Executive Functions Flashcards
What type of study did Romine & Reynolds (2005) conduct?
Meta-analysis of 8 studies.
What did Romine and Reynolds (2005) study find?
- Units of frontal functioning increase with age.
- Different trajectories of development are apparent for different cognitive tasks.
- Adult levels are only reached by 20s.
What did Kail et al.’s (1991) study find?
- Analysed data from 72 studies comparing adults and adolescents
- Range of tasks: visual search, stroop, mental rotation, reading
- Linear relationship of RT for adults and adolescents
- Suggest global development factor.
Define working memory.
Temporary storage of information for use by other cognitive processes.
What happens to working memory during adolescence?
Increases in capacity and precision of recall.
What did Gathercole et al. (2004) state about Working Memory structure?
- Over 700 participants from 4-15y.
- Verbal storage, visuospatial storage and executive functions assessed.
- Basic modular structure from 6y.
- Each component expands from childhood to adolescence: capacity increases linearly from 4y to early adolescence.
How did Burnett-Heyes et al. (2012) investigate Visual Working Memory precision?
- 90 participants, 7-13y.
- Sensorimotor control task, 1 item and 3 item memory task.
- Precision increased with age.
Define Executive Functions
Cognitive processes based in the Prefrontal Cortex that underlie goal-directed behaviour.
What makes EF a multi-stage process?
Different functions mature at different times in different ways.
Who investigated abstract reasoning and how?
- Dumontheil et al., 2014
- Review of behavioural and functional/structural studies.
- Suggests that prolonged development of RLPFC contributes to abstract reasoning prolonged development.
- Functional and structural support
- Behavioural studies show prolonged changes in speed and accuracy
- Also shown that later adolescence is better at responding to abstract thoughts: shorter RT with age responding to Stimulus Independent Thought
Define prospective memory.
The ability to remember to remember.
What 2 studies investigated prospective memory?
- Maylor and Logie, 2010: 300,000 participants, 8-50y. Peak in late adolescence, 16-19y.
- Ward et al., 2005: 90 participants, 7-21y. Word/non-word lexical task, also identifying italicized letters as PM task. Adult/adolescents better at PM task, but more self-reported activation needed for adolescent to perform the same.
What developmental neural correlates of Working Memory have been found? (4 studies)
- Kilngberg et al., 2002: Visuospatial WM task vs. control task. Similar fronto-parietal network activated across age, with age-related increase.
- Kwon et al., 2002: fMRI in v-s WM task. Age related increase in brain activity in dorsolateral PFC, ventral PFC and PPC.
- Olsen et al., 2003: Development of structural and functional networks: fMRI and DTI. Correlation of FA and GM activation in fronto-parietal WM regions.
- Scherf et al., 2006: Both increases and decreases with age indicate increasing specialisation of WM networks.
Dumontheil et al.’s (2010) study showed what about neural correlated of Abstract reasoning?
- 37 participants took part in task and fMRI.
- Stimulus orientated vs stimulus independent
- Lower RPFC and lower insula activation with age
- Inverted U shaped activation of RPF activation and age
What other factors affect EF findings?
- Environmental vs endogenous factors
Define cognitive control.
The ability to regulate thoughts and actions in accordance with internally represented goals: use to coordinate basic Executive functions.
Which 3 coordination areas are particularly improved during adolescence?
Abstract reasoning, problem solving, creative thought
What 2 pairs of brain regions interact with to lead to 2 types of motivation?
Mid PFC + dACC = episodic motivation
Post PFC + preSMA = contextual motviation
What functions move forward in the brain?
More abstract thought and higher order control.
Define the 2 mechanisms of cognitive control.
Proactive control: keep goal in mind during other things. Biases perception, attention and action systems. Continues to develop in adolescence.
Reactive control: cue from environment reminds of goal. ‘Late correction’ mechanism.
What is unclear about the pattern of PFC development?
Different activation patterns have been found:
- increased activation = increased specificity and connectivity
- decreased activation = increased efficiency
Define hot and cold EF.
Hot: Motivational and emotional significant contexts.
Cold: Affectively neutral contexts.
What tasks can you use to measure cold EF?
Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, Stroop and Eriksen Flanker Task.
What tasks can you use to measure hot EF?
Iowa Gambling Task, Driving Game and reward paradigms.
What were Hooper et al.’s (2004) findings from the Iowa gambling task?
- Participants made more advantageous choices as they got older.
- 14-17y were better than children, but not as good as adults still.
What is the main finding of neural correlates in adolescence and motivation?
Heightened sensitivity to reward in adolescence.
What neural correlates have been found regarding motivation?
- increased ventral striatum and orbiotfrontal cortex activation
- sensitivity to socio-affective information
- increased dopamine
Describe the dual system model.
There is an imbalance due to maturation, which dips towards the motivational/limbic/hot system and away from the prefrontal/neutral/cold system
Describe the triadic model
3 regions interact to create cognitive control: cold PFC, harm avoidance/amygdala and reward-seeking/ventral striatum.
Which 3 studies found an increase in performance when a reward is presented?
- Kohls et al., 2009: go/nogo task, improvement with any reward.
- Strang & Pollack, 2015: adapted go/nogo task with reward shown before each trial during fMRI. Child, adolescent and adult age groups. All 3 groups improved when there was a reward.
- Geier & Luna, 2010: anti-saccade task. Adding reward led to increased accuracy and lower RTs.
Describe Teslovich et al., 2014.
- High vs low rewards with task difficulty adjusted for performance.
- Different pattern with age for size of reward: only adolescent increased performance when reward was high.
- Increased PFC recruitment when reward was high.
