Executive Functions in Children

The six articles in this special issue address different types of cognitive skills and behavioral functioning commonly described as "executive" functions. These functions actually represent several aspects of cognition, including the allocation of cognitive resources, planning, problem solving, response inhibition, self-monitoring and regulation, and the maintenance of mental sets. As the authors conclusively demonstrate, it is wrong to ascribe cognitive functions subserved under "executive" functions to the frontal lobes, particularly at the level of specific tasks. The overlap with constructs from models of attention and memory reflects the fact that mental operations are complex, such that the working of the executive function component may be masked by the material-specific nature of the task, age of the child, or other task demands.

What may be most important is the implicit approach to investigation characteristic of all the articles. In the previous decade, many investigators described problems with neuropsychological approaches to children that reflected excessive reliance on investigations of adults and the need to develop hypotheses and databases on disorders specific to children. The contributors to this issue report specific applications to samples that clearly represent childhood disorders. The applications are driven by hypothetical models of cognition derived from research on the cognitive development of children. The goal is to use cognitive tasks to understand the nature of brain function in children and brain dysfunction in CNS disorders specific to children. The reports represent the continued emergence of a developmental neuropsychology of children and the establishment of hypotheses and databases on CNS disorders specific to children.