History of the “executive functions” concept

A review of foreign literature

Abstract

Based on the analysis of foreign literature, the article examines the history of the formation of the concept of “executive functions”. The article considers the change in the content of this concept and discusses the current state of executive functions research.

The article contains a brief overview of the key milestones in the study of the concept. The first description of the concept was given in 1953 by the British psychologist D. Broadbent who distinguished between automatic and controlled processes. Later on, various authors modified the content of the concept. Shiffrin and Schneider introduced the concept of selective attention which is closely related to executive functions. In 1975, the psychologist M. Posner introduced the term “cognitive control” in his book Attention and Cognitive Control. Posner proposed to distinguish a separate executive branch of the attentional system responsible for focusing attention on particular aspects of the environment. Later, A. Baddley proposed the “central executive body” which allows manipulating information in short-term memory. In 1988, Shallis also suggested that attention is regulated by a “supervisory system” that can translate automatic responses into conscious components of the behavior planning system. Currently, executive functions are associated with the prefrontal cortex of the brain. In 1971, Pribram was the first to introduce the term “executive” when discussing the functioning of the prefrontal cortex. Today there is still no single idea of the content and functioning of the system of executive functions.