The understanding that child development occurs through a dynamicinteraction between biological and environmental factors suggests that this phase is a flexible and amenable to improvements through interventions. In this context, pre-school children are simultaneously vulnerable to environmental influences and able to benefit from early interventions, pointing to the importance of understanding cognitive development at this stage of life. In the literature, executive functions are presented as flexible cognitive skills, necessary for the adaptation of the human being to the new situations, articulated to those actions necessary to reach a certain goal. Thus, the goal of this study was to carry out a bibliographic review of studies that investigate the initial stages executive function development and, from this, elaborate a proposal aiming to measure executive functions in pre-school children, pointing out the benefits of these studies in the area of child development. Results indicated the need for national publications aiming at the adaptation and validation of neuropsychological assessment instruments targeting the initial stages of human development.