This developmental account of executive function (EF) argues that domain-general analogical processes build a functional hierarchy of skills, which vary on a continuum of abstraction, and become increasingly differentiated over time. The paper begins by showing how a functional hierarchy can capture important aspects of EF development, including…

Dysexecutive syndrome has been consistently reported in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Particularly, impairments have been documented in working memory, inhibition, and mental flexibility. However, the relationship between executive impairments and intellectual functioning is far from clear in this population. This…

Executive function (EF) skills are a set of attention-regulation skills involved in intentional, goal-directed behavior that include (but are not limited to) the cool EF skills of working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, and also the hot EF skill of intentional reevaluation. These skills are inevitably expressed in goal- and…

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

Cognitive control skills in early life are vital to success throughout the lifespan. Such skills have been positively linked to a host of important short- and long-term outcomes across many diverse domains. Similarly, self-perceptions such as self-efficacy, implicit beliefs about cognition, and self-concept have all been shown to predict…

There is now wide consensus that the quality of family relationships is involved in the development of child executive functioning (EF), a set of cognitive skills that bear critical importance for social and academic adjustment at school. This body of research has, however, focused almost exclusively on dyadic parent-child interactions and failed…

The present study evaluated: (1) the effects of two training programs designed for promoting Theory of Mind (ToM) skills in children aged 7/8; and (2) the relations between second-order recursive thinking (II-order-RT), advanced-ToM (Adv_ToM) and metacognition. Ninety-one 7- to 8-year-old children were assigned to one of three training conditions:…

The study of executive function (EF) has become increasingly popular in multiple areas of research. A wealth of evidence has supported the value of EF in shaping notable outcomes across typical and atypical development; however, little evidence has supported the cognitive contributors to early EF development. The current study used data from a…

The purpose of this study was to specify the development of and links between executive functioning and theory of mind during middle childhood. One hundred four 7- to 12-year-old children completed a battery of age-appropriate tasks measuring working memory, inhibition, flexibility, theory of mind, and vocabulary. As expected, spatial working…

Young children often provide ambiguous referential statements. Thus, the ability to identify when miscommunication has occurred and subsequently repair messages is an essential component of communicative development. The present study examined the impact of listener feedback and children's executive functioning in influencing children's ability to…

Children's knowledge of repeating patterns (e.g., ABBABB) is a central component of early mathematics, but the developmental mechanisms underlying this knowledge are currently unknown. We sought clarity on the importance of relational knowledge and executive function (EF) to preschoolers' understanding of repeating patterns. One hundred…

The current study examined the impact of retention interval task difficulty on 4- and 5-year-olds' prospective memory (PM) to test the hypothesis that children periodically monitor their intentions during the retention interval and that disrupting this monitoring may result in poorer PM performance. In addition, relations among PM, working memory,…

A simple "expression" account of the relation between executive function (EF) and children's developing theory of mind (ToM) has difficulty accounting for the generality of the changes occurring in children's mental-state understanding during the preschool years. The current study of preschool children (N = 43) showed that EF--especially…

Hala, Brown, McKay, and San Juan (2013) found that children as young as 2.5 years of age demonstrated high levels of accuracy when asked to recall whether they or the experimenter had carried out a particular action. In the research reported here, we examined the relation of early-emerging source monitoring to executive function abilities.…

Previous research has clearly demonstrated that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) involves deficits in multiple neuropsychological functions, such as executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM). A conceptual distinction is commonly made between cool and hot EF. In ASD, continued attention has been paid to the cool areas of executive dysfunction.…