The present study investigated the role of executive functions in the development of two aspects of timing: temporal reproduction and comparison. Children aged 7 and 10 years and young adults were asked to either reproduce target durations (i.e., reproduction task) or judge the similarity of two target durations (i.e., comparison task). These…

By approximately 6 years of age, children can use time-based visual selection to ignore stationary stimuli, already in the visual field and prioritize the selection of newly arriving stimuli. This ability can be studied using preview search, a version of the visual search paradigm with an added temporal component, in which one set of distractors…

Inhibitory control is a core executive function that develops during childhood and is measured with tasks that require the inhibition of a dominant response. The current study examined the diagnostic value of using response accuracy and latency in a simple inhibitory control test, the computerized Pointing-Stroop Task (cPST), for kindergarten…

This study examined relations between children's false statements and response latency, executive functioning, and truth--lie understanding in order to understand what underlies children's emerging ability to make false statements. A total of 158 (2- to 5-year-old) children earned prizes for claiming that they were looking at birds even when…

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…

Perspective-taking plays an important role in daily life, allowing consideration of other people's perspectives and viewpoints. This study used a large sample of 265 community-based participants (aged 20-86 years) to examine changes in perspective-taking abilities--a component of "Theory of Mind"--across adulthood, and how these changes…

Previous research findings indicate that young children from East Asia outperform their counterparts from Europe and North America on executive function (EF) tasks. However, very few cross-national studies have focused on EF development during middle childhood. The current study assessed the EF performance of 170 children in grades 2 and 4 from…

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 hearing often declines with age, prior research has shown that older adults may benefit from multisensory input to a greater extent when compared to younger adults, a concept known as inverse effectiveness. While there is behavioral evidence in support of this phenomenon, less is known about its neural basis. The present functional MRI…

Conflict adaptation is key in how children self-regulate and assert cognitive control in a given situation compared with a previous experience. In the current study, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify age-related differences in conflict adaptation. Participants of different ages (5-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and…

Purpose: Random item generation (RIG) involves central executive functioning. Measuring aspects of random sequences can therefore provide a simple method to complement other tools for cognitive assessment. We examine the extent to which RIG relates to specific measures of cognitive function, and whether those measures can be estimated using RIG…

This study examined the independent and mediated associations between maternal depression symptoms (MDS), mother-child interaction, and child executive function (EF) in a prospective longitudinal sample of 1,037 children (50% boys) from predominantly low-income and rural communities. When children were 6, 15 and 24 months of age, mothers reported…

Background: Few investigations have examined the relationship between a comprehensive range of executive functioning (EF) abilities and reading. Aims: Our investigation identified components of EF that independently predicted single word reading, and determined whether their predictive role remained when additional variables were included in the…

The current study aimed at addressing two issues concerning children's estimation performance: (1) to investigate whether the log-to-linear framework or the proportional judgment framework provided a better explanation of children's estimation patterns, and (2) to examine the consistency of response patterns in different estimation tasks. A sample…

In simple rule-switching tests, 3- and 4-year-olds can follow each of two sorting rules but sometimes make perseverative errors when switching. Older children make few errors but respond slowly when switching. These age-related changes might reflect the maturation of executive functions (e.g., inhibition). However, they might also reflect…