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CLANCY BLAIR ALExANDRA URSACHE e xecutive functions are cognitive abilities that are important for organizing information, for planning and problem solving, and for orchestrating thought and action in goal-directed behavior. As such they are aspects of psychological ability that assist the individual in self-regulation and self-control. As aspects of cognition that are important for rational thinking and planful behavior, however, executive functions are not synonymous with self-regulation and self-control; that is, people do not always act rationally or purposefully when regulating behavior, and they may act rationally and with deliberation when experiencing a failure of self-regulation and a loss of self-control (Stanovich, 2009). Executive thinking skills can and often do facilitate self-regulation and self-control, but the relation of higher order, more effortful or deliberative aspects of self-regulation, such as executive functions, to lower order, more automatic aspects of self-regulation, such as the regulation of emotion, attention, and stress physiology, is somewhat unclear. Executive functions can serve a critical higher-level or top-down role in behavior regulation and act as a primary mechanism of effortful self-regulation but are to some extent as much a consequence as a cause of reactivity and regulation in lower-order, more automatic emotion, attention, and stress response systems. Accordingly, this chapter describes a bidirectional developmental model in which brain areas that underlie executive functions reciprocally interact with brain areas associated with the control of attention, emotion, and stress physiology. Because relations among …