Central Executive Flashcards
What is the central executive?
Processes that organise and coordinate the cognitive system to fulfil current goals
When is the central executive used?
- when reading
- problem solving
- multi-tasking
Where is the central executive located?
In the prefrontal cortex
disruption to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex resulted in impaired performance in complex cognitive tasks
Miyake et al 2000 argues there are three processes of the central executive …
- Inhibition
- Shifting
- Updating
What is the inhibition process?
The ability to deliberately halt or stop automatic, dominant or prepotent responses
(stroop effect)
What is the shifting function?
The ability to move flexibly between multiple tasks or operations
What is the updating process of the central executive?
The ability to keep track of working memory operations
What evidence is there fo Miyake’s central executive framework?
each executive process (inhibition, shifting, updating) was found to activate different regions of the prefrontal cortex
Which area of the brain is associated with the inhibition process of the central executive?
The right intraparietal sulcus
this area is activated when there is a selective attention and a suppression of irrelevant information
what area of the brain is associated with the shifting function of the central executive?
The left superior parietal sulcus
What area of the brain is associated with the updating function of the central executive?
The lateral prefrontal cortex
What unifies the 3 function of the central executive?
there all have the ability to maintain task goals and goal-related information
What is the evidence for unity amongst the 3 functions of the central executive?
fMRI evidence showed that tasks assessing each of the functions produced activation in other areas such as the left lateral prefrontal cortex
Where is the episodic buffer
A temporary store that exists to integrate information from the phonological loop, the visa-spatial sketchpad and long-term memory
Why is the episodic buffer part of the working memory model?
because the episodic buffer explains how information from the LTM can be combined with information held in the phonological loop and sketchpad
Baddeley and Wilsons evidence for the episodic buffer …
They used a prose recall study with amnesic patients
amnesiac patients with poor long term memory found it difficult to recall prose, those who had poor central executive functioning had poor immediate prose recall
Those with good central executive functioning displayed better immediate prose recall
What brain areas are involved in the episodic buffer
Hippocampus
(Rudner et al required participants to construct representations based on both sign language and speech, episodic buffer task has involved combining different kinds of information - imaging results showed that activation was found in the left hippocampus and not the prefrontal cortex)
What does the episodic buffer do?
provides the glue for integrating different types of information in the working memory
