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PSYC 304 Child Development > Executive Functioning > Flashcards

Executive Functioning Flashcards

1
Q

What is Executive Functioning?

A
  • Set of neurocognitive skills that promote adaptive functioning
  • Conscious, goal-directed action
  • Many tasks require executive functioning
    • Taking turns in a game
    • Getting dressed
    • Solving math problems

Divided in 3 components:

  • Inhibitory control
  • Working memory
  • Set shifting
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2
Q

Inhibitory Control

A
  • Control your thought, attention and behavior
  • Override internal and external forces
  • Selective attention/ attentional control
    • Ability to selectively attend to some information and filter our extraneous information
  • Self Control
  • Delay of Gratification
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3
Q

Selective Attention

A

Ability to selectively attend to some information and filter our extraneous information

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4
Q

Measuring Attention

A
  • Flanker Task
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5
Q

Flanker task

A

You have to press a button depending on the image in the center of the screen

Notice that besided the target there might be images that will either encourage, discourage or neutral the correct answer.

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6
Q

Self-Control

A

Response inhibition

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7
Q

Measuring Response Inhibition

A
  • Stop-signal task
  • Go/no go task
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8
Q

Stop-Signal task

A
  • Respond to a stimulus by pressing a button
  • On some trials, a sound woudl indicat that you should not press the button
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9
Q

Go / no go task

A
  • If you see one stimuli you should respond and if you see a different one you should not
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10
Q

Delay of Gratification

A
  • Not taking a reward now to have a bigger reward later
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11
Q

Measuring Delay of Gratification

Study 1

A

Study my Mischel and Ebbesen 1970

  • Children choose a prefereed ad a less preferred reward
  • They were tolds that they could have the less preferred reward anytime
  • To get he more preferred reward, they have to sit very still in their chair and wait for the experimenter to come back (15 min)
  • Results:
    • If the preschoolerds can see the reward they wait about 5 minutes (2 out of 8 waited 15 min)
    • If they can see both rewards, they wait about 1 minute (no one waited the whole time)
    • If they can see neither reward they wait the longest
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12
Q

Working Memory

A
  • Mental sketch pad
  • Verbal
  • Visual-spatial
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13
Q

Measuring Working Memory

A
  • Digit span
  • Forward digit span
  • Backward digit span
  • Order them
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14
Q

Set Shifting

A
  • Mental flexibility
  • If something isn’t working, can you try something new?
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15
Q

Measuring Set Shifting

A

Winsconsin Card Sorting Task

You have 4 cards, you have to place a new card with the correcponding card given a feature.

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16
Q

Executive Functioning in Infancy

A
  • Infants engage in behaviours that require executive functioning
  • At around 7 to 8 months infants will retrieve an object that has been hidden in one of two locations and obscured for 2 to 3 seconds
  • Think about what is required to find a hidden object
    • You have to remember where it is
    • Use the information about its location to coordinate behaviour
17
Q

Executive Functioning during Preschool years

A
  • Ages 2 to 5 years
  • Rapid gains in executive functioning during this period
  • When tested with the Flanker task, we can observe an accentuated increase in the score between the ages 3 to 5.
  • There is also:
    • improvement in selective attention
    • Working memory capacity increases
    • Improvement in set shifting abilities
18
Q

Improvement in Set Shifting during the Preschool years

A

Study by Zelazo 2006,

Dimensional Change Card Sort Task

  • This was a task similar to the Winsconsin Sorting Card task but simplified for younger children
  • Results:
    • 4 years old are capable of set shifting when the rules change
    • 3 years old get stuck
      • They persevere on the previous intruction even when they are reminded of the new rules
      • They can even tell you what the new rule is
19
Q

Executive Functioning during Childhood

A
  • Ages 6 to 12
  • Improvement in selective attention
  • Working memory capacity continues to increase
  • More complex planning task
    • Improves accuracy
    • Improved efficiency
20
Q

How to measure the complexity of planning ?

A

Tower of London:

How will you move a ball to a goal position while respecting a set of constraints

21
Q

Development of Executive Functioning during Adolescence and beyond…

A
  • 13 to 18 years old
  • Inhibitory control and working memory reach adult like performance during adolescence
  • Depending on task it, it might be adult like performance as early as 12 years of age
  • Set shifting:
    • Adolescents are as good as adults to adapt to new rules
    • Show greater switch cost
22
Q

Indivial Difference in Executive Functioning

A
  • There are pronounced individual differences in executive functioning
    • Stability
    • Outcomes
    • Predictors
23
Q

Stability of Executive Functioning

A
  • Mounting evidence suggests that executive functioning is stable across childhood and adolescence
    • Children with stronger executive control skills continue to have strong executive control in adolescence and beyond
  • How well children perform on measures of executive functioning in childhood predicts how well they will perform on taskts of executive functioning in development
24
Q

Example of how the measure of the executive control in childhood could predict executive functioning skills in the future

A
  • Delaying gratification in preschool predicts later indicators of executive functioning
  • Length of time the child waited in preschool predicted:
    • better inhibitory control at 18 and at 40 years old
    • better attention during adolescence
25
Q

Outcomes Associated with Executive Functioning

A
  • In Mischel’s original study, delay of gratification in preschool predicted
    • SAT scores (after accounting for IQ)
    • Education level
    • During adolescence:
      • Parent ratings of academic and social competence
    • In the 30s
      • Body mass index
      • drug use
  • Delay of gratification is one specific facet of inhibitory control
    • It does not predict academic outcomes (Watt et al)
26
Q

Name the limitations of the predictions made by Mischel’s study

A
  • Sample was small
    • longitudinal data only available for about 50 paticipants
  • Selective sample
    • Children attending Standfor University
  • Did not control other variables that might explain the association
    • Socioeconomic status (SES)
27
Q

Outcomes Associated with Executice Functioning

Study 1

A

Study by Watts et al 2018

  • 918 4.5 year olds
  • 552 children were lower SES (mom had not completed college)
  • 336 were higher SES (mom had completed college)
  • Task: varian of the marshmallow task
    • 7 min wait
  • Control variables:
    • Family
      • mom’s education
      • mom’s vocabulary
      • SES
    • Home environment:
      • learning materials
      • language stimulation
      • physical environment
  • Results:
    • ​See W6E5 (12, 13)
      • lower-SES children waited less time
    • In the lower-SES sample, once control variables were accounted for no association between delay of gratification and acedmic achievement
    • In the higher-SES the same pattern was found
    • Weak associations between delay of gratification at 4.5 years and academic achievement at age 15 year, once you account for other variables
28
Q

Outcomes Associated with Executive Functioning

Study 2

A

Study by Moffitt et al. 2011

  • 1000 children born in the same city and followed for 32 years
  • Measured inhibitory control between ages 3 and 11:
    • Better at waiting turn
    • less easily distracted
    • more persistent
    • less impulsive
  • Examined associations between this measure of inhibitory control and outcomes at 32 years of age
  • Controlled IQ, gender and SES
  • Results:
    • better inhibitory control during childhood predicted
      • better physical health
      • better mental health
      • greater income
      • fewer arrests
      • greater happiness
    • When you compares sibilings, the sibiling with better inhibitory control had better outcomes
29
Q

Links between Caregiving and Executive Functioning

A

Study by Hughes and Ensor 2005

  • Does scaffolding by parents contribute to better Executive Functioning?
  • Observes 125 two years old in a 10 min interaction with thei moms
  • Coded Scafforlding behaviours
    • open ended questions
    • praise
    • encouragement
    • elaborating
  • Maternal scaffolding at two year olds predicts executive control at four years old after accounting for earlier executive control and family SES.

PSYC 304 Child Development (7 decks)

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