The close association between executive functions (EFs) and educational achievement has led to the idea that targeted EF training might facilitate learning and goal-directed behavior in the classroom. The evidence that training interventions have long-lasting and transferable effects is however decidedly mixed (Melby-Lervåg and Hulme, 2013; Simons et al., 2016). The goal of the current paper is...

The aim of the present study is to investigate the performance of children of different ages on an analogy-making task involving semantic analogies in which there are competing semantic matches. We suggest that this can best be studied in terms of developmental changes in executive functioning. We hypothesize that the selection of common relational structure requires the inhibition of other sal...

The ontogeny of human empathy is better understood with reference to the evolutionary history of the social brain. Empathy has deep evolutionary, biochemical, and neurological underpinnings. Even the most advanced forms of empathy in humans are built on more basic forms and remain connected to core mechanisms associated with affective communication, social attachment, and parental care. In this...

Induced positive affect (PA) can improve verbal fluency performance, and induced negative affect (NA) can increase design fluency performance (Bartolic, Basso, Schefft, Glauser, & Titanic-Schefft, 1999). Building on this, the current study investigated associations between everyday mood states and executive functions. Participants (N = 74, mean age = 51.19 years) completed verbal and design flu...

The Public Perception and Normative Valuation of Executive Compensation: An International Comparison This paper describes individuals’ perceptions and normative valuations of executive compensation using comparable survey data for fifteen OECD member countries. An overwhelming majority of individuals (more than 90%) believes that top executives earn more than they actually deserve. However, the...

Despite the prominent role of executive functions in children's emerging competencies, there remains debate regarding the structure and development of executive functions. In an attempt to reconcile these discrepancies, a differentiation model of executive function development was evaluated in the early years using 6-month age groupings. Specifically, 281 preschoolers completed measures of work...

Marteau and Hall provide interesting insight into the important links between early life environments, poverty, deleterious health behaviours, and the cognitive abilities used to control such behaviours—the “executive functions.” They suggest that associations between early life exposure to poverty and subsequent reductions in executive functions contribute to health inequalities. They also ack...

Executive functions (EF) such as self-monitoring, planning, and organizing are known to develop through childhood and adolescence. They are of potential importance for learning and school performance. Earlier research into the relation between EF and school performance did not provide clear results possibly because confounding factors such as educational track, boy-girl differences, and parenta...