Early Childhood Profiles of Executive Functions and Socio-Emotional Competencies: Cross-Jurisdictional Differences and Associations with Emerging Literacy and Numeracy

Executive functions and socio-emotional competencies play an important role in emerging literacy and numeracy. Hence, it is important to consider how functioning in the cognitive domain co-occurs with socio-emotional functioning and how these two domains of early childhood development are associated with emerging literacy and numeracy. At the same time, there are few cross-national person-centred studies that address how individual differences in executive functions co-occur with individual differences in socio-emotional competencies. Drawing on the data of 18,875 children (mean age = 5.52 years; 49.30% female) who participated in the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study 2025, the current study examines latent profiles of executive and socio-emotional competencies in early childhood and their associa-tion with emerging numeracy and literacy. Latent profile analyses yielded five distinct profiles of early childhood executive functions and socio-emotional competencies. The first profile was characterised by globally low functioning (12.9%). The second profile comprised children with comparatively low social-behavioural functioning (24%), whereas the third reflected broadly average, balanced functioning (28.5%). The fourth included children with pronounced executive functioning and emotional strengths but comparatively weaker social and behavioural functioning (20.4%). The fifth profile comprised children who exhibited profound social and behavioural strengths (14.3%). Significant cross-jurisdictional differences were found in profile membership. These differences may reflect broader contextual, cultural, or educational conditions, alt-hough the mechanisms underlying them require further investigation. Significant dif-ferences in emerging literacy and numeracy were also found across profiles, with the children in the fourth profile exhibiting the best numeracy and literacy competencies. The findings suggest that executive and socio-emotional strengths do not necessarily align in early childhood, and that their distinct configurations are associated with dif-ferences in emerging literacy and numeracy.