Executive functioning (EF) plays a major role in many domains of human behaviour, including self-regulation, academic achievement, and even sports expertise. While a significant proportion of cross-sectional research has focused on the developmental pathways of EF, the existing literature is fractionated due to a wide range of methodologies applied to narrow age ranges, impeding comparison across a broad range of age groups. The current study used a cross-sectional design to investigate the factor structure of EF within late childhood and adolescence. A total of 2166 Flemish children and adolescents completed seven tasks of the Cambridge Brain Sciences test battery. Based on the existing literature, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed, which indicated that a unitary factor model provides the best fit for the youngest age group (7–12 years). For the adolescents (12–18 years), the factor structure consists of four different components, including working memory, shifting, inhibition and planning. With regard to differences between early (12–15 years) and late (15–18 years) adolescents, working memory, inhibition and planning show higher scores for the late adolescents, while there was no difference on shifting. The current study is one of the first to administer the same seven EF tests in a considerably large sample of children and adolescents, and as such contributes to the understanding of the developmental trends in EF. Future studies, especially with longitudinal designs, are encouraged to further increase the knowledge concerning the factor structure of EF, and the development of the different EF components.

执行功能 (EF) 在人类行为的许多领域发挥着重要作用，包括自我调节、学业成就，甚至体育专业知识。虽然很大一部分横断面研究都集中在 EF 的发展途径上，但由于适用于狭窄年龄范围的广泛方法论，现有文献被分割开来，阻碍了广泛年龄组的比较。目前的研究使用横断面设计来调查儿童晚期和青春期 EF 的因素结构。共有 2166 名佛兰德儿童和青少年完成了剑桥脑科学测试组的七项任务。基于现有文献，进行了验证性因素分析，这表明单一因子模型最适合最年轻的年龄组（7-12 岁）。对于青少年（12-18 岁），因子结构由四个不同的组成部分组成，包括工作记忆、转移、抑制和计划。对于早期（12-15 岁）和晚期（15-18 岁）青少年之间的差异，工作记忆、抑制和计划显示出晚期青少年的得分较高，而在转移上没有差异。目前的研究是首批在相当大的儿童和青少年样本中进行相同的七项 EF 测试的研究之一，因此有助于了解 EF 的发展趋势。鼓励未来的研究，特别是纵向设计，以进一步增加关于 EF 因子结构的知识，