Executive Functions

Question 1

what are adult executive functions

Answer 1

general purpose control mechanisms that modulate the operation of various cognitive subprocesses and thereby regulate the dynamics of human cognition

Question 2

what are the adult models of executive function

Answer 2

Supervisory activating system (Norman and Shallice, 1986, Shallice & Burgess, 1996)
Central executive (Baddeley, 1996)
Learning focused flexible models (Braem & Egner, 2018)
Implementing attentional control that intervenes when routine control of action is insufficient

Question 3

what is the link between executive functions and frontal cortex

Answer 3

In the absence of changes in general intelligence, adults with frontal cortex damage tend to
Show perseverative motor behaviours
Be cognitively inflexible
Difficulty inhibiting inappropriate responses
Difficulty with the strategic control of behaviour
Serious difficulty in social cognition

Question 4

what tasks did miyake et al., 2000 use to test EF

Answer 4

Tried to combine the major cognitive tasks used to assess different aspects of organised behaviour and control of behaviour
Grouped into
Switching
plus-minus, number-letter, local-global
Updating
Keep track, tone monitoring, letter memory
Inhibition
Antisaccade, stop-signal, stroop
complex EF tasks: Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (Grant & Berg, 1948)

Question 5

what did Miyake et al’s 2000 find about the unity and diversity in predicting complex executive task performance

Answer 5

executive functions are correlated to each other (unity) - i.e inhibition, updating and shifting are highly correlated suggesting they were together so cannot be dissociated

but they are also clearly separable (diversity)
i.e. each of the inhibition tests were correlated to inhibition so inhibition can contribute individually in a significant way

Question 6

what is the idea of the common executive

Answer 6

unity = common EF
this encompasses updating, shifting and inhibition ability

diversity = explains individual differences and according to Miyake & Friedman (2012) only includes updating and shifting such that inhibition does not contribute to ID

Question 7

how can executive functions in early predict behaviour much later (Friedman et al., 2011)

Answer 7

investigated childrens self-restraint ability age 3 using a holistic task where they were left with something tempting and attention grabbing on a table which they could not touch

at 14 months children could be split into high and low self-restraint categories, and this persists at the age of 3
moreover this can be used to predict some aspects of behaviour at age 14 and 17

children with better self-restraint generally perform better in common executive functions, but show no difference in updating and are worse at shifting