Introduction: Assessments of executive functions (EFs) with varying levels of perceptual information or action fidelity are common talent-diagnostic tools in soccer, yet their validity still has to be established. Therefore, a longitudinal development of EFs in high-level players to understand their relationship with increased exposure to training is required. Methods: A total of 304 high-performing male youth soccer players (10–21 years old) in Germany were assessed across three seasons on various sport-specific and non-sport-specific cognitive functioning assessments. Results: The posterior means (90% highest posterior density) of random slopes indicated that both abilities predominantly developed between 10 and 15 years of age. A plateau was apparent for domain-specific abilities during adolescence, whereas domain-generic abilities improved into young adulthood. Conclusion: The developmental trajectories of soccer players’ EFs follow the general populations’ despite long-term exposure to soccer-specific training and game play. This brings into question the relationship between high-level experience and EFs and renders including EFs in talent identification questionable.

简介：具有不同水平的感知信息或动作逼真度的执行功能（EFs）评估是足球中常见的人才诊断工具，但仍然需要确定其有效性。因此，需要在高级玩家中纵向发展EF，以了解其与培训机会的增加之间的关系。方法：在三个季节中，共对304名德国高性能男青年足球运动员（10-21岁）进行了评估，包括各种运动特定和非运动特定的认知功能评估。结果：随机斜率的后验均值（最高后验密度90％）表明这两种能力主要在10至15岁之间发展。青春期特定领域的能力处于明显的高原，而普通领域的能力则提高到成年后。结论：尽管长期暴露于针对足球的训练和比赛中，足球运动员的EF的发展轨迹仍遵循普通人群的发展轨迹。这使高水平经验与EF之间的关系受到质疑，并使包括EF在内的人才识别变得令人怀疑。