Journal
PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 16, Issue 6, Pages 1198-1208Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/1745691620966792
Keywords
cognition; child development; developmental process; dynamic-systems theory; executive function
Categories
Funding
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [R01-HD092485]
- ACTNext by ACT, Inc.
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Executive function plays a foundational role in daily behaviors, but the theoretical understanding of its development is still evolving. Doebel suggests that executive function development involves using control skills to guide behavior by incorporating mental content in a specific context, which contrasts with modular views. This liberating view is similar to older dynamic-system concepts, emphasizing behavior as an assembly of multiple parts in context.
Executive function plays a foundational role in everyday behaviors across the life span. The theoretical understanding of executive-function development, however, is still a work in progress. Doebel proposed that executive-function development reflects skills using control in the service of behavior-using mental content such as knowledge and beliefs to guide behavior in a context-specific fashion. This liberating view contrasts with modular views of executive function. This new view resembles some older dynamic-systems concepts that long ago proposed that behavior reflects the assembly of multiple pieces in context. We dig into this resemblance and evaluate what else dynamic-systems theory adds to the understanding of executive-function development. We describe core dynamic-systems concepts and apply them to executive function-as conceptualized by Doebel-and through this lens explain the multilevel nature of goal-directed behavior and how a capacity to behave in a goal-directed fashion across contexts emerges over development. We then describe a dynamic systems model of goal-directed behavior during childhood and, finally, address broader theoretical implications of dynamic-systems theory and propose new translational implications for fostering children's capacity to behave in a goal-directed fashion across everyday contexts.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available