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…

Increased focus on resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and the use and accessibility of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) have advanced knowledge on the interconnected nature of neural substrates underlying executive function (EF) development in adults and clinical populations. Less is known about the relationship between rsFC…

Children with dyslexia frequently also struggle with math. However, studies of reading disability (RD) rarely assess math skill, and the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying co-occurring reading and math disability (RD+MD) are not clear. The current study aimed to identify behavioral and neurocognitive factors associated with co-occurring MD among…

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies with adults provide evidence that functional brain networks, including the default mode network and frontoparietal network, underlie executive functioning (EF). However, given the challenges of using fMRI with infants and young children, little work has assessed the developmental trajectories of…

A theoretical distinction exists between the cool and hot aspects of executive function (EF). At the neural level, cool EF may be associated with activation in the lateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas the orbitofrontal cortex may play a key role in hot EF. However, some recent studies have shown that young children…

Abundant behavioral studies have demonstrated high comorbidity of reading and handwriting difficulties in developmental dyslexia (DD), a neurological condition characterized by unexpectedly low reading ability despite adequate nonverbal intelligence and typical schooling. The neural correlates of handwriting deficits remain largely unknown;…

There is no relationship more vital than the one a child shares with their primary caregivers early in development. Yet many children worldwide are raised in settings that lack the warmth, connection, and stimulation provided by a responsive primary caregiver. In this study, we used data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), a…

Interest in the applications of mindfulness practice in education is growing in the scientific community. Recent research has shown that mindfulness practice in schools may be beneficial for executive functions (EFs) which are abilities crucial for healthy development. The study of the effects of mindfulness practices on children's neural…

The development of the ability to anticipate--as manifested by preparatory actions and neural activation related to the expectation of an upcoming stimulus--may play a key role in the ontogeny of cognitive skills more broadly. This preregistered study examined anticipatory brain potentials and behavioral responses (reaction time; RT) to…

The development of cognitive control enables children to better resist acting based on distracting information that interferes with the current action. Cognitive control improvement serves different functions that differ in part by the type of interference to resolve. Indeed, resisting to interference at the task-set level or at the…

A well-established literature demonstrates executive function (EF) deficits in obese children and adults relative to healthy weight comparisons. EF deficits in obesity are associated with overeating and impulsive consumption of high calorie foods leading to excess weight gain and to problems with metabolic regulation and low-grade inflammation…

A number of training interventions have been designed to improve executive functions and inhibitory control (IC) across the lifespan. Surprisingly, no study has investigated the structural neuroplasticity induced by IC training from childhood to late adolescence, a developmental period characterized by IC efficiency improvement and protracted…

Executive function (EF) is a key cognitive process that emerges in early childhood and facilitates children's ability to control their own behavior. Individual differences in EF skills early in life are predictive of quality-of-life outcomes 30 years later (Moffitt et al., 2011). What changes in the brain give rise to this critical cognitive…

Working memory (WM) skills are closely associated with learning progress in key areas such as reading and mathematics across childhood. As yet, however, little is known about how the brain systems underpinning WM develop over this critical developmental period. The current study investigated whether and how structural brain correlates of…