Investigation of the Scientific Studies in Turkey Regarding the Evaluation and Development of Executive Functions in Early Childhood Period

The effects of the digital culture are on the agenda as well as the negative effects of unconscious consumption. Growing children in our developing country due to rapid technological changes; it turns into fast-consuming, impatient, unsatisfied individuals. Executive functions; it is defined as the complex cognitive processes needed to perform the new tasks encountered. Early childhood period in which critical periods are present is valuable for the development and evaluation of executive functions of children. The aim of this study is to investigate scientific studies on the development and evaluation of executive functions in early childhood. The method of research is document analysis. This method includes the analysis of written materials with information about the issues planned to be investigated. Scientific researches determined in the research; National Thesis Center for master's and doctoral theses; the articles were obtained by using Google Scholar covering national and international peer-reviewed educational journals. Then, scanning was continued with the keywords ’working memory, attention, impulse, empathy, inhibition, self-regulation, problem solving, cognitive flexibility, reasoning tar which are the concepts covered by the executive functions. In this respect, 34 scientific studies conducted in the country between 2000-2017 were included in the study. In our country, few studies on the development of executive functions in early childhood stand out. In particular, it has been determined that these studies are not addressed in cognitive and emotional integrity in the field of education