Executive Function Flashcards
What is executive function:
- a set of cognitive abilities that control and regulate other abilities and behaviours
- brain functions that organise, activate, integrate and manage other functions
- regulates an individuals ability to organise thoughts, priotirise tasks, manage time
- it is a function/abilit sustained by various processes
- these processes are effortful rather than automatic, top-down processes that modulate low-level bottom-up processes, goal-directed, links to individuals intention
- used mainly in novel situations and situations requiring flexibility
Early EF skills and later life
- early EF skills are a predictor of later academic and social success
- Clark 2010
What are the 3 main disorders mainly associated with poor executive function
- autism
- ADHD
- fragile X syndrome
what does executive function involve? life/lab?
- working memory. shopping list/digit memory span
- inhibition. ignoring distractions/stroop, go, no-go task
- cognitive flexibility. (repsponding to same thing in diff ways depending on context). multiple passwords, up vs down in lift, alarm on vs off/ dimensional change card sorting task, task-switching paradigm
Executive function development in infannts
- first signs of cog control at 8-9 months
- consolidated at 12 months
- Diamond 2006 review on this
- e.g. a not b task, detour reach task,
discuss executive function development in toddlers and young children
- dramatic improvements in ex funct
- working memory : spin the pots (pots in spinning table, find thse stickers hidden in the pots (hughes & Ensor, 2007), errors reduce between 2 and 4 years (at 4 half what they were at 2)
inhibition: day/night stroop: sun say night, moon say day, performance improves between 4.5 and 6 years. Gerstadt 1994 - shifting: dimensional change card sort DCC (Zelazo 2006 also Frye and rapus (lol) 1996) e.g. flowers vs cars, red vs blue
- Garon 2008 review of this
Does EF have the same structure in toddlers and young children as in adults?
Hughes and ensor 2007
- same groip of children tested at 2,3 and 4
- mesures of working emmory, inhibition, shifting,
- 1 general ex funct factor at 3 and 4 (factor analysis) no clear pattern at 2
Muller 2012
- same childre tested at 2,3, 4
- spatial working memory and inhibition
- different tests at different ages (this is key apparently because it bold and in red)
- 2 factors at 2 adn 3, 2 factor at 4
Wiebe, Espy and Charack 2008
- single group of 2.5-6 year olds
- working memory and inhibitory control
- 1 general ex funct factor across all ages
discuss executive function development in midchildhood
- improvements in working memory and inhibition (best 2009)
- shifting is more complex and individual (cragg and chevalier 2012)
does EF have the same structure midchildhood as in adults?
- improbements in inhibition (Li 2009) although this continues from 0 to 30 and then rises up again at 60 so like U shaped but you neber get back to the point of a young child
- by 15 youre pretty much only v slightly worse than a 21 year old
- development slows down a lot after age 11
- Huizinga 2006
- used nearly 400 p’s for this so pre good, there were factors forworking memory and shifting byt the 3 diff inhibition tasks did not load onto the same factor
van der ven 2013
- 200 6 year olds
working memory factor and a combined intention-switching factor
lee, bull, & ho 2013
- nearly 700 5, 7, 10 and 12 year olds all tested 4 times
- 4 factor structure at 6 years same as above van der ven structure
- clear 3 factor structure at 15 years
monette bigras lafreniere 2015, 300 5 year olds, inhibition factor and combined working memory-switching factor
discuss unity and diversity EF model
updating, shifting and inhibition
all flow into unity which is common EF
then diversity which is updating-specific and shifting-specific
this is by Myake and Friedman 2012
has not been tested to see if its a good fit in children
traditional view of EF and th modern view of EF
- contrast this with modern view
- EF traditionally associated with frontal lobes
- frontal lobe damage produces disexecutive syndrome
more modern view:
- deficits in EF can occur because of lesions or uderdevelopment of structures or pathways involved, or abnormal neurotransmitter activity within the required circuits
prefrontal cortex and EF
- the prefrontal cortex is the last part of brain to undergo synaptogenesis, which peaks here at 2-4 years old
it then undergoes synaptic pruning until early aduthood with probls explains that too
frontal lobe and EF
Aldeman 2002
30 ps between 7 and 22
colour word stroop task and fMRI
increased inhibition related actibity in fronta lobe with age : adults used theirs more than chhildren
- hwang 2010, tenagers and adults rely on long range connections in frontal lobe whereas children rely on short range connections in parietal lobe. strength of these conections icreases with age
white matter development and EF
- nagy westerberg and klingberg 2004
- 23 between 7 and 18 years
- visuospatial short term memory task
- sMRI
- performance correlated to amount of myelination in frontal lobe
- perhaps EF is just due to lots of short distnace connections rather than long myelinated ones? there are more short ones in childhood Fair 2007 longer ones in aadulthood
