L22 - Executive Function Flashcards
1
Q
What is executive function?
A
- Goal-directed behaviour
- Critical for selecting the most relative actions that we need to complete some goal
- The executive of the mind/brain, controls your thoughts, feelings, behaviours
- How to follow rules
2
Q
What is executive function critical for?
A
- devising a plan and keeping that plan
- monitoring what you are doing or learning
- e.g. how long you are taking to get ready
- metacognitive evaluation
- Am I achieving the plan today?
- emotion regulation
- social appropriateness
3
Q
How does executive function develop?
A
- Drastic improvements from 3 – 5 years across EF’s but keeps on changing/improving through your 20’s!
- Which is why car rentals are much more expensive until you are 25.
- 5 is when you go to school as it is when you can function at school
- Related to prefrontal cortex
- Integrates, amplifies, down-regulates information from the rest of the brain
- Major frontal growth in first few years of life
- Largest time of growth is actually 7-11
- Huge variability - people even out by 11
- Strengths of connections/myelination continue through adolescence, and recent work documenting the brain changes in prefrontal connectivity through the 20’s
- One important example of prefrontal connectivity: people at risk for depression have less white matter connecting prefrontal cortex and amygdala
4
Q
What is response inhibition?
A
- Most studied EF from developmental perspective
- Inhibit the most immediately alluring or habitual response
- Immediate vs long-term goals
- 5pm - work or drink?
- Marshmallow test predictive of lifelong outcomes
- Worse performance in school, worse liked among peers
- Likelihood of being a drug addict, not completing high school.
- Disorders of impulsivity
5
Q
How is the stroop test used to measure response inhibition?
A
- Day-night ‘stroop-like’ test
- Say night when shown sun
- Say day when shown moon
6
Q
What are the theoretical implications of response inhibition?
A
- Often claims have been made that children do not possess knowledge of a certain kind, but really they cannot show it because there is a more alluring option
- Competence V Peformance
- Kids may have competence but something getting in the way of task performance - e.g. exam anxiety
- Competence V Peformance
- Social-cognition
- Analogical reasoning/relational learning
- Remember the lure of visual features over matching relations? Some say a lot of that is about a lack of response inhibition
- E.g., Richland, Morrison, & Holyoak (2006)
- Munakata’s work argues however that response-inhibition comes from representing goals, and that what changes is the ability for the PFC to represent goals robustly/abstractly enough that immediate stimuli don’t drive behaviour
7
Q
What is an example of a task switching/cognitive flexibility task?
A
- Dimensional Change Card Sort Task: 3 year-old children possess knowledge of either way to sort categories, but cannot switch from one strategy to the next
- e.g. learn shape game (boat or rabbit) or colour game (blue or red)
- Can say the rule but cannot do it in action
8
Q
What is working memory?
A
- Amount of stuff you can juggle in your mind at once
- Critical for complex problem solving and learning complex concepts
- Halfords: Relational complexity theory
- It is not the number of items but items in relation to on another (as you cannot chunk them)
- PFC supports analogical reasoning. Finding commonalities in the relations requires WM , in addition to inhibiting more superficial matches
- If just # of items they can be processes serially but the relations among then items force one to process them at once
- It is not the number of items but items in relation to on another (as you cannot chunk them)
9
Q
What study is there to show relational complexity theory?
A
- Think about 2 main effects vs. an interaction vs. a 3 way interaction
- No one can interpret five way interaction
- Have a four item maximum that we can understand about
10
Q
At what age does WM develop?
A
- Andrews & Halford (2002): Children < 5 pretty bad at considering relations between multiple variables at once
- Across language comprehension, learning, reasoning
- When diagonal quadrants map to categories → hard for pre-schoolers
- Conjunction of multiple conventions - difficult for children to learn the relations of
11
Q
How does knowledge interact with WM?
A
- WM is critical for learning complex concepts
- But high-quality knowledge reduces WM load in problem solving
- With higher quality stuff in mind, less stuff has to be juggled at once
- e.g., chess experts - can put chess pieces back on the board
- Why old people can think better than one might predict given decline in PFC function
- Myelination lessens in old age, reverse of child development
- Also suggests why EF is so critical in childhood: need to acquire the high-quality knowledge in the first place
- e.g. Analogical reasoning in Piaget’s work
- Pre-operational children couldn’t solve them
- 3 years olds can solve relations they know
- e.g. Analogical reasoning in Piaget’s work
- With higher quality stuff in mind, less stuff has to be juggled at once
12
Q
What is the driver of cognitive development?
A
- The contemporary update to Piaget focusses on the combination of how increases in knowledge improve how you think and increases in the three EF faculties of “cognitive capacity” improve how you think.
- So, these two factors together, not stage transitions, account for cognitive improvements over development
- Both knowledge and WM increase in childhood
13
Q
How is SES linked to EF?
A
- Lower SES children have lower EF’s across the board, and this is predictive of educational/longitudinal outcomes
- Stress specifically effects PFC and EF’s - it doesn’t impact all brain function equally
- Lack of stimulation & stress hinder PFC growth
- EF and language primary issues that connect SES and achievement
- Classic language brain areas (Broca’s area) is frontal region very involved in verbal working memory
- Hackman & Farah for review
14
Q
What interventions can be implemented for executive function?
A
- Traditional martial arts training, with a focus on discipline and self-control
- Not just teaching kids how to fight
- Lakes & Hoyt (2004)
- This was a single low sample size study
- “Brain training:” Early computer training games of various kinds showed promise, but have not stood up to scrutiny
- Not much of an effect in normally developing kids
- Abcedarian- was not called an EF study, did not directly measure EF, but you can be confident that it improved EF
- EF and Fluid IQ are very highly correlated
15
Q
What is “tools of the mind”?
A
- Diamond et al. (2007)
- Goal to create a curriculum that any pre-k teacher could implement: no special training or equipment
- (such as with martials arts training or computer games)
- A Vygotskian, structured play-based curriculum
- Low-income urban public school system agreed to test this curriculum for EF against one it designed to improve early literacy.
- But after some time, all schools starting using Tools because all the kids and teachers were so much happier!
- No behaviour problems in Tools classrooms, so no
stressed kids and teachers. - Evidence that Tools kids go on to have improved literacy
and maths skills
- Goal to create a curriculum that any pre-k teacher could implement: no special training or equipment
- It included curriculum/activities that involved scaffolding
- e.g. used concrete external aids
- Regulating other task - counter engages in self-reflection
- Private speech to regulate oneself & encourage cognitive flexibility
- Teachers model speaking to oneself during lots of learning activities to be aware of one’s thinking
- At the end of the trial
- Test of attentional control
- Maintenance of multiple rules
- Easier version of tasks have benefits but harder tasks has even bigger on tools
