Higher Cognitive Function: Executive Function.

Question 1

What does executive function mean?

Answer 1

Description of psychological processes that underline flexible ‘goal directed’ behaviour.

Question 2

Executive dysfunction occurs when what part of the brain gets damaged?

Answer 2

Unilateral frontal damage.

Question 3

What happens to someone with executive dysfunction?

Answer 3

Normal speech, perception, IQ may be normal. Loss of goal orientated behaviour. Deficit in initiation of behaviour (apathy) and impaired monitoring of responses.

Question 4

How can action selection can be achieved?

Answer 4

Contention scheduling - perception. When in routine, one behaviour over rules the other, eg: driving a car, automatic mode.
Supervisory attention system - decision process. Automatic mode is overridden. Requires conscious awareness, doesn’t work well when stressed or tired.

Question 5

When is executive function required?

Answer 5

• When a novel solution is required or task not well learnt.
• Situation requires a response that competes with a strong, habitual response.
• situation requires error correction.
• situation is difficult/dangerous stimuli and compatible with more than one task.

Question 6

What are some test of executive function?

Answer 6

Wisconsin card sorting test - measures frontal lobe function well.
Working memory tests for eg: delayed response tasks, digit span and N-BAK tests.

Question 7

What is temporal/recency memory?

Answer 7

Remembering order of events/actions. Temporal lobe tracks things over time-recollection of what you did during the day.

Question 8

What is source memory?

Answer 8

Context in which learning took place, remembering where we learnt something.

Question 9

What is executive control of attention?

Answer 9

Selecting task relevant info, excluding irrelevant info.