Associations between middle childhood executive control aspects and adolescent substance use and externalizing and internalizing problems

This study examines the degree to which two middle childhood executive control aspects, working memory and combined inhibitory control/flexible shifting, predict adolescent substance use and externalizing and internalizing problems. Participants were 301 children (ages 3–6 years; 48.2% male) recruited from a Midwestern city in the United States and followed into adolescence (ages 14–18 years). Working memory had a statistically significant unadjusted association with externalizing problems (r = −.30, p = .003) in a confirmatory factor analysis. Neither factor significantly predicted any of the adolescent outcomes in a structural equation model that adjusted for each EC aspect, sociodemographic covariates, and middle childhood externalizing and internalizing problems. Stronger prediction of EC aspects might not emerge until they become more fully differentiated later in development.