The Development of Hot and Cool Executive Functions in Childhood and Adolescence: Are We Getting Warmer?

The influence of hot and cool executive function on the development of eating styles related to overweight in children

“…However, because different tasks were used to measure each form of EF, it remains difficult to draw conclusions regarding the relevance of hot vs. cool EF in the context of eating independent of other factors to distinguish between tasks (Zelazo & Müller, 2002). It remains a challenge for the field to construct tasks which are suitable for the sole manipulation of affective context or motivational significance in order to isolate the effects of hot regulation (Peterson & Welsh, 2014).…”

“…Although empirical findings on the distinction between hot and cool EF in children are still inconsistent at this time (e.g., Peterson & Welsh, 2014), researchers from different disciplines have advocated for distinguishing between these two facets of self-regulation in order to guard against the oversimplification of PFC-mediated regulatory processes (Willoughby, Kupersmidt, Voegler-Lee, & Bryant, 2011). Moreover, there is evidence that hot and cool EF have different developmental correlates.…”

Balancing Automatic-Controlled Behaviors and Emotional-Salience States: A Dynamic Executive Functioning Hypothesis

“…According to our perspective, the three main contributions of these models are: (i) hierarchical and multicomponent approaches make it easier to define some behaviors that seem to represent cognitive processes that could not be classified as general automatic responses caused by a stimulus (e.g., planning and cognitive flexibility); (ii) the possibility to develop specific tasks to assess each component independently (even theoretically considering that they are inter-related), which fits with one of the main aims of neuropsychology as a clinical field, to assess and treat patients with brain injury or disease; and (iii) the possibility to provide an explanation as to how executive dysfunction affects all aspects of behavior differently from specific cognitive deficits (Lezak et al, 2012). However, multicomponent models of executive functions are based upon the traditional framework of “cognitive control” proposed by Posner and Snyder (2004), in which the PFC plays an “executive” role over goal-oriented behaviors (Pribram, 1973) and emotional self-regulation (for a review on this topic please see (Peterson and Welsh, 2014). Medical imaging technologies, developmental research, experimental psychology, and neurosciences have rescued dual-processes theories to describe the so-called “cold” and “hot” cognitive information processing systems (Sahlin et al, 2010; Zelazo and Carlson, 2012).…”

“…Second, the boundaries between “hot” and “cold” executive functions are not clear and, considering previous theories regarding cognitive automaticity (Bargh, 1992; Moors and De Houwer, 2006). Consequently, individual factors (e.g., personality traits or mood), developmental factors (e.g., age and life experiences) and/or contextual factors (e.g., healthy or financial decisions) – could influence the “warmth” of a task (Peterson and Welsh, 2014), thus requiring research to use decompositional approaches (Moors and De Houwer, 2006). In fact, it is true that earlier dual-processing models argued that a process is neither fully controlled nor automatic (Bargh, 1992).…”

“…Although these dual-processes models have contributed to the understanding of information processing and brain disorders (Volkow and Baler, 2014), research questions centerd upon a categorical epistemological base seem to defy recent findings in the field (Morris and Cuthbert, 2012). Current interdisciplinary efforts to integrate “hot” and “cold” processes is timely and important since psychological scientists have previously assumed that adaptive behavior in real-world contexts involves continuous interactions between emotional and cognitive processes (Peterson and Welsh, 2014). …”