V. ELUCIDATING NEW PATHWAYS TO DIMENSIONS OF ADHD SYMPTOMS IN PRESCHOOL BY JOINTLY MODELING EXECUTIVE CONTROL AND FOUNDATIONAL COGNITIVE ABILITIES

Poorer executive control (EC) in childhood relates to, and in some cases precedes, a variety of difficulties with behavior regulation, including problems with hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention. In the developmental psychopathology literature, these dimensions of dysregulated behavior coincide with the domains of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Indeed, deficits in EC among youth displaying symptoms of ADHD are well-documented in both clinical and community samples (see Pauli-Pott & Becker, 2011; Willcutt, Doyle, Nigg, Faraone, & Pennington, 2005 for meta-analyses of studies in preschool and older children and adolescents, respectively), and EC has been implicated as one of the core neuropsychological deficits that precede the onset of ADHD among affected children and adolescents (Barkley, 1997; Sonuga-Barke, Sergeant, Nigg, & Willcutt, 2008). Given the novel model of preschool EC central to this monograph, the goals of this chapter were to review the literature linking EC to commonly associated behavior difficulties (i.e., hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention), particularly at preschool age, and to examine the relation of EC to these difficulties using the bifactor model of EC in order to evaluate the predictive utility of this specification. At the same time, we aimed to advance the field in understanding of how EC relates to behavior dysregulation at a young age, by applying more refined methodological characterization of the key constructs.