Hot and Cool Executive Functions in Middle Childhood: Development and Relationships with Cognitive and Emotional Processes, and Functional Outcomes

Abstract

Executive functioning (EF) follows a protracted course of development, emerging in early infancy and continuing to develop throughout childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, before declining in older age (Diamond, 2006; Zelazo, Craik, & Booth, 2004). Despite this, the majority of developmental research has focused on the emergence of EF before age 5 (Best, Miller, & Jones, 2009). Recent research also suggests that EF can usefully be separated into hot (more emotionally driven) and cool (more abstract) factors (Kerr & Zelazo, 2004), and that these factors likely have distinct neural underpinnings (Bechara, Damasio, & Damasio, 2000). The current program of research investigated the development of hot and cool EF in a sample of 126 (59 males and 67 females) typically developing Australian 5 to 12-year-old children. Six different behavioural measures of EF (three hot and three cool) were administered. The first study examined and compared the age-related development of hot and cool EF in a series of cross-sectional age-group comparisons. Age-related improvements were observed on all six EF tasks. Across the age-range studied, all EF tasks showed a linear relationship with age. Analysis using composite measures of hot and cool EF showed no significant differences in the rate of development between hot and cool EF, suggesting that hot and cool EF develop at similar rates across middle childhood. Factor analysis of the EF tasks also supported a single factor solution. Thus, the first study did not find evidence supporting a hot-cool EF distinction during middle childhood.