Executive control (EC) emerges in the first year of life, with the ability to inhibit prepotent responses (inhibitory control [IC]) and to flexibly readapt (cognitive flexibility [CF]) steadily improving. Simultaneously, electrophysiological brain activity undergoes profound reconfiguration, which has been linked to individual variability in EC.…

Integrating behavioral and neurophysiological measures has created new and advanced ways to understand the development of self-regulation. Electroencephalography (EEG) has been used to examine how self-regulatory processes are related to frontal alpha power during infancy and early childhood. However, findings across previous studies have been…

Attentional control in infancy has been postulated as foundational for self-regulation later in life. However, the empirical evidence supporting this claim is inconsistent. In the current study, we examined the longitudinal data from a sample of Swedish infants (6, 10, and 18 months, n = 118, 59 boys) across a broad set of eye-tracking tasks to…

Executive functions (EFs) embrace a range of cognitive control processes that allow us to control and direct our own behavior, thoughts, and emotions and to develop complex responses to difficulties. Standardized tasks commonly used to investigate EFs are reviewed. Here, a study is reported of the first challenges that children set for themselves…

Social cognition is a set of complex processes that mediate much of human behavior. The development of these skills is related to and interdependent on other cognitive processes, particularly inhibitory control. Brain regions associated with inhibitory control and social cognition overlap functionally and structurally, especially with respect to…

Executive functions enable children to pay attention, follow instructions, apply what they have learned, have those "aha!" moments in which they grasp how multiple facts interrelate, think of creative solutions, obey social norms such as waiting their turn and not butting in line or jumping out of their seat, mentally construct a plan,…

In recent years, the intersection of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and neuroscience with regard to deaf individuals has received increasing attention from a variety of academic and educational audiences. Both research and pedagogy have addressed questions about whether deaf children learn in the same ways that hearing children…

Executive functions (EFs) involve a number of interconnected systems that, when compromised, can result in difficulties that affect a child's ability to perform tasks across early childhood settings, including the home and community-based settings. In retrospective research studies, researchers have found that a young child's…