CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In 2020, an international symposium on ?Updates on the study of the development of self-regulation, cognitive control, and executive functions? was held online. The aim of the symposium was to address the conceptual and methodological advances in the study of the development of self-regulation, cognitive control, and executive processes, as well as their implications for different settings. To approach this aim, participants focused on three main questions: (1) How do you define self-regulation, cognitive control, executive functions, and their associations; (2) What implications and challenges would the current approaches entail for scientific research in the field; and 3) How should these approaches be considered in dialogues with policymakers. Among the organizers and speakers emerged the interest in continuing the effort through the organization of a Special Issue that included both empirical and perspective work on the subject.The main assumptions that we proposed in the call for the Special Issue were: (a) the constructs of self-regulation, cognitive control, and executive functions refer to a diverse set of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral processes involved in the regulation of goal-oriented behaviors, and (b) these regulatory processes are involved in different aspects of daily life, including socialization and learning processes during the life cycle. We also highlighted that, over the last two decades, there has been a growing interest in the development of these processes across a variety of disciplines (e.g., psychology, neuroscience, economy, education, policymaking). On the one hand, this expanding body of research from each of these disciplines has provided rich information about the developmental trajectories of regulatory skills and how they are influenced by individual and contextual factors at different levels of analysis. On the other hand, research has also identified some inconsistencies in the way these constructs are defined and studied. In the light of new evidence and theoretical proposals addressing these issues, there is a real need to harmonize how these constructs and their development are conceptualized and applied across different disciplines, and cultural scenarios.The special Issue gathers 36 empirical articles that approach these topics throughout the lifespan using one or multiple methodologies (e.g., behavioral, neural and/or psychophysiological) mainly in typically developing but culturally diverse samples. Eighteen of these articles are presented in this first editorial note. The rest will be presented in a second and last note, in which we will reflect back on the objectives of the Special Issue.