Emerging executive function in childhood, one of the main predictors of major life success, is goal-directed in nature. Yet children’s ability to identify goals (i.e., what should be done) has been underresearched, often because of implicit assumptions that it is trivial even in early childhood. In contrast, I review evidence for goal identification as a major force behind developing executive function. Both increasing attention to environmental cues and increased goal inferencing from these cues drive goal-identification improvement with age. This framework has important implications for assessing and supporting executive function in childhood.
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