cognition- executive function

Question 1

central executive function
definition

Answer 1

-mental processes for regulating and controlling other cognitive processes, in particular in relation to complex actions

Question 2

why are they called ‘executive’

Answer 2

-they manage task processing
-they are not actually involved in performing the task

Question 3

the three major executive functions

Answer 3

inhibition
shifting
updating

Question 4

executive function : inhibition

Answer 4

-inhibition : control ones attention, behaviour, thoughts, and / or emotions to override a string internal predisposition or external lure
-can include inhibition of attention : resisting distractor interferences
-includes inhibition of action : inhibiting a prepotent response

Question 5

shifting

Answer 5

-to switch flexibly between tasks or mental sets
-called shifting ability

Question 6

updating

Answer 6

-to monitor and engage in rapid addition or deletion of working memory contents
-eg removing stuff that’s not relevant anymore

Question 7

tasks used to measure executive functions
-stroop task (stroop,1935)
ef inhibition of attention task

Answer 7

-to measure inhibition of attention people often use the stroop task
-name colours in which words are printed
-in congruent condition - the word green shows in green ink (response is faster as they just say green
-incongruent - the word green in red ink (response is red but slower response)

Question 8

ef task inhibition of action
stop signal task (logan and cowan,1984)

Answer 8

-indicate the direction of the arrow, but stop responding when hearing a beep sound (the stop signal)
-by varying the time you play the stop sound you can measure the response and how could you are at inhibition of action

Question 9

ef task shifting
number-letter task (rogers and monsell, 1995)

Answer 9

-part of the experiment you will only see a letter and a digit on the upper side of the screen, and you need to judge whether they are even or odd numbers

-in another section of the exp you will see the digit and letter combination on the lower side of the screen and you have to make a judgement on whether the letters are vowels or consonants

-but in the final part, you will see the combination of the letters and numbers one by one in clockwise order, so first make judgement on numbers then on the letters (and so the task is shifting)

-by comparing the reaction time it takes you to switch from this shifting task compared to the previous exp tasks , we can measure how long it takes for you to shift from one task to another

Question 10

• ef updating
  tone monitoring task (Larson, Merritt and Williams 1988)

Answer 10

-3 types of tones (high,low,medium) played in a random sequence
-respond when the 4th tone of each particular pitch was presented (eg after hearing the 4th low tone, the 4th medium tone, 4th high tone)

Question 11

relationship between different executive functions
according to unity/diversity framework (Miyake and Friedman 2012) what do they say about it?

Answer 11

• each executive function has a component that is common to all executive functions
  -and also has a component unique to that specific to that particular executive function

Question 12

Miyake and Friedman 2012
-experiment on relationship among EF
-unity/diversity framework
-findings between the efs

Answer 12

-conducted experiment on the abilities of many participants
-did a sort of structure equation analysis so that they can understand a correlation

-for updating and shifting ability they do have a common executive function, and plus a specific updating component or specific shifting component

-for inhibition ability, almost perfectly overlaps with the common executive function

-according to their findings they believe the common executive function is the ability to maintain task goals and goal related information and use this information to effectively bias lower level processing

Question 13

what is common for all executive functions (Miyake and Friedman 2012 ) findings

Answer 13

-according to their findings they believe the common executive function is the ability to maintain task goals and goal related information and use this information to effectively bias lower level processing

Question 14

relationship among efs
-evidence/testing the unity/diversity framework (Hedden and Gabrieli 2010)

Answer 14

-used a brain imaging task
-in this task both inhibition and shifting function was measured
-tried to identify brain network that’s associated with inhibition task and shifting task (as its found previously these two functions overlap, so the brain network used for these 2 tasks should also overlap)

-global local task
-identify either the global (large letter) or the local (small letter) level on each trial, as cued by the colour

-congruent condition - global and local letter is the same
-incongruent condition - local and global letters conflict each other (H is made up of smaller local sses)
-congruent condition would require little inhibition function but the incongruent condition you would require more

-also measuring the shifting condition, by having two colours so if its blue eg you only judge the local letter and if its green you judge the global letter

Question 15

evidence/testing the unity/diversity framework (Hedden and Gabrieli 2010)
results

Answer 15

-there was considerable overlap in the brain areas associated with inhibition and shifting
-there was also evidence of diversity, especially with respect to the inhibition
-does not support the unity framework as that suggests that inhibition function has nothing unique to itself (no diversity) but in the brain scans you can see parts of the brain solely associated with the inhibition function

Question 16

dysexecutive syndrome

Answer 16

brain damaged individuals whose EF is impaired

Question 17

Godefroy et al,2010 - what did he say about dysexecutive function

Answer 17

-according to him, dysexecutive syndrome includes impaired response inhibition, rule deduction and generation, maintenance and shifting of sets, and information generation

Question 18

Iowa gambling task in brain damaged patients (Glascher et al.2012)

Answer 18

-participants were shown four decks of cards
-each deck holds cards that will either reward or penalise them, using game money (eg rewarding card you get more game money)
-goal of the game is to win as much money as possible.
-‘good decks’ reward the player more often than bad decks

Question 19

Iowa gambling task in brain damaged patients (Glascher et al.2012)
results

Answer 19

-ordinary healthy participants would be able to find out that among the four decks some contain more rewarding cards than others
-eg they learn this rule there are some that are good and some bad

-those with dysexecutive syndrome were deficit in this task,

-by looking into the brain region damaged of they found two networks that associate with the damage of this task

Question 20

two separate brain networks associated with the damage of dysexecutive syndrome task

Answer 20

-a cognitive control network associated with response inhibition ,conflict monitoring and switching
(so the executive function)

-a value based decision making network associated with emotion and value judgements. (this isnt executive function, this is a different network, so if you had brain damage in the value based decision making network you would also be likely to fail the task)

-

Question 21

evidence supporting training improves the executive function
kimberley and william 2004

Answer 21

-study
-askeed children from kindergarten through to grade 5 to either exercise martial arts or just traditional pe lessons
-four 45 min training sessions each week, this lasted 4 months
-after this children were tested on their self regulation ability in 3 domains
-physical : the level of physical control and skilfulness.
-cognitive : focus attention and efforts on the task at hand
-affective: self confidence , emotional control , persistence and will

Question 22

evidence supporting training improves the executive function
kimberley and william 2004
results

Answer 22

-martial arts training group led to greater gains in all three areas of self regulation, with the greatest gains in cognitive and affective self regulation

-both boys and girls benefited from martial art training than ordinary pe activities , with boys gained more than girls

-children at older ages benefited more than younger age children did

-concluded that using techniques such as mediation, self monitoring or martial art instructors teach students to be more self aware and to own the responsibility for correcting their thoughts and behaviours , therefore this kind of training can improve their self regulation ability

Question 23

bergman nutley et al 2011: tested transfer of Ef training in 4 year old (whether it can be transferred in 4 year olds)

Answer 23

-the software guides child through several rotating exercises each day (mental rotation task)
-the exercise becomes more difficult in small steps as the child’s ability to handle them improves
-10-15 minutes every week day for 5 weeks

Question 24

evidence supporting training improves the executive function
kimberley and william 2004
results

Answer 24

-training on spatial working memory can transfer to other measures of spatial working memory but not visual working memory

Question 25

karbach and kray 2009
switching task
and results

Answer 25

-they trained a 4 year old on a switching task.
They found that the beneficial effect transferred not only to an untrained task switching task, but also to inhibition (stroop interference) , verbal and non verbal working memory, and reasoning
-this study found more generalisable results

Question 26

conclusion of ef training
-to what extent does ef training work

Answer 26

-if ef training tasks are more demanding and more difficult, they are more likely to generalise to other EF tasks. It is often only in pushing the limits of children’s EF skills that beneficial effects emerge.

Question 27

kovacs and mehler 2009, wass et al 2011)
-exposure to bilingual input can ______ the development of Executive Functions in infants.

Answer 27

accelerate/benefit

Question 28

kovacs and mehler (2009) study on inhibition of habitual responses in 7 month old infant
-what were the two grouos
-what was the task/how was it carried out

Answer 28

-they got bilingual infants ,they had parents with different mother tongues , and both parents addressed them consistently in their own native language, and the infant also consistently had exposure to both languages (bilingual infant group)

-monolingual group (only exposed to one type of language

-monolingual and bilingual infants were matched for age , gender, and their parents’ socioeconomic status

the task:
presented infants a fixation cross in the beginning and then present them different cues in each exp
1st exp: presented random words eg lemovo
2nd exp : they presented with verbal cues that have repeated structures eg lemomo
3rd exp: visual cues

-certain cues led to a toy to appear on 1 side of the screen
-between the cue and presentation of toy, there is an anticipation period between and they wanted to compare children’s ability how quickly the children could anticipate the correct location of the toy (in the pre switch trails participants learned association between cue and location of toy (either left or right hand side of the screen) so eg visual cue red circle and left hand side toy.
-different cues led to a toy to appear on the other side in the post switch trials
-during the post switch , infants had to learn to redirect their gaze from the previously valid side towards the opposite side of the screen.
-infants with stronger inhibition should redirect their gaze earlier

Question 29

kovacs and mehler (2009) study on inhibition of habitual responses in 7 month old infant
results and conclusion

Answer 29

-in the pre switch trials where they just learn the association between particular cue and presentation side of the toy, both monolingual and bilingual groups show similar learning rate (fast learning) and no group difference
-but after the switch (and the rule became the opposite) for the monolingual infant, they hardly learnt anything. but for bilingual infants improved significantly-they learned the opposite rule faster (only bilinguals displayed an increase in correct anticipatory looks

-concluded that multilingual environment improves inhibition even in preverbal infants

Question 30

Bialystok et al 2004
-bilinguals preserve the executive functions longer during aging exp
procedure

Answer 30

-bialystok examined whether bilingualism attenuates the negative effects of aging on cognitive control in older adults
-they compared the performance of monolingual and bilingual middle aged and older adults on the simon task

-simon task: judge the colour of object on screen , left key for blue and right key for green
-in compatible group blue colour appears on same side as the key ,whereas incompatible (incogurent) condition, the colour appears on the opposite side (will take more inhibition function in the incompatible condition

-bilinguals : speakers of English and Tamil living in India , of English and Cantonese living in Hong Kong and English and French living in Canada
-monolinguals : speakers of English living in Canada.

Question 31

Bialystok et al 2004
-bilinguals preserve the executive functions longer during aging exp
results

Answer 31

-age related increase in inhibition costs was greater for monolingual than bilinguals
-when it got the age bracket of 50-59, after that the inhibition ability of monolinguals significantly decreased compared to bilinguals

Question 32

findings of bilingualism and EF called into question
Gathercole et al 2014

Answer 32

gathercole explored the extent to which a bilingual advantage in EFs can be observed in an established population of fully fluent bilinguals from childhood through adulthood
-bilinguals : welsh-english simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals from north Wales