The term “executive function” was familiar to those who were trained in
adult-oriented behavioral neurology and kept up with developments in
the elaboration of the dementias, especially cortical versus subcortical in
origin. Thus it was of particular interest to learn in the late 1980s that
no less an authority on a major developmental disability than Russell
Barkley was beginning to talk and later write about deficient executive
function as central to the meaning of the syndrome of attention-deficit/
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)