Although frequently mentioned in contemporary neuropsychology, the term executive functioning has been a source of considerable confusion. One way in which the meaning of a variable can be investigated involves examining its pattern of relations with established cognitive abilities. This method was applied to a variety of variables hypothesized to assess executive functioning in 2 data sets, 1 consisting of 328 adults between 18 and 93 years of age and a 2nd composite data set based on nearly 7,000 healthy adults between 18 and 95 years of age. Most of the hypothesized executive functioning variables were strongly related to reasoning and perceptual speed abilities, and very few had any unique relations with age after taking into consideration the relations of age through the cognitive abilities. These results raise questions about the extent to which neuropsychological tests of executive functioning measure a distinct dimension of variation in normal adults.
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