The executive brain Flashcards
Executive functions
Control processes that enable an individual to optimize performance in situations requiring the operation and coordination of several more basic cognitive processes.
Self-ordered pointing task
A task in which participants must point to a new object on each trial and thus maintain a working memory for previously selected items.
FAS Test
A test of verbal fluency in which participants must generate words beginning with a letter in a limited amount of time.
Stroop test
Response interference from naming the ink color of a written color name (e.g., the word BLUE is printed in red ink and participants are asked to say the ink color, i.e., ‘red’).
Go/No-Go Test
A test of response inhibition in which participants must respond to a frequent stimulus (go trials) but withhold a response to another stimulus (no go trials).
Impulsivity
A behavioral tendency to make immediate responses or seek immediate rewards.
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
A test of executive functions involving rule induction and rule use.
Perseveration
Failure to shift away from a previous response.
Task-switching
Discarding a previous schema and establishing a new one.
Switch cost
A slowing of response time due to discarding a previous schema and setting up a new one.
Multi-tasking
Carrying out several tasks in succession; requires both task-switching and maintaining future goals while current goals are being dealt with.
Reversal learning
Learning that a previously rewarded stimulus or response is no longer rewarded.
Somatic Marker Hypothesis
A proposal that emotional and bodily states associated with previous behaviors are used to influence decision making.
Iowa Gambling Task
A task in which participants must learn to avoid risky choices (generating a net loss) in favor of less risky (and more rewarding) choices.
Sociopathy
A personality disorder (now called Anti-Social Personality Disorder) associated with irresponsible and unreliable behavior that is not personally advantageous; an inability to form lasting commitments or relationships; egocentric thinking; and a marked degree of impulsivity.
Delay discounting (or temporal discounting)
The tendency for future rewards to have less subjective value than the same reward received now (or in the nearer future).
Multiple-demand network
A set of brain regions in the lateral prefrontal and parietal lobes activitated by a large range of tasks relative to baseline.
Neuroeconomics
The use of neuroscientific methods and theories to account for economic decision making.
Ultimatum Game
A two-player game in which one player proposes a split of money and a responder either accepts the money (and obtains the agreed split) or rejects it (and both players get nothing).
Fluid Intelligence
Flexible thinking and problem-solving in novel situations, independent of acquired knowledge.
Crystallized Intelligence
The ability to use prior expertise and knowledge.
Monitoring
The process of relating information currently held in mind back to the task requirements.
Sustained attention
Maintaining focus on the task requirements over a period of time.
Error-related negativity
An event-related potential component in EEG that can be detected at the scalp when an error is made.
