a green Smartie on a yellow card). Children were then asked to turn
around and retrieve a small card that matched the color of the card on which the Smartie
was placed. Whereas 3-year-olds performed poorly by attending only to the color of the
Smartie rather than the color of the large card, 4- to 6-year-olds had no difficulty. When 3-
year-old children were specifically asked to label the color of the card before making a
selection, however, they performed near ceiling. Similarly, labeling the items facilitated
toddlers’ performance on a search task, with the greatest improvement when they had to
generate the label themselves (Miller & Marcovitch, 2011).
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A number of researchers have examined the effects of labeling on the DCCS, and there is
evidence that asking children to label the relevant dimension on test cards improves
performance (Kirkham et al., 2003; Towse, Redbond, Houston-Price, & Cook, 2000; but
see Müller, Zelazo, Lurye, & Liebermann, 2008). In addition, using the Flexible Item
Selection Task, Jacques and Zelazo (2005) reported that asking 4-year-olds to label their
basis for selection 1 (e.g., “Why do those two pictures go together?”) improved their
performance on selection 2 (“Show me two pictures that go together in a different way”).
This was true whether children provided the label themselves or whether the
experimenter generated it for them (see also Deák, 2000). These results suggest that
labeling does not simply change the relative salience of stimuli and redirect children’s
attention to the postswitch dimension, but instead may facilitate reflection on their initial
construal of the stimuli.
In addition to the effects of verbal labeling, a growing body of research has suggested
that bilingualism is associated with better EF. Bialystok (2001) posited that a key aspect
of EF, namely inhibitory control over attentional resources, develops more rapidly in
children with extensive experience shifting between languages. Several studies of
preschool children by Bialystok and colleagues, using a number of conflict EF tasks (e.g.,
the DCCS, Simon Task, Global-Local), have supported this hypothesis (e.g., Bialystok,
1999, 2010; Bialystok & Martin, 2004; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008). In each case,
heterogeneous samples of bilinguals were better than monolinguals at selectively
attending to a stimulus in the presence of distracting information. Extending these
findings, Carlson and Meltzoff (2008) found that kindergarten children who were native
speakers of both English and Spanish performed significantly better on a battery of EF
tasks than monolingual (English) speakers in traditional schools and those enrolled in
second-language immersion kindergarten. The bilingual advantage was significant for
conflict EF tasks, which specifically call for managing conflicting attentional demands,
whereas there was no advantage on delay EF tasks. Carlson and Choi (2009) reported
parallel results for Korean-English bilinguals ages 4 to 7 years. More recent
investigations have pushed the envelope in terms of the youngest age at which such
findings might emerge, and found evidence for a bilingual advantage on conflict EF tasks
at age 3 years (Bialystok, Barac, Blaye, & Poulin-Dubois, 2010), 24 months (Poulin-
Dubois, Blaye, Coutya, & Bialystok, 2011), and even 7 months, using a visual switch task
requiring inhibitory control (Kovacs & Mehler, 2009). Further research will be needed to
examine early versus late exposure to a second language, whether EF advantages accrue
as a function of proficiency in both languages, and the manner in which initial dual-
language input influences (p. 724) brain development (Vaid, 2002). Additionally, as will be
discussed below, it is important to take cultural background into account. In a noteworthy
exception to the bilingualism findings, Morton and Harper (2007) compared French-
English and English-only children who were well matched on ethnicity and SES and found
no significant differences in EF performance (but see Bialystok, 2009). Such findings
raise questions about the robustness of the bilingual advantage when these other
experience-dependent factors are held constant.
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Symbolism and Psychological Distancing

The evidence described thus far on the role of verbal labeling and bilingualism in EF
leads us to consider whether any facilitative effects are specific to language or can be
attributed more generally to symbolism. Symbols decontextualize concrete stimuli and
can do so along a gradient from highly realistic (e.g., a high-resolution photograph) to
highly abstract (e.g., words). This decontextualization is akin to psychological distancing
(Dewey, 1931/1985; Werner & Kaplan, 1963), the process of stepping back from a
stimulus and construing it from a broader perspective (i.e., in terms of a larger context).
Young children are inclined to attend to highly salient though often misleading aspects of
objects or events (Carlson & Zelazo, 2008; DeLoache, 1987). By substituting symbols for
referents, however, children may decrease the salience (i.e., “hotness”) of those referents,
hence liberating them from a tendency to respond in a bottom-up, stimulus-driven fashion
(Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999). Moreover, symbols (including artifacts but also verbal labels
and thoughts) may also direct children’s attention to aspects of a current situation that
were previously unnoticed, helping them to reflect on the situation and behave more
flexibly.
Several studies have demonstrated the power of psychological distancing for enhancing
delay of gratification (Mischel & Rodriguez, 1993; Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989).
For instance, children cued to focus on the “cool” features of rewards (e.g., “If you want
to, when you want to, you can think about how the marshmallows look like white puffy
clouds”) waited twice as long as children cued to dwell on their consummatory, “hot”
features (e.g., “If you want to, when you want to, you can think about how sweet and
chewy the marshmallows taste”) (Mischel & Baker, 1975). In fact, children faced with
actual treats but cued to pretend they were pictures by essentially “putting a frame
around them in your head” waited more than twice as long as when they were shown
actual rewards or pictures of the rewards but asked to imagine that they were real
(Moore, Mischel, & Zeiss, 1976). Similarly, preschoolers given the option to point to
symbols for different quantities of treats in a reverse contingency task (e.g., a mouse to
represent a small amount and an elephant to represent a large amount) were significantly
better at inhibiting an impulsive response and optimizing their long-term rewards than
children presented with the treats themselves (Carlson, et al., 2005). Apperly and Carroll
(2009) replicated this finding and extended it by showing that children were able to
transfer successful performance from the symbolic to the real case.
Even when children are not cued directly to transform the test stimuli, they are more
likely to delay gratification when indirectly primed by being told about a character who
chooses to delay (Kesek, Cunningham, Packer, & Zelazo, 2011), and the effects of indirect
priming are significantly greater than the effects of direct instruction (i.e., “Get the most
rewards that you can”). Young preschoolers are also better at optimizing delayed rewards
when asked what someone else should do than when asked what they will do. In a study
by Prencipe and Zelazo (2005), 3-year-olds typically chose an immediate reward for
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themselves and a delayed reward for the experimenter, suggesting they are capable of
adaptive decision making but have particular difficulty regulating approach behavior in
motivationally significant situations. Psychological distancing in this case may be
accomplished by the adoption of a third-person perspective on one’s own behavior
(Barresi & Moore, 1996).
In addition to experimental studies on the effects of various symbolic manipulations,

researchers have also used an observational approach. The strategies that young children
use to engage in spontaneous distancing are often overt and readily observable. For
example, they may talk aloud when left alone in a room during a self-control task, or
avoid looking at tempting stimuli. In one study, Carlson and Beck (2009) observed the
spontaneous use of symbolic (distanced) and nonsymbolic (proximal) strategies in 171 3-
to 4-year old children during a delay of gratification task. Symbolic strategies such as
overt pretense, rule reminders, and talking or singing to oneself increased with age,
whereas nonsymbolic strategies such as obstructing the line of sight to the treats and
physical restraint (e.g., sitting on hands) decreased with age. Results suggested that
physical strategies might be most (p. 725) helpful to young 3-year-olds before they master
the spontaneous and independent use of more symbolic strategies. Furthermore, the total
number of strategies used was significantly positively related to delay time in this study.
Together, the evidence points to a role for imagination—both generating novel ideas and
stepping away from problems as if “not here, not now, not me”—in the development of EF
(Carlson, 2010; Carlson & White, in press).
Culture
At a more macro level of analysis, research has investigated cultural variation in EF and
EF development—variation that may reflect any number of influences, including not only
language and genes (see below) but also cultural values and child-rearing practices. To
date, this research has centered mainly on the differences between Asian and Western
samples. In a large study, Sabbagh, Xu, Carlson, Moses, and Lee (2006) found that
preschoolers in Beijing, China, significantly outperformed their American counterparts on
all eight tasks in an EF battery, displaying a 6-month developmental advantage on
average. Similarly, Oh and Lewis (2008) compared Korean and U.K. preschoolers on
several EF measures and reported that only the Korean children were at ceiling on most
tasks. Lan and colleagues (2011) extended these findings in showing that Beijing
preschool children were specifically advanced over U.S. children on inhibitory control
(Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task) and selective attention (Woodcock-Johnson Pair
Cancelation task), but not on WM (a verbal span task). A slightly different pattern was
found in a comparison of Korean and American children, in which Koreans did
significantly better on selective attention and a forward memory span task, but worse
than the American children on Delay of Gratification (Carlson & Choi, 2009).
Interestingly, in this same study, Korean-American bilinguals, who also outperformed
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Caucasian-American monolinguals on a variety of measures of EF, were nevertheless

indistinguishable from Korean monolinguals. These findings suggest that the effects of
bilingualism described earlier may be attributable, at least in part, to differences in
cultural background. Finally, Imada, Carlson, and Itakura (in press) included EF in their
investigation of Japanese and U.S. children ages 4 to 9 years and found the Japanese
children to be advanced on the DCCS, but significantly worse than their American
counterparts on a Gift Delay task. These results highlight the need to distinguish various
subcomponents and dimensions of EF in cross-cultural investigations. Moreover, the
earlier acquisition of EF in Asian children is likely to depend on which demographic
groups are being compared (e.g., rural vs. urban regions within China).
Although cultural groups differ in many ways and it is difficult to determine the causes of
observed group differences, it is noteworthy that Asian cultures tend to place a relatively
strong emphasis on self-control during the primary school years. Observational studies
indicate intensive training on skills such as following directions and concentration in
Chinese classrooms (Lan, Ponitz, Miller et al., 2009). Similarly, Korean teachers enforce
discipline (Kwon, 2004), whereas in American classrooms, teachers tend to place high
value on freedom of self-expression (Chen, Hastings, Rubin et al., 1998). It remains
unclear why there might be worse performance among Asian children on delay of
gratification EF tasks, although we speculate that these measures are more heavily
influenced by political and economic resource histories (e.g., trust, scarcity) than are the
cool EF measures. Alongside these experiential differences in the shaping of EF, however,
genetic variation within and across cultural groups must be considered, a topic to which
we return below.
Cultural differences in EF are also reflected in different patterns of brain development. In

one of the very first studies to examine cultural group differences in developing
neurocognitive function, Lahat and colleagues (2010) used high-density EEG to examine
the neurophysiological correlates of EF in European-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian 5-
year-olds as they participated in a Go/No-Go task. Chinese-Canadian children showed
larger N2 amplitudes than European-Canadian children on the right side of the scalp on
No-Go trials, as well as on the left side of the scalp on Go trials, and for all children,
larger (i.e., more negative) N2 amplitudes were associated with faster median reaction
times. These findings reveal that EEG can provide a measure of cultural differences in
neurocognitive function and that Chinese-Canadian children show a pattern of
hemispheric differentiation in the context of this task that is more pronounced than that
of age-matched European-Canadian children. The asymmetrically lateralized N2 might be
a reliable marker of both effortful avoidance (inhibitory control) and effortful approach,
and may indicate that Chinese children try harder in this task. Many more questions
remain, but it is clear that one cannot (p. 726) simply assume that brain development
occurs in the same fashion across cultures.
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Caregiving
At a more proximal level, parent–child relations arguably constitute the most intense and
enduring relationships of early childhood, thereby representing the very core of the
young child’s environment, especially in the first few years of life. A recent body of
research is beginning to suggest that the quality of parent–child interactions is related to
children’s EF. Three specific dimensions of parental interactive behavior have been
proposed to promote the development of child EF (Carlson, 2003): sensitivity, autonomy-
support, and mind-mindedness. Sensitivity, which consists of appropriate and consistent
responses to children’s signals, provides children with information that supports
expectations of the world as orderly and predictable; this might enhance children’s
emerging confidence in their self-regulatory capacities. Scaffolding, or offering children
age-appropriate support during problem solving, is likely to yield more problem-solving
opportunities and successes, potentially affecting motivation and mastery, in addition to
learning. Finally, mind-mindedness, or parents’ tendency to comment appropriately on
their children’s mental states while interacting with them, might offer children verbal
tools that will facilitate reflection and awareness of their own response tendencies,
thereby promoting the top-down control that is central to EF (Zelazo, 2004). In support of
this proposal, Bernier, Carlson, and Whipple (2010) reported that maternal sensitivity,
mind-mindedness, and autonomy-support (or scaffolding), assessed between 12 and 15
months, were related to child EF performance (specifically conflict EF) at 18 months and
2 years. When pitted against one another in a multiple regression, autonomy-support and
mind-mindedness explained unique variance in later child EF.
Indeed, the few studies that have examined this question thus far have mainly focused on
autonomy-support or scaffolding. Bibok, Carpendale, and Müller (2009) found that
parental verbal scaffolding during a puzzle task (i.e., utterances that elaborated on the
child’s course of action) was related to the child’s concurrent EF performance at age 2
years. Hughes and Ensor (2009) provided further support for this link, reporting that
maternal verbal scaffolding of the child’s activity during play at 2 years predicted
children’s EF at 4 years of age, above and beyond EF at 2 years.
In a further assessment of their longitudinal sample, Bernier, Carlson, Deschênes, and

Matte-Gagné (2011) found that children experiencing higher-quality parenting and those
more securely attached to their mothers were found to perform better on conflict EF at 3
years of age, even when accounting for conflict EF performance at age 2 years. Their
results also suggested that attachment security might, in fact, be more relevant than SES
and language in predicting conflict EF. The portion of variance in conflict EF explained by
attachment alone (11.6%), or by parenting and attachment together (18%), was
substantial.
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A key notion in the caregiving literature is that regulatory processes are first practiced in
the context of attachment relationships (Sroufe, 1996), and that the strategies learned
are then generalized and used outside of the dyadic relationship, such as during tasks
requiring independent self-regulation (i.e., EF; Calkins et al., 2004; Cole et al., 2004).
Furthermore, parenting has been shown to relate to the development of children’s stress-
response systems, which influence the development of frontal brain regions (see the
chapter by Gunnar & Herrera in this handbook; Gunnar et al., 2006; Hane & Fox, 2006).
Hence, secure attachment relationships may favor the healthy development of EF by
facilitating the development of the neural systems that underlie it (Glaser, 2000).
In contrast to the beneficial effects of secure attachment relationships, however, there is

emerg-ing evidence that harshly punitive caregiving is associated with decrements in EF.
Hughes and Ensor (2005) reported that preschoolers in families that were more chaotic
and in which parents were more likely to use physical punishment performed more poorly
on EF measures than did their peers from a similar low-SES background who did not
receive physical punishment. In a unique study of the link between corporal punishment
in schools and children’s EF, Talwar, Carlson, and Lee (2011) investigated EF in
kindergarten and first-grade students attending private schools in West Africa. One
school continued the longstanding tradition of harsh discipline, such as regularly slapping
and pinching children for even mild offenses (e.g., forgetting a pencil), whereas the other
school employed time-outs and verbal reprimands for similar offenses. The researchers
found no overall differences in EF in the younger age group, but in first grade, children in
the nonpunitive school were significantly outperforming children in the punitive school.
Importantly, parents of children in both schools endorsed physical discipline (p. 727)
equally, suggesting that the differences found may be attributed to the school
environment. Talwar and colleagues referred to the notion of “short-term gains, long-term
losses” associated with harsh discipline, as noted in Baumrind’s (1978) characterization
of the authoritarian parenting style: children who are afraid of punishment might comply
with caregivers’ demands in the moment but then fail to internalize the rules needed to
self-regulate in the absence of the authority figure in the future.
Genetics
Sophisticated models of genetic influences on behavior are making a mark in
developmental psychology, and the area of EF is no exception. For example, using a
traditional behavioral genetics approach, Friedman and colleagues (2007) concluded that
there is a highly heritable common factor as well as additional genetic influences that are
unique to particular components of EF (inhibiting dominant responses, updating WM
representations, and shifting between task sets). Importantly, EF heritability does not
fully overlap with that of IQ or perceptual speed in this high-risk sample. In other work,
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only moderate heritability has been reported for certain components of EF, such as
attention and working memory (Polderman et al., 2007).
Given the challenges associated with interpreting behavioral genetics findings, however,
direct examination of genetic polymorphisms may offer a more straightforward form of
evidence of genetic influences on EF (see the chapters by Lickliter and by Moore in this
handbook). Indeed, growing evidence suggests that genetic polymorphisms implicated in
dopaminergic functioning may play a role in children’s development of attention
problems. In particular, the 7-repeat variant of a variable-nucleotide tandem repeat
(VNTR) polymorphism in the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene has been linked with
higher levels of attention problems, across samples (see Faraone et al., 2005; Gizer, Ficks,
& Waldman, 2009; Thapar, Langley, Asherson, & Gill, 2007) and at multiple points in
development (El-Faddagh, Laught, Maras, Vöhringer, & Schmidt, 2004; Schmidt, Fox,
Perez-Edgar, Hu, & Hamer, 2001).
Given experimental studies showing that intervention improves aspects of children’s EF

performance (e.g., Diamond, Barnett, Thomas, & Munro, 2007; Dowsett & Livesey, 2000;
Kloo & Perner, 2003; Rueda, Rothbart, McCandliss, Saccomanno, & Posner, 2005) and the
evidence cited earlier that EF is somewhat heritable, gene–environment interactions are
almost certainly at play. Although such interactions take several forms, one possible
model is that of the reaction range (Schmalhausen, 1949). According to this model, a
child’s genetic makeup may constrain the lower and upper potential limits of his or her
EF performance (within a range of possible environments), while specific environmental
experiences (including the various inputs described earlier) influence EF within that
reaction range. Another form of interaction is the notion of differential susceptibility to
rearing experiences, which posits that genes constrain the degree to which any
environmental variable will have an impact (Belsky & Pluess, 2009; Boyce & Ellis, 2005;).
For example, Sheese and colleagues found that toddlers who had the DRD4 7-repeat
allele were influenced by parenting quality (with low quality related to higher sensation
seeking), whereas those without the 7-repeat allele were not (Sheese, Voelker, Rothbart,
& Posner, 2007). Finally, G x E investigations examine whether gene–environment
interactions are more powerful predictors than main effects of either factor alone. For
example, Berry, Deater-Deckard, McCartney, Wang, and Petrill (in press) examined
attention in a large sample of children in the NICHD Study of Early Childcare and Youth
Development, assessed by teacher report as well as independent observations in the
classroom in first through fifth grade. G x E interactions indicated that it was especially
in the context of insensitive maternal care in infancy that the DRD4 7-repeat
polymorphism was associated with higher levels of inattention in elementary school, and
that the magnitude of the interaction effect increased over time. Similarly, Wiebe and
colleagues reported that a polymorphism of the D2 dopamine receptor gene (A1+
genotpye) was related to poor performance on an EF task in preschoolers, but only if they
also had prenatal exposure to smoking (Wiebe, Espy, Stopp, et al., 2009). Contrary to
models of genetic main effects, the magnitude and even the direction (positive or
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negative) of genetic effects on EF may vary across high- and low-quality environmental
experiences.
Sleep
There is mounting evidence for a relation between sleep and the subsequent development
of EF. Bernier and colleagues reported that infant sleep predicted later EF in
toddlerhood, even when SES, cognitive ability, and prior executive ability were controlled
(Bernier, Carlson, Bordeleau, & Carrier, 2010). (p. 728) Infants between 12 and 18
months of age for whom a greater proportion of sleep occurred at night had better EF at
26 months and again at 4 years, particularly in the domain of impulse control (Bernier et
al., in press). This relation was unique to EF, not general cognitive ability. Later in
development, childhood sleep is also a predictor of EF during adolescence, with the
trajectory of parent-reported sleep problems between 4 and 16 years predicting EF in
late adolescence (Friedman, Corley, Hewitt, & Wright, 2009). Specifically, decreasing
sleep problems during childhood, rather than whether they were present initially,
predicted better performance on inhibition and updating tasks at age 17. These
longitudinal findings are consistent with a growing literature documenting the concurrent
association between EF and individual differences in the sleep of healthy infants and
children (e.g., Gómez, Bootzin & Nadel, 2006; Steenari et al., 2003). Neurocognitive
testing of individuals with sleep-disordered breathing, which is abnormal nocturnal
respiratory functioning that includes obstructive sleep apnea, provides additional
evidence for a relation between EF and sleep (see Beebe, 2006, for review). Longitudinal
work highlights changes in key sleep variables throughout development; while more sleep
is generally considered positive with older individuals, the amount of time infants spend
sleeping decreases between the first and second year of life (McLaughlin, Crabtree, &
Williams, 2009). Instead, the proportion of infant nighttime (relative to daytime) sleep
was related to EF, not overall duration or interruptions (Bernier et al., 2010).
Understanding the mechanisms that account for the influence of sleep on subsequent EF
is an exciting direction for future research.
A related line of research has revealed that EF may be particularly sensitive to disruption
by perturbations in circadian rhythms of arousal. Physiological arousal, measured using a
variety of biological and behavioral indices (e.g., core body temperature and sleep–wake
cycles), rises and falls according to a regular circadian rhythm, and there are both
individual and developmental differences in the nature of these rhythms with some
individuals being morning types and others being evening types. A study by Hahn, Cowell,
Wiprzycka, Goldstein, Ralph, Hasher, and Zelazo (2012) found that children between the
ages of 11 and 14 years who were tested in the morning or afternoon performed better on
measures of EF when tested at their optimal versus nonoptimal times of day, even when
controlling for sleep duration on the previous night (see also Goldstein et al., 2007).
Participants tested at their optimal time performed better on a composite measure of EF,
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as well as on individual measures of affective decision making (the Iowa Gambling Task)
and working memory. Understanding the possible role of circadian synchrony on EF
during the transition to adolescence may provide insight into individual differences in
educational achievement and the possible onset of behavioral problems.
Motor Development
Evidence of a predictive relation between early motor development and later EF has been
provided by Murray and colleagues (2006), who followed a large cohort of children
prospectively from the time their mothers were pregnant. These authors selected groups
based on the month that the motor milestone of unsupported standing was achieved.
They found a significant predictive relation between the age of standing and EF
performance at 33 to 35 years of age even when controlling for gender, SES, and
maternal education. Adult EF was measured using a categorization task with and without
WM demand.
The relation between motor ability and cognition, including EF, may be due to common
brain circuitry (see Diamond, 2000; Posner, Rothbart, Sheese, & Voelker, 2011).
Prospective findings are consistent with other work showing that concurrent motor
development and EF are correlated in typically developing children. A large investigation
of Dutch kindergartners revealed a specific relation between motor measures and EF, but
not general cognitive ability, when attention was controlled (Wassenberg et al., 2005). An
Australian sample of the same age range exhibited relations between fine motor and ball
skills in the motor domain and conflict control on the Day/Night Stroop task and
externalizing behavior rated by teachers on the Rowe behavior rating scale (Livesey et
al., 2006). In sum, there is evidence that motor development and EF are related, with
early motor milestones predicting adult EF as well as relations between individual
differences of young children in the motor and executive domains. However, the literature
is variable in terms of the specific motor and executive tasks that have been linked.
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Training Executive Function

Beyond its fundamental importance in the understanding of cognition, the study of EF has
remarkable practical implications that are considered a “hot topic” in applied
psychological research throughout the lifespan. Of particular interest are the early
developmental precursors of adult EF (p. 729) skills (Anderson, 2002; Espy & Kaufman,
2002; Welsh, 2002), their typical and atypical trajectories throughout the school years,
and whether trajectories may be altered via direct manipulation with practice or training
(e.g., Dowsett & Livesey, 2000). Meltzer’s (2007) edited volume calls for neuroscientists
and developmental psychologists researching EF to produce knowledge relevant to
education (i.e., “neuroeducation”). It includes several examples of how innovative EF
research findings have already been translated into educational practice (Gaskins &
Pressley, 2007; Meltzer, Pollica, & Barzillai, 2007; Roditi & Steinberg, 2007; Rose & Rose,
2007). Training studies explore potential applications of research on executive
development—either to enhance the EF of children beyond their current developmental
level or to remediate deficits in EF for individuals with impaired functioning in this
domain.
Training studies are also useful for examining possible mechanisms of development via
experimental manipulation (see Diamond & Lee, 2011, for a summary of EF
interventions). These can target short-term change by (a) training one EF component and
then observing any immediate changes in other components, (b) providing more general
learning experiences, such as metacognitive instruction, and observing any facilitation of
EF, or (c) providing training in a related domain, such as ToM, and observing effects on
EF. The first approach is illustrated in an investigation of the transfer of training effects
associated with one of four conditions: visual WM training, inhibition training, an active
control condition with commercial videogames, and a passive control condition (Thorell,
Lindqvist, Nutley, Bohlin, & Klingberg, 2009). The computer-based training was provided
in the context of preschool programming for about 15 minutes a day over 5 weeks. The
preschoolers who received working memory training exhibited significant improvements
in untrained verbal and visual WM and attention tasks, while the inhibition training group
did not improve in untrained tasks in these domains. Neither training group improved on
measures of inhibition, reaction time, or visual problem solving. An example of the second
approach is the measurement of the effects of a broad social and emotional learning
curriculum that teaches cognitive and language strategies to enhance self-control and EF.
Specifically, the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) Curriculum (Kusché
& Greenberg, 1994) promotes inhibition and increases verbal fluency (Riggs, Greenberg,
Kusché, & Pentz, 2006). Of note, the PATHS curriculum is delivered by teachers in
elementary classrooms, thus translating knowledge of neurocognitive development
directly to the classroom. Similarly, the Tools of the Mind curriculum (Bodrova & Leong,
2007) includes activities to enhance self-talk and model the use of external aids to
memory and attention to preschoolers. Low-income preschoolers who received Tools of
the Mind improved on two measures of EF, the Dots and Flanker tasks (Diamond, Barnett,
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Thomas, & Munro, 2007). Interestingly, children who attended a Montessori school have
been shown to perform better on tasks of EF than children assigned by lottery to non-
Montessori schools (Lillard, in press; Lillard & Else-Quest, 2006). As with Tools of the
Mind, the Montessori approach is multifaceted. Characteristics of Montessori schools
include multiage classrooms, student-chosen learning activities carried out with minimal
instruction from teachers, and long periods of time designated for uninterrupted pursuit
of these activities. An example of the third approach is training of preschool children on a
ToM skill (i.e., representing false beliefs) and an EF skill (i.e., the DCCS task) (Kloo &
Perner, 2003). Training on each task improved performance on the other, suggesting that
both of these skills may rely on similar, shared mechanisms.
Finally, training studies can examine developmental mechanisms by tracking changes in

both cognitive performance and brain organization, thus providing a multilevel
assessment of influences. Such studies are rare, however. One investigation
demonstrated both improvement in EF and change in fMRI patterns of brain activity
associated with EF following a 3-month after-school high-intensity exercise program for
children aged 7 to 11 years (Davis et al., 2007, 2008; see Best, 2010, for a review). In
comparison to a control group, the exercise group showed increased bilateral activity in
PFC and reduced bilateral activity in posterior parietal cortex during an inhibition task.
Another study demonstrated that young children who received 5 days of computerized
executive attention training had improved performance on untrained executive tasks as
well as more adultlike prefrontal EEG patterns during task completion (Rueda, Rothbart,
McCandliss, Saccomanno, & Posner, 2005). A third study investigated Fast ForWord, a
commercial computerized language intervention administered over 30 2-hour sessions,
with 6- to 8-year-olds (Stevens, Fanning, Coch, (p. 730) Sanders, & Neville, 2008).
Although the study primarily focused on the effects of training on children with specific
language impairment, a group of typically developing children also received the training.
Compared to those who did not receive training, a trend toward increased auditory
attention measured by event-related potentials was detected for trained typically
developing children.
Summary and Future Directions

Childhood EF is receiving considerable attention in developmental and, more recently,
educational psychology, which is well justified given the wide array of important life
outcomes that can be traced to early development of and individual differences in EF. As
measures continue to improve, we are filling in the details of age-related changes in EF
and their neural correlates. With accumulating evidence of task features as well as the
numerous endogenous and exogenous factors (and their crucial interplay) that influence
EF performance levels, we will see refinement of the theories and mechanisms used to
explain its development. In turn, the hope is that greater awareness among caregivers
and more targeted, effective prevention, intervention, and training programs will sprout
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to help mitigate or even reverse the course of EF deficits and delays in vulnerable, at-risk
populations. More basic psychometric and longitudinal work is needed, as well as more
follow-up to assess the viability of EF interventions over time, in both clinical and
educational environments.
Questions for Future Research

1. How do bottom-up processes, such as stress, motivation, and arousal, interact
with top-down EF processes, and how does the nature of this interaction change with
age?
2. Is it possible to establish age norms for EF measures in very young children that
apply across cultures and contexts?
3. What are the most effective ways to promote the healthy development of EF in
childhood?
4. Are there sensitive periods (e.g., preschool, the transition to adolescence) during
which EF is especially malleable?
5. What are the mechanisms through which EF influences learning, and what is the
best way to translate knowledge about EF into education?
Acknowledgment
The preparation of this chapter was supported in part by NIH R01 HD51495 to SMC.
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Stephanie M. Carlson
Stephanie M. Carlson, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota
Philip David Zelazo
Philip David Zelazo, Ph.D., is the Nancy M. and John E. Lindahl Professor at the
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. His research has been
recognized by numerous awards and honors, he serves on several editorial boards
(e.g., Child Development; Emotion; Development and Psychopathology), and he is
currently the President of the Jean Piaget Society. In 2007, he was the lead Editor of
The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness.
Susan Faja
Susan Faja, Center on Human Development and Disability, University of Washington,

Seattle, WA; Center for Autism Research, Philadelphia, PA
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Executive Function

Oxford Handbooks Online

Print Publication Date: Mar 2013 Subject: Psychology, Developmental Psychology

Abstract and Keywords

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3. EF, and prefrontal cortical function, is influenced by bottom-up processes such as

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Components of Executive Function

Despite the longstanding

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In developmental studies of this kind, the tripartite structure of EF identified by Miyake

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Development of Prefrontal Cortex in Childhood

Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)

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Hot (Socioaffective) Executive Function

Click to view larger

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mapping of human cortical development during Traditionally, EF has been

Taking a developmental approach, Zelazo and Cunningham (2007) proposed a framework

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Figure 25.4 . Top-down and bottom-up influences on Over the course of

Age-Related Changes in Executive Function

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Until recently, the absence

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continue to be made. In general, these advances are characterized by increased control of

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Atypical Development of Executive Function

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Poor EF is also a predictor of aggression, conduct disorder, psychosis, and mood

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It is challenging to situate the neurocognitive profile within the broader view of

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Despite recent interest in the development of EF and increasingly sophisticated methods,

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Some investigators have attempted to extract developmental sequences from EF task

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result of development, training, or planned interventions. The test–retest intraclass

Theories and Mechanisms of Development

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Another approach to EF and its development is to invoke the maturation of an inhibition

A third approach to the development of EF is to suggest that it depends on conceptual

According to a fourth approach, the cognitive complexity and control theory–revised

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and indirect influences upon EF and the neurocognitive mechanisms involved.

Cognitive and Academic Outcomes

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An area of cognitive development that has been studied extensively in relation to EF is

Numerous studies have established a robust association between individual differences in

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Explaining individual differences in emotion regulation that appear in early childhood is

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Influences on Executive Function

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