Department of Psychology, George Mason University.
Perspect Psychol Sci. 2020 Jul;15(4):942-956. doi: 10.1177/1745691620904771. Epub 2020 Apr 29.
Research on executive function in early childhood has flourished in recent years. Much of this work is premised on a view of development of executive function as the emergence of a set of domain-general component processes (e.g., working memory updating, inhibitory control, shifting). This view has shaped how we think about relations between executive function and other aspects of development, the role of the environment in executive-function development, and how best to improve executive function in children who struggle with it. However, there are conceptual and empirical reasons to doubt that executive function should be defined in this way. I argue that the development of executive function is better understood as the emergence of skills in using control in the service of specific goals. Such goals activate and are influenced by mental content such as knowledge, beliefs, norms, values, and preferences that are acquired with development and are important to consider in understanding children's performance on measures of executive function. This account better explains empirical findings than the component-process view; leads to specific, testable hypotheses; and has implications for theory, measurement, and interventions.
近年来，儿童执行功能的研究蓬勃发展。这项工作的大部分是基于这样一种观点，即执行功能的发展是一系列领域普遍的组成过程的出现（例如，工作记忆更新、抑制控制、转换）。这种观点影响了我们对执行功能与其他发展方面之间关系的思考、环境在执行功能发展中的作用以及如何最好地提高那些在执行功能方面有困难的儿童的执行功能。然而，有概念和经验上的原因怀疑执行功能应该这样定义。我认为，执行功能的发展更好地理解为在使用控制以实现特定目标的技能的出现。这些目标通过知识、信仰、规范、价值观和偏好等心理内容来激活和受到影响，这些内容是随着发展而获得的，对于理解儿童在执行功能测量中的表现，这些内容非常重要。这种解释比组成过程观点更好地解释了实证发现；导致了具体的、可测试的假设；并对理论、测量和干预有影响。
