Executive functions Flashcards
Executive functions
Refers to a set o psychological attributes that are supervisory, controlling and organizational.
Prefrontal lobe
Three subcategories of EF
- Action control
- Abstract/conceptual thinking
- Goal directed behavior
Psychological inertia
- failure to initiate behavior, e.g. might neglect personal hygiene and seems indifferent to the world around them.
- Difficulty in terminating behavior once started.
Perservative responding
Repeating the same behavior again and again.
“environmental dependency syndrome”
describes a pattern of behavior in which environmental cues trigger responses irrespective of their appropriateness at the time.
e.g. shown into a room with hammer, nail, and some picture. start to hang up a picture.
its a type of stimulus driven behavior.
impairment in action control
- interita
- Perservative behavior
- environmental dependency syndrome
Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST)
can participant overcome the tendency to perservate?
are being told whether the card matches the “rule” the experimenter “has in mind”. The participant will quickly learn the matching criterion and sort card according to it. after some trials, the experimenter changes the “rule”.
Frontal lobe damage: learn slowly than normal people, make many more preservative error (continue to sort card according to previous matching criterion).
Sequential planning
individual with frontal lobe damage struggles with this task, when they had to be broken down into subroutines (e.g. a cup of tea for two).
Impairment in goal-oriented behavior
- sequential planning
2. self-monitoring
Self-monitoring
how am I getting along with this task? what was it I just did? e.g. when asked to copy one of several drawing on a page, they may start accurately but then integrate material from one or more of the other drawings into their own.
Key regions of verbal fluency
left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), anterior cingulate, and left inferior frontal gyrus
Brain + WCST
WCST performance is associated with DLPFC.
Brain + Tower of London
Patient with basal ganglia disorder (Parkinson’s) shows significant impairments on this task.
DLPFC, however, non-frontal regions are also involved, including basal ganglia structures, premotor cortex.
Supervisory attentional system (SAS)
Norman and Shallice
Aim to describe goal-directed behavior where achieving an overall goal depends on successful and orderly completion of several subgoals.
e.g. decorating a room = small subroutines that must be competed, fill cracks before painting the wall, and not lay a new carpet before painting the wall.
How the complete the subroutines are stored in memory, and we must select the correct schema. For a professional decorator this are automatic and passive processes. For an amateur, decorating will require a higher level of planning and this is where the SAS comes in.
E.g. if a professional decorator discovers an unexpected problem, the SAS will come into play in order to solve the problem.
Contention scheduling
“selecting” schemas is a relatively automatic and passive process.
