Cognitive Control / Executive Functioning (EF)

Cognitive control or executive functioning (EF), also called self-regulation, refers to top-down mental processes that regulate thoughts and actions to achieve goal-directed behavior, which override automatic responses and concentrate attention to handle novel or complex situations. Vital to lifelong functioning, cognitive control is the prime responsibility of the brain’s prefrontal cortex (PFC), responsible for specific, often lower-level mechanisms and neural processes (like attention prioritization and conflict resolution) that make those abilities possible. EF mental skills include working memory (short-term, relevant information to choose among possibly conflicting options to act), decision-making (relying on past experience and current context), social control (suppresses urges toward socially unacceptable outcomes), critical thinking, problem-solving, planning, and executing. It also directs complex processes, like attention allocation, inhibitory control, breaking habits—and facing addictive urges and other uncertainty. Cognitive control (a term more frequently used in cognitive neuroscience than EF) boosts our ability to consciously focus on a task despite distractions, multitask, think abstractly, reason, and make ethical decisions—skills that mature at different rates and develop over time. Research describes dedicated neurocognitive mechanisms that regulate and adapt thought and behavior. Also see Theory of Mind, EF of Expectation, and Conflict-Monitoring Theory