J Abnorm Child Psychol (2007) 35:335–345 DOI 10.1007/s10802-006-9094-z ORIGINAL PAPER Executive Inhibitory Control and Cooperative Behavior During Early School Years: A Follow-Up Study Silvia Ciairano · Laura Visu-Petra · Michele Settanni Published online: 17 January 2007 C  Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007 Abstract Several links between aspects of executive func- tioning and the development of social competence have been established. The present study investigates the relation between executive inhibitory control and cooperative/non- cooperative behavior, in an ecological setting, and from a lon- gitudinal perspective. Elementary school children (n = 195) of three age groups (7, 9, 11 years, initially) were measured at two consecutive time points, at a one-year interval, with tasks tapping executive inhibitory control (the Stroop test), and social competence (a collaborative puzzle solving task). Executive inhibition was identified as the most influential stable predictor only in the case of non-cooperative behavior and presented strong concurrent relations with both cooper- ative and non-cooperative behavior at follow-up, even when controlling for previous level of the same behavior. The find- ings imply the need to consider the important role of exec- utive inhibitory processes in multifactorial models of social competence development and in the refinement of present interventions. Keywords Executive inhibition . Social competence . Cooperative behavior . School-based interventions S. Ciairano () · M. Settanni Department of Psychology, Laboratory of Developmental Psychology, University of Torino, Italy. Via Verdi 10, 10124 Torino, Italy e-mail: ciairano@psych.unito.it L. Visu-Petra Department of Psychology, Program of Cognitive Neuroscience, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Republicii Str. 37, 400015 Cluj-Napoca, Romania e-mail: laurapetra@psychology.ro Children’s adaptive functioning in the social environment, generally referred to as social competence, is an essential in- gredient of their socio-emotional development, paralleled by the gradual enrichment of their cognitive-behavioral reper- toire. Investigated mainly in a social-cognitive framework, social adjustment has been a popular topic of interest in re- cent years. This is probably due to longitudinal evidence sug- gesting a link between poor social adjustment in childhood and later life difficulties (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Parker & Asher, 1987; Welsh & Bierman, 1998). An essential feature of socially competent behavior is the ability to gratify per- sonal needs while maintaining positive social relationships with others (Green & Rechis, 2006; Rose-Krasnor, 1997). Therefore, the ability to cooperate with others represents a fundamental component of socially competent behavior (LaFreniere, 1996). An increasing need exists for research investigating the development of social competence skills, taking into account both recent advances in the study of neurobiological and contextual constraints, as well as their impact on the cognitive-behavioral repertoire of children in a social context. Our study aims to investigate the relationship between the development of inhibitory control and coopera- tive behavior, both evaluated during early school age. Most social interactions are known to involve executive functions (EF) and mentalizing abilities, namely the abil- ity to attribute mental states to others (Decety, Jackson, Sommerville, Chaminade, & Meltzoff, 2004). The umbrella concept of “executive control” encompasses those cogni- tive functions involved in the selection, scheduling and co- ordination of the computational processes responsible for perception, memory and action (Norman & Shallice, 1986; Shallice, 1994); they enable maintenance of behavior on a goal set and calibration of behavior to context (Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996). EF can be seen as a type of internal constraint mechanism for social cognition, restricting or widening the Springer