Chapter 11 Key Terms

Question 1

Executive functions

Answer 1

Abilities to plan actions to reach a goal, to use information flexibly, to think abstractly, and to make inferences (among other capabilities). See also cognitive control.

Question 2

Cognitive control

Answer 2

Process of guiding or controlling one’s thoughts and actions. See also executive functions.

Question 3

Contention scheduling

Answer 3

One component of a two-component system that influences the choice of behavior; a cognitive system that enables relatively automatic processing, which has been developed over time through learning.

Question 4

Supervisory attentional system

Answer 4

One component of a two-component system that influences the choice of behavior; cognitive system required to effortfully direct attention and guide action through decision processes. Active only in certain situations: when no preexisting processing schemes are available, as occurs in novel situations; when the task is technically difficult; when problem solving is required; and when certain typical response tendencies must be overridden.

Question 5

Environmental dependency syndrome

Answer 5

Disorder in which behavior is triggered by stimuli in the environment; involves automatic invocation of contention scheduling schemes because the supervisory attentional system has been lost.

Question 6

Perseveration

Answer 6

Behavior of repeating the same action (or thought) over and over again.

Question 7

Metacognition

Answer 7

The ability to reflect upon a cognitive process.

Question 8

Attentional (or task) set

Answer 8

Process that designates which information is task-relevant.

Question 9

Psychological inertia

Answer 9

Consequence of executive dysfunction; persons with this symptom are poor at starting an action or a behavior, but once engaged in it they have great difficulty stopping it.

Question 10

Go/No-Go task

Answer 10

Test in which participants respond by pushing a button when certain visual stimuli appear (Go trials) and withholding response to other stimuli (No-Go); measures response inhibition.

Question 11

Interference resolution

Answer 11

Ability to resolve conflict between competing information or distracting information that might interfere with performing a task.

Question 12

Self-ordered pointing task

Answer 12

Test of sequencing ability. The person is shown an array of items laid out on a page, followed by another page with those same items in a different arrangement, etc. The participant must point to a unique item on each successive page which requires keeping track of which items were previously selected.

Question 13

Tower of London task

Answer 13

Test of planning and sequencing; the task requires the person to move a set of balls, one at a time, from an initial position on prongs to a target configuration in as few moves as possible while keeping in mind the constraints imposed by the height of each prong.

Question 14

Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)

Answer 14

Classic neuropsychological test used to examine task-switching. The participant is to sort a stack of cards into four piles based either on the color, number, or shape of the items on the card. No explicit criteria for sorting are given, but as the participant places each card onto one of the four piles, the experimenter indicates whether the response is correct or incorrect. From the experimenter’s feedback, the participant must deduce the dimension by which the card should be sorted. At some point in the trial, the experimenter changes the sorting criterion, and the participant must deduce the new order.

Question 15

Switch cost

Answer 15

Time (or other resources) needed to change the current task-set.

Question 16

Error-related negativity (ERN)

Answer 16

An ERP signal that occurs approximately 100ms after an error has been made.

Question 17

Error positivity (Pe)

Answer 17

An ERP signal that is thought to indicate awareness of an error; typically follows the error-related negativity (ERN) by about 200–300ms.

Question 18

Interoception

Answer 18

Ability to perceive the internal state of the body.

Question 19

Higher-order thinking

Answer 19

Set of abilities involving complicated aspects of thought, such as being able to think in an abstract and conceptual rather than concrete manner, the ability to deduce rules or regularity, and the ability to be flexible and respond to novelty.