On Executive Functions & Neuroscience

Pictured: executive function at work. Sharing a set of toys side by side while playing independently. Holding back on pulling a piece out of another’s hands. And playing pretend by mixing the pieces up and playing with them a different way.

Executive functions (EFs) are a family of top-down mental processes that activate when automatic or instinctive responses would be insufficient or outright harmful. Diamond identifies 3 core EFs: inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility.

• Inhibitory control is the capacity to override a strong impulse, habit or environmental pull in order to do what is more appropriate. It is what allows a child to pause before grabbing another child's toy, or to resist giving the first answer that comes to mind and wait for a better one.

  
  

• Working memory is the ability to hold information in mind and mentally work with it, to reason, to relate one idea to another, to update thinking when new information arrives.

  
  

• Cognitive flexibility develops latest of the three. It is the ability to shift perspectives, to see something from a different angle, to adjust when circumstances change, and to admit when a previous way of thinking no longer serves.

From these three, higher-order capacities like reasoning, problem-solving, and planning are built.

Here are the most interesting takeaways for me:

1. EFs are more important for school readiness than IQ or entry-level reading or mathematics.

   In her paper, Diamond cites a landmark longitudinal study that tracked 1,000 children over 32 years. Children who had stronger inhibitory control between ages 3 and 11 grew up to have a better physical and mental health, higher earnings, and greater life satisfaction as adults, even after controlling for IQ, gender and social class.

   These are not small effects; they are life-shaping ones.

   “Having the ability to exercise inhibitory control creates the possibility of change and choice.”

   
   

2. EFs are trainable. They are not fixed; not something innate a child is born with. They can be improved.

   Diamond reviews a range of programmes and interventions that have demonstrated genuine EF gains in children. What successful programmes have in common is that they embed EF practice throughout the day across all activities, not in a single isolated module. Repetition across varied contexts is what moves a behaviour from effortful to automatic.

   “Repeated practice is key.”

   
   

3. Children who benefit most from EF training are those who arrive with the weakest EF foundations.

   Children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who face higher levels of stress at home, children whose environments have not yet given them the conditions to build this capacities would benefit most from EF training. This means that well-designed EF training could level the playing field by reducing social disparities in EF development before school entry, which could in turn reduce disparities in academic achievement and long-term health.

That is a significant claim, and a significant responsibility for those of us designing programmes for young children. If EFs are trainable, then every curriculum decision is also an EF decision.

“The children most behind on EFs… benefit the most from any EF intervention or program.”

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In Diamond's paper, she also shares a counterintuitive idea. That at some point, EFs should actually not be applied.

When you are learning something new, your prefrontal cortex works hard. It monitors, checks, holds rules in mind, corrects errors. That effortful attention is necessary precisely because the task is unfamiliar. But once a skill is well-practised, the brain hands it off. It moves from the prefrontal cortex to older, deeper brains structures that run faster and more smoothly, with far less effort.

Reading this, I think of my experience learning to drive, and I imagine for most other drivers too. At the beginning, every action was conscious and effortful: check the mirrors, signal, check blind spot, speed up gently, filter lane, check mirrors. It was exhausting because your prefrontal cortex was managing all of it at once. Years later, an experienced driver can drive from one point to another and barely remember the journey. Muscle memory, we call it.

Diamond notes that once a skill has been transferred to those deeper regions, consciously reactivating the prefrontal cortex actually interrupts smooth execution. Athletes call this paralysis by analysis. An expert who starts consciously thinking about what their body is doing mid-performance will perform worse than if they simply let the habit run.

“When you are truly good at something, thinking about what you are doing often gets in the way of performing well.”

So here's what we do: train EFs effortfully and consciously so that the habits those EFs build become the brain's automatic default. The goal is not permanent effort. The goal is for good thinking habits to become the brain's natural posture.

Why does this matter for the world filled with AI?

AI tools, used without structure, are well-designed for bypassing EF development. They answer before a child has held a question in working memory. They offer fluent, confident outputs that need no evaluation to accept.

The question here is not whether children encounter AI, but whether that encounter with AI will build or erode their cognitive architecture. If children skip the effortful training of EFs, they are allowing their brains to accept information by default, without evaluation. This habit will automate.

Conversely, teach a child to think before asking for an answer, to resist the pull of reaching for the faster, easier solution, to see an AI output given to them and evaluate that critically. This is the inhibitory control intervention we can give to the child.

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What I love about finding articles like this is that they give me the vocabulary to describe processes. To put words to the neuroscience behind curriculum decisions that were previously made on my own intuition and experience.

As someone who has been designing curriculum and working with educators to deliver enriching programmes for young children for over a decade, it is easy to get caught up in what is visible on the surface: children engaged during an experience, positive feedback from parents, educators sharing enthusiastically about lesson resources..

While those things matter, I find it essential to step back and find research that gives more bones and rationale to why the curriculum is designed the way it is.

The next articles on my reading list are Alison Gopnik’s work on the lantern consciousness of young children, and Angeline Lillard’s research on pretend play and cognitive development.