Assessing frontal lobe functioning in children: Views from developmental psychology

TLDR

Executive function is used as a behavioral marker of prefrontal development from infancy through childhood, yet research faces critical methodological challenges. This review seeks to integrate developmental psychology insights to better understand frontal lobe functioning in children and to recommend developmentally appropriate executive function measures. The authors synthesize evidence that frontally mediated executive functions arise in the first year, persist through puberty, and can be assessed via animal models, self‑control tasks, and developmental psychology measures.

Abstract

This review presents the potential contribution of developmental psychology to a more complete understanding of the nature of frontal lobe functioning in children. The cognitive construct of “executive function” has been adopted as a possible behavioral marker of prefrontal functioning from infancy through childhood. Instead of focusing exclusively on mature, adult‐level functioning of the frontal lobes, our article reviews evidence for the view that frontally mediated executive functions emerge in the first year of life and continue to develop at least until puberty, if not beyond. A key theme in this review is that measures used to detect executive functions must be developmentally appropriate, and suggestions regarding viable executive function measures are offered. The contribution of the animal models tested by Diamond and Goldman‐Rakic to our understanding of rudimentary executive functions in infancy is discussed. Another behavioral domain, self‐control, is proposed as a possible source of frontal assessment tools for very young children. In addition, several cognitive tasks from developmental psychology are highlighted as potential frontal measures for school‐age children. Critical issues and current problems associated with research in developmental neuropsy‐chology are discussed.