procese executive

Question 1

What are executive processes?

Answer 1

Set of higher-order cognitive abilities that enable individuals to monitor and control thoughts and action.

Question 2

What are the differences between automatic vs controlled behaviour? (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977)

Answer 2

Automatic: actions that occur with little conscious effort. Do not require conscious attention or decision-making.

Controlled: Conscious effort, volitional control. These actions require attention. Can be adjusted based on goals, context.

Question 3

What are the differences between Bottom-up vs. Top-down Control? (Desimone & Duncan, 1995)

Answer 3

Bottom up: the influence of environmental stimuli on cognitive processing. Info from envo drives attention and perception.

Top down: the influence of higher-level cognitive factors such as goals, expectations, on perception and attention. Cognitive processes are guided by internal factors such as beliefs.

Question 4

What are 5 types of situations in which top-down executive control processes need to be engaged?

Answer 4

1. Situations involving planning or decision making
2. Situations involving error correction or trouble shooting
3. Situations where responses contain novel sequences of actions
4. Situations involving technical difficulty or danger
5. Situations that require the overcoming of strong habitual responses

Question 5

What is the link between prefrontal cortex and executive processes?

Answer 5

Patients with frontal brain damage have deficits in executive processes.
Frontal lobe patients have difficulty with top-down executive control processes

Question 5

What is dysexecutive syndrome?

Answer 5

Dysexecutive or frontal lobe syndrom is associated with head injury or stroke affecting the prefrontal cortex.

Question 5

What are common behavioural symptoms of dysexecutive syndrome?

Answer 5

Perseveration
Echopraxia

Question 6

What is echopraxia?

Answer 6

Involuntary imitation or repetition of the action of others.

Question 7

What are clinical tests of executive processes?

Answer 7

In a planning and decision making task (Tower of London test), frontal patients require significantly more moves
Left frontal regions are engaged during this task

Question 8

How do frontal lobe patients perform in the multiple errands test?

Answer 8

They fail to plan in an organised or coordinated way
They spend too long planning one task so run out of time

Question 9

How do frontal lobe patients have trouble with error correction?

Answer 9

Frontal lobe patients do not shift when given feedback that rule has changed, and continue with previous rule (perseverate)

Question 10

How do frontal lobe patients perform on the stroop task?

Answer 10

Very poor performance compared to controls

Question 11

What have clinical tests of executive processes confirmed about deficits in frontal lobe patients

Answer 11

Diff with error correction and trouble shooting
Diff with planning and decision making
Diff with overcoming habitual responses

Question 12

Who else struggles with executive processing

Answer 12

Children - on marshmallow test

Adolescents: improvements during adolescence was observed on tasks of selective attention, working memory and problem solving

Question 13

What is a theory of executive processes?

Answer 13

Supervisory Attentional System

Question 14

What is the supervisory attentional system theory?

Answer 14

Controlled behaviour arises through selection and implementation of schemas

Question 15

How can schema selection be triggered?

Answer 15

1. Contention scheduling - primarily bottom-up triggering in routine situations
2. Supervisory attentional system - additional top-down control in non-routine situations