The structure of executive functions in preschoolers is controversial. Miyake and colleagues found that, in adults, inhibition, shifting, and updating are correlated but distinguishable processes; this finding was sometimes replicated with schoolchildren. Based on schoolchildren data, Im-Bolter, Johnson, and Pascual-Leone proposed a four-component…

To successfully navigate their social worlds, children must adapt their behaviors to diverse situations and do so in a fluid fashion. The current study explored preschool-aged children's sensitivity to a gameplay context (cooperative/competitive) and messages from another (fictional) player (team-oriented/self-oriented) while distributing gameplay…

According to the executive framework of prospective memory (PM), age-related differences in PM performance are mediated by age-related differences in executive functioning (EF). The present study further explored this framework by examining which specific components of EF are associated with PM differences between and within three age groups. A…

Although a bilingual advantage has been reported for various measures of cognitive control, most previous studies have looked at a limited range of cognitive control measures. Furthermore, they typically leave unaddressed whether positive effects of bilingualism hold for all bilinguals or whether these are modulated by differences in bilingual…

Bilingual experience has an impact on an individual's linguistic processing and general cognitive abilities. The relation between these linguistic and non-linguistic domains, in turn, is mediated by individual linguistic proficiency and developmental changes that take place across the lifespan. This study evaluated this relationship by assessing…

The present study explored the temporal allocation of attention in groups of 8-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and adults performing a rapid serial visual presentation task. In a dual-condition task, participants had to detect a briefly presented target (T2) after identifying an initial target (T1) embedded in a random series of…

Age-related differences in episodic memory judgments assessing recall of fact information and the source of this information were examined. The role of executive function (EF) in supporting early episodic memory ability was also explored. Four- and 6-year-old children were taught 10 novel facts from two different sources (experimenter or puppet),…

Executive functions play an important role in cognitive development, and during the preschool years especially, children's performance is limited in tasks that demand flexibility in their behavior. We asked whether preschoolers would exhibit limitations when they are required to apply a general rule in the context of novel stimuli on every trial…

The effect of bilingualism on the cognitive skills of young children was investigated by comparing performance of 162 children who belonged to one of two age groups (approximately 3- and 4.5-year-olds) and one of three language groups on a series of tasks examining executive control and word mapping. The children were monolingual English speakers,…