Executive function plays a foundational role in everyday behaviors across the life span. The theoretical understanding of executive-function development, however, is still a work in progress. Doebel proposed that executive-function development reflects skills using control in the service of behavior—using mental content such as knowledge and beliefs to guide behavior in a context-specific fashion. This liberating view contrasts with modular views of executive function. This new view resembles some older dynamic-systems concepts that long ago proposed that behavior reflects the assembly of multiple pieces in context. We dig into this resemblance and evaluate what else dynamic-systems theory adds to the understanding of executive-function development. We describe core dynamic-systems concepts and apply them to executive function—as conceptualized by Doebel—and through this lens explain the multilevel nature of goal-directed behavior and how a capacity to behave in a goal-directed fashion across contexts emerges over development. We then describe a dynamic systems model of goal-directed behavior during childhood and, finally, address broader theoretical implications of dynamic-systems theory and propose new translational implications for fostering children’s capacity to behave in a goal-directed fashion across everyday contexts.

执行功能在整个生命周期的日常行为中发挥着基础性作用。然而，对执行功能发展的理论理解仍在进行中。Doebel 提出，执行功能的发展反映了使用控制为行为服务的技能——使用知识和信念等心理内容以特定环境的方式指导行为。这种解放观点与执行功能的模块化观点形成鲜明对比。这种新观点类似于一些旧的动态系统概念，这些概念很久以前提出行为反映了上下文中多个部分的组装。我们深入研究了这种相似性，并评估了动态系统理论在理解执行功能发展方面的其他作用。我们描述了核心动态系统概念并将其应用于执行功能——正如 Doebel 所概念化的那样——并通过这个镜头解释了目标导向行为的多层次性质，以及跨环境以目标导向方式行事的能力如何在发展中出现。然后，我们描述了儿童时期目标导向行为的动态系统模型，最后，解决了动态系统理论的更广泛的理论意义，并提出了新的转化意义，以培养儿童在日常环境中以目标导向的方式行事的能力。