Bidirectional associations between executive function and social behavior across childhood: A registered report using...

Executive function (EF) refers to a set of cognitive skills involved in deliberate, goal-oriented behavior. Although research has established links between children's EF and aspects of their social skills, it remains unclear how EF skills are related to specific social behaviors, such as prosociality and social aggression. Additionally, the codevelopment of EF and social behavior during childhood is less understood. Therefore, the current registered report aimed to examine bidirectional associations between two EF skills-working memory and cognitive flexibility-and children's prosocial behavior and social aggression using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (N = 18,174). Based on Sameroff's transactional model of human development, we expected that EF and social behavior would be bidirectionally related from third to fifth grade (8-11 years old). We hypothesized that both working memory and cognitive flexibility would be positively associated with later prosocial behavior and negatively associated with later social aggression. Furthermore, we hypothesized that prosocial behavior would be positively associated with later EF skills and that social aggression would be negatively associated with later EF skills. Our results indicated that, at the between-person level, EF skills were positively associated with prosocial behavior and only working memory was negatively associated with social aggression. At the within-person level, we found no bidirectional associations between EF skills and social behaviors. However, we observed a small number of concurrent correlations between EF skills and social behaviors, along with a limited set of cross-lagged associations. Findings are discussed in the context of children's social development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).